Kathmandu, October 15

Cricket Association of Nepal has invited the representative of Bright Sports, a subsidiary of national team’s kits sponsor SingaSteel, for a meeting

and also asked the sponsors to send the gears for the World Cricket League Championship matches against Papua New Guinea.

In a turnaround of the events, the cricket governing body backed off from its decision of terminating the contract with the Singapore-based company and asked BS to deliver gears for the two matches slated for November 16 and 18 in Abu Dhabi.

The move came two weeks after Bright Sports threatened the CAN of dragging the cricket governing body to courts for unilaterally terminating the deal. SingaSteel had signed a three-year deal with CAN in December last year. As per the agreement, the sponsors would provide jerseys and kits worth Rs 10 million every year. But CAN CEO Bhawana Ghimire, sending an email to Bright Sports, had terminated the contract on May 23.

In an email sent to Marketing Director of Bright Sports Ali Babar, acting Secretary of CAN Uttam Karmacharya invited the sponsors for a meeting to discuss about contract. “The meeting of CAN has decided to invite representative from Bright Sports to discuss regarding the clothing contract,” the email stated. “National cricket team is travelling to the UAE on November 3 to play WCL Championship match against PNG as per the programme of International Cricket Council. Pleae provide us with the clothing for the tournament by the end of October,” Karmacharya wrote in the email.

In reply, Marketing Director of BS Ali has sent agendas for the meeting along with the assurance of providing gears for the national team as a goodwill gesture. “In the meeting, we would like to discuss about the breach of contract by CAN, violation of the contract, CEO damaging the name of sponsor on social media and non-cooperative response from the CEO upon contact by BS, and non-commitment in payments and domestic buying,” Ali wrote in the reply. “As far as our visit is concerned, we will fix the date for next month as there is a series of festive holidays in Nepal.

And we suppose CAN should provide us the accommodation in official tours and meetings,” he added.

“After discussing on the above mentioned issues, we will decide how we go ahead with the contract.” Ali said he would be happy to provide clothing to Nepal national team for the upcoming tour. “We are supplying the gears as a goodwill gesture and not looking at odd things right now,” he said.