Sunil Gavaskar

Calcutta: With no Brett Lee and a big question mark over Michael Clarke’s fitness, Team India could have it easy against world champions Australia in Sunday’s face-off in Adelaide.

However, not everybody in the touring party has taken too kindly to the Indian Premier League (IPL) contracts being “discussed” for much of Saturday evening.

The IPL is, of course, being promoted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Essentially, it’s a response to the rebel Indian Cricket League, which has Zee’s backing.

“It’s a big match (in the tri-series) tomorrow and the players should only have been focused on that... It’s very disappointing that this IPL business had to come up today,” somebody senior told The Telegraph.

While details weren’t available, one learns that former captains Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri (both of whom are on the IPL’s governing council) had a “15-minute” session with the Mahendra Singh Dhonis at the team hotel, the Hyatt.

Later, the players had a closed-door meeting amongst themselves, at the hotel itself.

Gavaskar and Shastri are in Australia on a TV assignment. Mansur Ali Khan ‘Tiger’ Pataudi is the other former captain on the governing council.

Obviously, Saturday’s IPL-related meetings in faraway Adelaide had everything to do with Monday’s deadline for providing the names of all available players (from India and overseas) to the eight team owners under the franchise system.

The auctioning of the players, an absolute buzz-creating (but, potentially, heartburn-causing too) first, has been scheduled for Wednesday in Mumbai.