Mumbai, Aug. 21 :    Mumbai, Aug. 21:  The Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has awarded the five-year telecast rights for international cricket in the country to Doordarshan for a record sum of Rs 231 crore. Confirming this, BCCI chairman Raj Singh Dungarpur told The Telegraph that the working committee of the BCCI approved the deal on Friday after the board?s marketing committee cleared the contract on August 19. Doordarshan?s bid was at least Rs 32 crore higher than the nearest bidder, Dungarpur said. The previous contract had been awarded to Worldtel, a private production house, for about Rs 50 crore. This time BCCI has sealed a deal that will give it revenues amounting to little more than four and a half times what it got under the earlier contract. The new contract will be effective from October 1999-2004. ?The acceptance of the bid has been conveyed to Prasar Bharati,? the BCCI chairman said. Under the terms of the contract, Doordarshan will telecast 21 days of live domestic cricket. Although Doordarshan has outbid rivals this time, it will share the spoils with an international production house. Dungarpur confirmed that Doordarshan has contracted the services of an international production house to help telecast the matches played in the country. He, however, expressed ignorance about the identity of the production house that Doordarshan had teamed up with. ?That is strictly between Doordarshan and the party concerned,? he said. Dungarpur also confirmed that ITC has been re-appointed as the official sponsor of the Indian team for three years. The other contenders for the sponsorship contract were Mid-day Publications and Pepsi. BCCI sources say ITC will pay Rs 30 lakh and Rs 35 lakh for every one-day international and test match respectively that the Indian team plays. The other bidders had reportedly bid in the region of Rs 25 lakh, the source said. According to Dungarpur, the cigarette maker has been extremely supportive. A few countries have banned cigarette makers from sponsoring sporting events. ITC used to pay the board for every match played by the Indian team despite local restrictions that prevented players from sporting the company?s logo on their apparel. The bidding war over the past few months for the lucrative contract had raised a lot of dust with several bidders ? the television channels and marketing companies ? threatening to engage the board in long-drawn out litigation if there was no transparency in the award of the telecast rights. With tension mounting before Friday?s BCCI working committee meeting, the board said it wanted the broadcaster to have a minimum reach of 15 million homes which automatically disqualified several private channels and left Doordarshan in the strongest position to bag the order.