Mumbai: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Monday scrapped the contract with its television rights holder, Nimbus, to broadcast domestic and international matches at home for default in payment. However, negotiations for a compromise are still on.

A BCCI official said Nimbus owes the Board over Rs 100 crore as outstanding payments from the India-England and India-West Indies series.

Ahead of the emergent working committee meeting in New Delhi on Monday, the television marketing company paid the BCCI Rs 24 crore, but could not place the rest of the outstanding amount of Rs 88 crore.

“Nimbus defaulted on payments and so we have scrapped the deal. The contract due to end in 2014 now stands nullified. Their bank guarantee of Rs 2000 crore for the deal will be forfeited by the BCCI,” said M.P. Pandove after a meeting of the emergent working committee.

The members were “unanimous” in scrapping the telecast deal for India’s home series matches.

Nimbus, headed by Harish Thawani and known to be close to Lalit Modi and quite a few others in the Board, has been a little out of favour with the current Board officials.

The BCCI and Nimbus also had a long-pending ‘issue’ over radio rights. Nimbus was not happy with the All India Radio’s offer and had asked the BCCI to deal with them directly. They feel the returns are insufficient.

But BCCI insiders say apart from the financial issues between the two parties, hockey too played a spoilsport in their relationship.

“During the West Indies series, Nimbus Communications was promoting the forthcoming World Series Hockey (WSH) in the air time scheduled for cricket.

“Commentators were being asked to speak to hockey players during match breaks,” complained a member of the working committee.

Nimbus owns Neo Cricket — the television channel on which India’s domestic and international matches played at home are telecast.

To top it all, pressure from government-backed Hockey India — which is opposed to the WSH — also made matters sticky for the BCCI.

The BCCI has been trying to ward of government pressure for greater say in its internal matters.

HI secretary genral Narendra Batra, who has been opposed to the breakaway league, wrote to the BCCI last week objecting to promotion of WSH on Neo Cricket.

Nimbus has refused to confirm the news.