About

This blog is to give Twenty20 cricket fans information on the Indian Premier league. It also allows fans to openly express their opinions on Twenty20 and the Indian Premier League.

For information about Twenty20 and the league please scroll down to get an insight into how the league began and why. Alternatively please click on the home page links to find out more, including the league fixtures and which stars are playing in the tournament. 

TWENTY20 CRICKET

Is a form of cricket, originally introduced in the United Kingdom for professional inter-county competition by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), in 2003. Both teams have a single innings and bat for a maximum of 20 overs.

A Twenty20 game is completed in about three hours, with each innings lasting around 75 minutes, thus bringing the game closer to the time-span of other popular team sports such as football. It was introduced to create a lively form of the game which would be attractive to spectators at the ground and viewers on television and as such it has been very successful. The ECB did not intend that Twenty20 would replace other forms of cricket and these have continued alongside it.

The game has spread around the cricket world. On most international tours there is a Twenty20 match and most Test-playing nations have a domestic cup competition. The inaugural ICC World Twenty20 was played in South Africa in 2007 with India defeating Pakistan in the final.

INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE

The Indian Premier League was created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and sanctioned by the International Cricket Council, as a Twenty20 cricket competition.

IPL Television Rights 

On January 14th, 2008, it was announced that a consortium consisting of India’s Sony Television network and Singapore-based World Sport Group secured the rights of the Indian Premier League. The record deal has a duration of ten years at a cost of US$1.026 billion. As part of the deal, the consortium will pay the BCCI US$918 million for the telecast rights and US$108 million for the promotion of the tournament.

The BCCI announced that the bulk of the proceeds from this deal would initially go to the IPL franchises themselves, gradually reducing this amount over the life of the contract.

Network Ten has bought the rights to show every game live in Australia on free-to-air television for the next five years at a cost of AU$10 – $15 million. Setanta Sports have secured the UK rights in a 5-year deal. All 59 games will be shown on their subscription channels.

Sponsorship 

Indian real estate developer DLF Universal secured exclusive rights to the Indian Premier League title sponsorship worth INR 200 crore (over US$50 million) for five years.

The Franchises 

The magnitude of the Indian Premier League was confirmed when the winning bidders for the eight franchises were announced on January 24, 2008. While the total base price for auction was US$400 million, the auction fetched US$723.59 million. The official list of franchise owners announced and the winning bids were as follows.

Franchise	Owner(s)	Price (USD)
Mumbai	Mukesh Ambani/ Reliance Industries Limited	$111.9 million
Bangalore Royal Challengers	Dr. Vijay Mallya / UB group	$111.6 million
Hyderabad	Deccan Chronicle	$107 million
Chennai Super Kings	India Cements / N Srinivasan	$91 million
Delhi DareDevils	GMR Holdings	$84 million
Mohali	Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia , Karan Paul (Apeejay Surendera Group) and Mohit Burman (Dabur)	$76 million
Kolkata	Shah Rukh Khan,Juhi Chawla Mehta and Jai Mehta	$75.09 million
Jaipur Rajasthan Royals	Emerging Media :(Manoj Badale, Lachlan Murdoch, Suresh Chellaram)	$67 million

Player Auctions

 Players in the league were put up for auction so the teams could bid for them (see ‘TEAMS’ on home page). The players auction was held on February 20. The IPL placed icon status on a select few marquee Indian players. These players were Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar,Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag. Many players from the Australian National Team decided not to submit their names for consideration in the auction. This may have been a direct result of the events of the Sydney Test in the 2007/08 Border Gavaskar Trophy (although key players involved in that issue; Ricky Ponting, Andrew Symonds and Matthew Hayden, have signed for IPL), or Cricket Australia’s desire for global protection of their sponsors. No player currently contracted by the England Cricket Board submitted their name, as the tournament directly conflicts with the English National Team’s winter schedule. From the 77 players who had put their names for consideration, Mohammad Yousuf and Ashwell Prince were unsigned.

(Information Courtesy of Wikipedia.org)