Kochi, Jan 21 (IANS): The Kochi franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) neither confirmed nor denied reports that they have approached the IPL governing council to rope in former India captain Sourav Ganguly.

When quizzed by IANS in this connection, Vivek Venugopal, co-owner of the IPL Kochi team, preferred to keep mum on the issue.

"I have no comments to offer on this," Venugopal said Friday.

A BCCI official, however, said that taking Ganguly, who went unsold in the IPL auction this month, will be a cumbersome process.

According to IPL rules and regulations, Kochi will have to get the green signal from all the other nine teams to include Ganguly.

"First, all the nine teams will have to agree to it. Do you think the Knight Riders will agree to this because if they do then they will have to face the sentimental issue of handing over the 'Prince of Kolkata' to Kochi. It would be strongly resented by the supporters of Ganguly," said the BCCI official.

The Kochi team bought Brendon McCullum, Brad Hodge, Owais Shah, Mahela Jayawardene and Muttiah Muralitharan, besides V.V.S Laxman, in the auction.

Ganguly, who played for and captained Knight Riders for three season, had a base price of $400,000 in the auction, but none of the 10 IPL teams bid for him.