About IPL

IPL - The concept
The Indian Premier League (IPL) was launched by the BCCI on September 14, 2007 amid a lot of media hype. Based on the lines of the English Premier League (EPL) and the National Basketball League (NBA), the IPL is apparently the brainchild of BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi. The idea was tossed up as far back as 1996 but was turned down by the Board which thought the concept would contradict its structure of domestic cricket.

The League will have some of the best cricketers from around the world playing for eight teams, alongside Indian senior and under-19 cricketers. IPL, which now has a title sponsor in DLF, will see a total of 59 matches spanning over 44 days beginning April 18.

The Franchises
The eight teams in the fray, Kolkata, Mumbai, Mohali, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi were sold to eight franchises who paid staggering amounts to own the teams. The owners can run the teams the way they want to and name them too. The franchises, if they so desire, can also list their teams on the stock exchange.

Following are the owners of the eight teams:
Kolkata - Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla Mehta and Jay Mehta
Mumbai - RIL- Mukesh Ambani
Mohali - Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Karan Paul and Mohit Burman
Hyderabad - Deccan Chronical
Jaipur - Emerging Media - Lachlan Murdoch, Manoj Badale and Suresh Chellaram
Bangalore - UB Group - Vijay Mallya
Chennai - India Cements - N. Srinivasan
Delhi - GMR Holding

The Auctions
The BCCI had initially contracted around 80 players who were put up for the first of two rounds of historic auctions, which was held in Mumbai on February 20 followed by the second one on March 11.

The first round of bidding saw huge amounts of money thrown on the tables by franchises to shop for the best of international players on show, an extravaganza never witnessed in global cricket before. India captain MS Dhoni was sold for a whooping USD 1.5 million.
Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai), Sourav Ganguly (Kolkata), Rahul Dravid (Bangalore), Virender Sehwag (Delhi) and Yuvraj Singh (Mohali) were nominated as icon players which meant that they would not be up for bidding. The icons would get to play for their home sides and would be paid 15 per cent over the highest bid player in their respective teams.

The auction saw some huge surprises where India’s young guns piped some of the more experienced and glamorous international stars to the post in terms of the money they earned. Young Indian fast bowler Ishnat Sharma was won over for 950,000 dollars by Kolkata while the fastest bowler in the world Brett Lee got no more than 900,000 dollars. One ODI old Manoj Tiwari took home an astonishing 675,000 dollars whereas Herschelle Gibbs, one of the most prolific batsmen in world cricket had to be content with 575,000 dollars. The auction also saw the story of Indian cricketers’ prominence being written in the loudest of words.

The second auction which was held to help teams finalise their playing squads and also ensure that they spent their allotted Rs 20crores on the teams was not as high profile but saw some very important cricketers like James Hopes of Australia and Pakistan’s Misbah-ul-Haq go under the hammer. The second round also belonged to India’s World Cup winning under-19 team whose players were picked up by the franchise at a fixed price of 30,000 dollars slotted by the BCCI.

The Money
The overall prize money will be a stupendous USD 5 million, with the winners taking home USD 2 million. Compare that with what World Champions Australia took home from the West Indies, a mere USD 1 million.

The people who matter
The BCCI has formed an IPL council which will include former BCCI president IS Bindra, Vice presidents Rajiv Shukla, Chirayu Amin, Lalit Modi and Arun Jaitley who will be honorary members. Former cricketers Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi will be paid for their services to the Council. The Council will in its five year term run, operate and manage the League completely independent of the BCCI.