CHAPTER 1 INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional league for Twenty20 cricket competition in India. It was initiated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) headquartered in Mumbai supervised by former Chairman and Commissioner of the Indian Premier League Lalit Modi. It is currently contested by 10 teams consisting of players from around the world. It was started after an altercation between the BCCI and the Indian Cricket League.

Fig. 1.1 IPL Logo

IPL was started to crush ICL. BCCI used its clout to get ICC ban players taking part in ICL. ICL had players from different countries. It was unfair to ban players taking part in ICL. IPL got franchisees and sponsors. Players were auctioned. ICL suffered loss and disappeared. Media gave good coverage to IPL. The telecast of matches was in the evening or at night. The matches provided entertainment and an alternative for movies and TV serials. People were fed up of K serials and they watched IPL. In 2010, IPL became the first sporting event ever to be broadcast live on YouTube. Its brand value was estimated to be around $4.13 billion the same year. According to global sports salaries review, IPL is the second highest-paid league, based on first-team salaries on a pro rata basis, second only to the NBA. It is estimated that the average salary of an IPL player over a year would be $3.84 million. The brand value of Chennai Super Kings (winner IPL 2010, finalist IPL 2008 and semi-finalist IPL 2009) is estimated at USD 48.4 Million.

1.1 First season

The inaugural season of the tournament started on 18 April 2008 and lasted for 46 days with 59 matches scheduled, out of which 58 took place and 1 was washed out due to rain. The final was played in DY Patil Stadium, Nerul, Navi Mumbai. Every team played each other both at home

and away in a round robin system. The top four ranking sides progressed to the knockout stage of semi-finals followed by a final. Rajasthan Royals defeated Chennai Super Kings in a last ball thriller and emerged as the inaugural IPL champions.

1.2 Second season

The 2009 season coincided with the general elections in India. Owing to concerns regarding players' security, the venue was shifted to South Africa. The format of the tournament remained same as the inaugural one. Deccan Chargers, who finished last in the first season,were big underdogs, but came out as eventual winners defeating the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the final.

1.3 Third season

The third season opened in January 2010 with the auction for players. 66 players were on offer but only 11 players were sold. In this season, Deccan Chargers did not play at their preferred home location of Hyderabad, India due to the ongoing political crisis in the Telangana region . The new bases for the champions this season were Nagpur, Navi Mumbai and Cuttack. Four teams qualified for the semi-finals. The first semi-final was won by Mumbai Indians who defeated Bangalore Royal Challengers by 35 runs. Chennai Super Kings defeated Deccan Chargers in the second semi-final. The final was played between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. Chennai Super Kings won by a margin of 22 runs. After the win Macrina Fernandes multi billionaire from Vasai gifted Mahendra Singh Dhoni a BMW as a token of appreciation

1.4 Fourth season (Controversies)

On 21 March 2010, it was announced in Chennai that two new teams from Pune and Kochi will be added to the IPL for the fourth season. However, the bid around the Kochi franchisee turned controversial resulting in the resignation of minister, Shashi Tharoor from the Central Government and investigations by various departments of the Government of India into the financial dealings of IPL and the other existing franchisees. Later, Lalit Modi was also removed from IPL chairmanship by BCCI. On 5 December 2010, it was confirmed that Kochi will take part in the fourth season of IPL.

The addition of teams representing Pune and Kochi was to have increased the number of franchises from 8 to 10. The BCCI originally considered extending the tournament format used in previous season to ten teams, which would increase the number of matches from 60 to 94. Instead, the round-robin stage of the tournament was to have been replaced by a group stage with two groups of five, limiting the number of matches to 74. But this format was replaced by another one in which each team would play 5 other teams in a two-way round robin format and there would be 2 teams against whom they would play only at home and remaining 2 teams against which they would play only away matches.Thus each team plays 14 matches.Top four teams would qualify for the semi-finals. In October 2010, the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab had their franchises terminated for breaching ownership rules. The new Kochi franchise was also issued a warning to resolve all their ownership disputes. Two months later both teams were finally allowed to take part in the 2011 edition after a court ruling

1.5 Franchises
The winning bidders for the eight franchises were announced on 24 January 2008. While the total base price for auction was US $400 million, the auction fetched US $723.59 million. On 21 March 2010, Pune and Kochi were unveiled as the two new franchises for the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League. The base price was $225 million. While Pune was bought by Sahara Adventure Sports Group for $370 million, the Kochi franchise was bought by Rendezvous Sports World Limited for $333.3 million. The process was to have been completed on March 7 but was postponed by two weeks after many bidders and the BCCI objected to stiff financial clauses. The second franchise auction fetched total $703 million.

Team

City

Inception Owner(s)

Captain

Head coach Robin Singh Ray Jennings

Mumbai Indians Mumbai Royal Challengers

2008

Mukesh Ambani (Owners of Sachin Reliance Industries) Vijay Mallya (UB Group) Tendulkar Daniel Vettori

Bangalore

2008

Bangalore Deccan Chargers Hyderabad 2008 Chennai Kings Super T.Venkatram Reddy Kumar Darren

(Deccan Chronicle) group India (N.Srinivasan) GMR Group

Sangakkara Lehmann Stephen

Chennai

2008

Cements Mahendra

Singh Dhoni Fleming Virender Sehwag Greg Shipperd

Delhi Daredevils New Delhi 2008

(Mr. GM Rao)

Ness Wadia, Preity Zinta, Kings XI Punjab Mohali 2008 Dabur, Apeejay Surendera Group Kolkata Riders Knight Red Chillies Entertainment Kolkata 2008
(Shah Rukh Khan)

Adam Gilchrist

Michael Bevan

Gautam Gambhir

Dav Whatmore

Emerging Media (Lachlan Rajasthan Royals Jaipur 2008 Murdoch), Shilpa Shetty,

Shane Warne Yuvraj Singh Mahela

Shane Warne Geoff Marsh Geoff

Raj Kundra ,Manoj Badale Pune India Kochi Kerala Tuskers Warriors Pune 2011 Subrato Roy Sahara

Kochi

2011

Rendezvous Sports World

Jayawardene Lawson

Table 1.1 IPL Franchises

Fig. 1.2 IPL Franchises

1.6 Rules
There are five ways that a franchise can acquire a player. In the annual auction, buying domestic players, signing uncapped players, through trading and buying replacements. In the trading window the player can only be traded with his consent. The franchise will have to pay the difference between the old contract price and the new contract price. If the new contract is worth more than the older one then the difference will be shared between the player and the franchise selling the player. Some of the Team composition rules are:

Minimum squad strength of 16 players plus one physio and a coach. No more than 10 foreign players in the squad and at least 4 foreign players should be there in each squad.

Minimum of 8 local players must be included in each squad.

A minimum of 2 players from the BCCI under-22 pool in each squad.

Some of the differences to international Twenty20 cricket:

A difference to international cricket is a timeout. It gives the players an opportunity to strategise and take a drink during the strict 2 minutes, 30 seconds time limit. Each team is awarded two timeouts per innings totalling to four timeouts for the whole game. The teams can take the timeout when instructed, but is necessary to take it from 6th to 9th and 16th to 18th over.

IPL is also known for having commercials during the game, hence there is no time limit for teams to complete their innings. However, there may be a penalty if the umpires find teams misusing this privilege at their own choice.

The total spending cap for a franchisee in the first player auction was US $5 million. Under-22 players are to be remunerated with a minimum annual salary of US $20,000 while for others it is US $50,000. The most expensive players in the IPL to date is Gautam Gambhir of India fetched the highest price of $2.4 million from Kolkata Knight Riders at the auction for season 4