By BABU KALYANPUR

After flexing its muscles in a long drawn battle, the Indian cricket board finally delivered the knockout punch on the Indian Cricket League (ICL).

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has all but slammed the door on the ICL by granting amnesty to 79 Indian players.

With many of the foreign contracted players also opting to get out of their contracts, the ICL is barely left with any cricketers of note, except a few veterans.

BCCI officials will be rubbing their hands in glee at having won the battle. But the tactics used will not go down well with the cricketing fraternity.

The BCCI has been monopolising Twenty20 cricket since the launch of the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year.

It wants the IPL to be the premier tournament and the rest be made into a non-entity. It has single-mindedly pursued that and finally succeeded.

It has also dictated terms and banned all ICL players from taking part in official tournaments in their respective countries. The BCCI also convinced the International Cricket Council (ICC) that the ICL should not be recognised by it.

Though many cricketing nations expressed their unhappiness at the growing clout of the BCCI, the ICC as usual did nothing.

So will the ICL survive now? At least some of the officials and the players still left feel they will.

With money such a big draw in cricket, the ICL may yet find more players to fill the breach. But most of the big names will be back in the fold.

The ICL most likely will continue for a year at least with some fresh blood from India and other countries. Some of the veterans with nothing to lose may well join up.

The success of old-timers like Adam Gilchrist and Anil Kumble in the IPL may well prompt the ICL to look for recently retired players to add big names to the tournament.

Another pressing issue the ICL will have to address will be the effect of the global economic crisis. The BCCI has already grabbed up all the big advertisers and the success of the IPL will make many others reluctant to sponsor the ICL.

The one advantage for many countries will be that some of the disgruntled star players will be back in the reckoning to play for them.

Teams like Pakistan will surely grab Mohammed Yousuf and Abdul Razzaq and fast track them into the side.

New Zealand will hope that Shane Bond will be back with them and lift their fortunes in the longer versions of the game.

The BCCI checkmate of the ICL was not required and both could have survived. But as in all walks of life, the power-hungry will try to trample everything else on the wayside.