The inevitable has happened: ICC¹s ridiculous sponsorship deal has claimed its first victim and the Indian team, for no crime of theirs, have been left without a sponsor. The Sahara group were well within their rights to withdraw from their US$ 15 million deal with the BCCI after ICC¹s perverse rejection of their revised logos. The demand that Sahara, a domestic airline operating strictly within India, should change its logo to honour ICC¹s commitment to South African Airways, which operates a few international flights to India, was unreasonable to start with but it means that Indian players, the most marketable cricketers in the world, stand abruptly deprived of their logo fee,which is five times their match fee. It is quite likely that another sponsor would lap up this opportunity and the Indians would soon be sporting another logo, but in principle, this nonsense has already gone too far. Sambit Bal

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