Axing IPL team not a solution, says Shilpa Shetty - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Bollywood actress and co-owner of the Indian Premier League's Rajasthan Royals team Shilpa Shetty said that axing teams was not a solution to any legal breaches committed by the franchise. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on October 10 terminated the franchise contracts of Indian Premier League's (IPL) Punjab and Jaipur teams. It had also issued a notice to the Kochi Team, and asked the franchise to settle its internal differences. The Emerging Media group had acquired the Rajasthan Royals for 67 million dollars. The investors in the team include Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, businessman Lachlan Murdoch, Aditya S. Chellaram and Suresh Chellaram, brother-in-law of former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi. On Thursday, Shetty said that she expected the teams to be treated with fairly if they have defaulted. "We've had, we are trying to have a dialogue directly with the BCCI and we like it to be private. We don't want to hurl stones and we haven't done anything wrong. Even if we have done something wrong, I think, as a franchise and as somebody who has really been a part of a team and, you know, done all that we have with the passion that we've done it with," said Shetty. "I just think we need to be treated with a little more fairness, and I think in any business if you have defaulted, you have to pay for it. And you can for it by compensating for it. Just throwing us out is, you know, not a solution," she added. Shetty also said that the ruling implied that the owners of the teams had defaulted, when it was not so. "I just want to remind people that Raj (Kundra, her husband) and I came in year two, okay, we weren't involved with the Rajasthan Royals year one, and there was no change in the ownership plans other than the inclusion of my husband and I, in year two," said Shetty. "So, whatever the problems that have been, you know, created, they seem to have, they seem to look like as if we have defaulted. But that's not the case," she added.