Thaindian News

New Delhi, April 1 (IANS) International Cricket Council (ICC) has lifted the ban on the electronic media’s coverage of Saturday’s World Cup final with a rider: Any infringement will lead to initiation of legal proceedings.

“Despite a lengthy meeting at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in New Delhi, the National Broadcasters Association (NBA) and the Broadcast Editors Association (BEA) refused to give assurances that they would desist from breaching the broadcast guidelines in their news programming,” ICC said in a statement.

Accordingly, the ICC has decided to commence legal action against the companies involved and will also seek to recover damages through the courts in India rather than bar the channels from the ICC Cricket World Cup final.

ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said that ICC will “take all steps necessary to protect our commercial rights.”

“I am very disappointed that it has come to this, however, we need to do everything to protect our exclusive commercial rights and those of our partners. If that means we have to resort to legal action, that is regrettable but necessary,” he said.

The ICC said Indian news channels have repeatedly breached the news access guidelines for broadcasters in the World Cup.

“At the Ministry’s request, we travelled to New Delhi to meet with the NBA and BEA in an attempt to resolve the issue but they were unfortunately not willing to conform to the guidelines agreed with the ICC prior to the event.”