'No decision on Pak players for IPL auction'

The IPL Governing Council has not taken any decision on whether to include or exclude players from Pakistan for the Indian Premier League's players' auction scheduled for January 8-9 next year, a member of the Twenty20 League's ruling body said.

"Anyone can write anything sitting in their room, but no such decision was taken at the meeting," a member of the IPL GC, who did not wish to be named said.

Reports quoting a top but unnanmed official of the Cricket Board, that owns the cash-rich Twenty20 League, indicated that the IPL GC, which met here on December 5, decided to leave out Pakistan players from the auction in the wake of the International Cricket Council's probe into the match-fixing allegations against some Pakistan cricketers.

Prior to IPL-3 no franchise showed any interest in picking up Pakistan players at the auction held in January.

Eleven Pakistani cricketers were to go under the hammer but there were no takers for any of them. The unsold players were Shahid Afridi, Misbah-ul-Haq, Umar Gul, Imran Nazir, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Mohammad Aamer, Abdul Razzaq, Kamran Akmal, Umar Akmal, Saeed Ajmal and Sohail Tanvir.

Players from Pakistan took part in the inaugural edition of the IPL in 2008 but were denied permission to figure in the second season of the Twenty20 League in 2009 by their government following the November 26, 2008 terror strike in Mumbai.