'There is no proposal to be discussed'- Arun Dhumal on speculations of proposals with Saudi Arabia in cricket

There have been plenty of speculations that Saudi Arabia giving a proposal of a Grand Slam T20 circuit and is in talks with the BCCI and IPL committee. The number of partnerships with Saudi Arabia and the growing ties with the nation.

While the reports of the proposals are making waves, ex-BCCI treasurer and IPL Chairman Arun Dhumal has made it clear that there has been no proposal made by the nation yet, and so it has only been speculation from the media. Dhumal has also discussed the growth of Saudi Arabia and how they have aspirations and demands that more cricketing activity should take place in their country.

“It can't be 'yes' or 'no' because there is no proposal to be discussed; it is just media speculation, There's nothing that we can do about media speculating, Saudi Cricket as such is part of ICC, They're wanting to make some investments in cricket so that cricket becomes more relevant in that part of the world, given the diaspora from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh… There's a lot of aspirations and demands from those guys that more cricketing activity should happen there,” Dhumal said as quoted by ESPN Cricinfo.

One of the moments that led to these speculations was the fact that the mega auction for IPL was held at Saudi Arabia to which the IPL chairman has revealed that the idea behind it was to give the nation a taste of how big of an event the IPL is.

“There has been a lot of speculation as to any talk between IPL and BCCI and Saudi Cricket with regard to their interest in IPL. I would want to categorically deny any of that. The idea was to give them a flavour of what IPL is all about. When you see the kind of numbers that happened there with regard to this mega-auction, everybody was startled as to how big this game is,” the IPL chairman added.