23 February 2005	Wednesday	13 Muharram 1426

MUMBAI, Feb 22: Pakistan's tour of India is in doubt because of a long-running court battle over TV rights, the head of the Indian cricket board has said.

"The situation is grim since the International Cricket Council (ICC) rules say that a telecast is a must," Ranbir Mahendra, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), said on Tuesday.

"TV is essential for the third umpire, and the ICC could refuse to post officials for the series. If the telecast issue is not decided by next week, they might step in."

The dispute involves India's largest listed media firm Zee Telefilms and the cricket board. The Chennai High Court is hearing a case against the board's decision to abandon a $308 million, four-year deal that Zee won in an auction.

Pakistan are due to arrive on Feb 28 to play three Tests and six One-day Internationals on their first full tour of India in six years following political tensions over the disputed region of Kashmir.

Before the board backed out of the deal last September, it had been challenged in court by unsuccessful bidder and rival ESPN Star Sports, owned by Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.

The dispute also put in doubt Australia's tour of India last October but the Supreme Court allowed the board to sell the series as a one-off to Sony Entertainment, with pictures produced by Dubai-based Ten Sports.

"We'll again request the court to allow us to make a stop-gap arrangement to show the Pakistan series on TV," Mahendra said. The tour has already been delayed by three days due to a dispute over venues.

The Pakistan Cricket Board had threatened to pull out if India insisted on hosting a Test in Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat which witnessed the country's worst Hindu-Muslim riots in a decade in 2002. India scrapped the Ahmedabad Test while Pakistan agreed to play an additional one-dayer there. -Reuters