Vijay Mallya set to lose ownership of CPL team Barbados Tridents
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Former United Spirits Chairman Vijay Mallya will lose ownership of CPL side Barbados Tridents ahead of the upcoming 2019 season. CPL CEO Damien O'Donohoe has confirmed that they are in talks with a number of prospective buyers, and they will announce a new owner ahead of the player draft on May 22.
Mallya, who earlier owned Royal Challengers Bangalore before transferring the ownership to good friend Amrit Thomas, is currently fighting to avoid extradition from the United Kingdom to India for his alleged bank fraud, with authorities trying to recover millions in unpaid loans.
Now, his legal and financial troubles have started having a strong impact on the Caribbean Premier League franchise Barbados Tridents. which he took ownership of in 2016. Players are yet to be paid in full for the 2018 season that finished in September and keeping a look at this, CPL authorities have decided to look for a new owner.Â
"That's obviously been a big headache for us … (but) that issue in relation to Barbados will be getting resolved in the next two to three weeks," O'Donohoe was quoted by Guyana Chronicle as saying.Â
"We will also have a change of ownership which we hope to announce in two weeks' time and that's a very experienced owner who is going to come in, and it's something that we're obviously excited about and we're looking forward to a fresh start at the end of this month."
Tridents' marquee player Dwayne Smith recently criticised the league for their unprofessionalism but CPL chief operating officer Pete Russell expressed gratitude to all affected players for their professionalism and assured that the payments issue would be resolved shortly.
"We just want to put on record how grateful we are to the patience of the players. They've been very understanding. For us, it's just the worst possible scenario where you've got to assess circumstances where an owner for whatever reason can't pay players is just not acceptable really. It's been a process we've had to go through and we're at the end of the process and it's all positive going forward."
The 2019 edition of the CPL will be played from September 4 to October 12 after the dates were revised to ensure it doesn't clash with India's tour of the Windies.
