NEW DELHI (AFP), Fri, Jan 22 2010 - Srinivasan stressed that even players like West Indian batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin and England spinner Graeme Swann had been ignored at the auction.
Such arguments are unlikely to placate critics across the border.
"I think this is a lesson to all the Pakistani players to think about their country only and don't play only for the lust of money in the IPL," Basit Ali, former Pakistan player, told AFP.
Leading sports personalities had also called on Pakistan to boycott next month's field hockey World Cup in New Delhi where the arch-rivals are due to clash in the opening match on February 28.
But Pakistan sports minister Ijaz Jakhrani said on Friday the national team will travel to New Delhi to take part in the tournament.
"The World Cup is an international event -- not an Indian one, so our team will participate in it," Jakhrani told reporters in Islamabad.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their independence in 1947 and tension spiked in 2008 when militants killed 166 people in an attack on Mumbai. New Delhi pointed the finger at a Pakistan-based Islamist group.
India cancelled a scheduled cricket tour of Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks, breaking a sequence of bilateral Test series held on each other's soil every year from 2004 to 2007.
In a further setback, the International Cricket Council withdrew Pakistan's right to host matches in next year's Cricket World Cup, following the Lahore terrorist attack in March on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team.
Pakistan's matches were instead shared among co-hosts India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
The third season of the lucrative IPL, which features the world's top players in eight teams owned by rich businessmen and Bollywood stars, will be held in March and April this year.
One franchise official, who preferred to remain unnamed, told AFP that he was not surprised that the Pakistanis were excluded.
"We were not sure if they would get visas and we did not want players who won't be available," he said. "Besides, there is also the security issue. No one was willing to take a chance."
Indian cricket board secretary N. Srinivasan, who owns the Chennai Super Kings team in the IPL, also said the franchisees should not be blamed.
"They (the franchisees) have the right to pick the players they want. After all, it is their money," Srinivasan told the Hindu newspaper on Friday.
"How can you say if you do not buy a player from a particular country it is an insult to that nation?
"How much a team is prepared to spend on and on whom is the sole prerogative of the franchisees."
A perceived snub to Pakistani players by the glitzy Indian Premier League has sparked a diplomatic spat between the great rivals, for whom cricket is more than just a game.
No Pakistani player was bought by the eight Indian clubs during an auction on Tuesday for the third edition of the league despite the Pakistan team being the reigning world champions in the Twenty20 format of the tournament.
The omission has triggered widespread protests in Pakistan with effigies of IPL chief Lalit Modi being burnt on the streets of Lahore amid condemnation from politicians and threats of boycotts from other Pakistani sports teams.
Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna was drawn into the maelstrom Thursday, denying that his government was behind the move following suggestions from IPL franchises that Pakistani players may have been refused Indian visas.
"The government has nothing to do with IPL, on selection of players and various exercises that are connected with it," he said.
In Pakistan, retaliatory steps saw a parliamentary delegation cancel their trip to India and a scheduled visit by the Pakistani kabaddi (traditional tag wrestling) team was called off.
"I agree this is a private event, but Pakistani players being excluded without any reason and without looking at the background is unfair," the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Ijaz Butt, told AFP.
Foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit told the newspaper Dawn "it is clear from what we heard from the Indian High Commission that the decision to not include Pakistani players was influenced by variables extraneous to sports."
Today : Sunday - May 27, 2012, 12:56pm (GMT+5.5)
