To add to the conundrum, the only Malayali face in the consortium, Vivek Venugopal, holds just one percent stake in the Rs 1,533 crore franchisee. But the Kerala Cricket Association secretary and former manager of Team India, T C Mathew, maintained on Monday that the Indian Premier League will come to Kochi despite Shashi Tharoor’s resignation from the Union Ministry.

“There are no issues with hosting IPL matches in Kochi,” Mathew told expresso. “Preparation is underway in full steam to host mat c h e s i n Kochi and the resignat i o n o f S h a s h i Tharoor will not affect cricket.” Co-owner of the franchise, Vivek Venugopal, too dismissed the chances of the team moving away from Kochi.

“There is no question of our home matches being played in another state,” he said. “We will have a team. The franchisee agreement is already in place.” But Vivek conceded that the consortium members were disappointed by the lack of active support for the franchisee from within Kerala.

“We thought we could have done better with a little more support,” he said. Meanwhile, reports coming in point to undercurrents within the consortium working towards shifting the base to Ahmedabad – what with the majority of investors hailing from that part of the country.

Apparently, the Rendezvous Sports World-led consortium had bid for Kochi as a strategic ploy to own an IPL team.

Satyajith Gaikwad of Rendezvous had told a web-site a few days ago that the consortium had chosen Kochi only after finding that it would be difficult to compete for the Ahmedabad franchise with heavyweights in the fray.

But having won the initial battle, their efforts to muster support from the social as well as political fronts seem to be stuck in a bottleneck.

The fact remains that Kochi’s fate as an IPL franchise still hangs in the balance, more so with Kochi failing to find its feet on its own strengths as a cricketing venue.

kochi@expressbuzz.com