The IPL Revolution _ It’s now reality by Nawshad Shah
The much anticipated and sometime controversial Indian Premier League (IPL) is going to start from 18th April (Friday). We have heard of houses being auctioned off, as also cars, memorabilia, stocks and shares. But in an innovative and historic scheme, the Indian Premiere League (IPL) bought international cricketers at an auction held in Mumbai on
February 2008.
The IPL is a professional Twenty20 cricket league created and promoted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and backed by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
The super popularity of Twenty20 cricket may have created a monster. Imagine, in 44 days from 18 April to 1st June, 59 Twenty20 matches will be played around India and Millions of US Dollars will be generated by the 8 franchise teams. Bollywood also made its presence felt with two of its leading stars bagging the ownership of their respective teams – Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla’s Red Chillies Entertainment buying out Kolkata for US$75 million, while Preity Zinta bought the Mohali team for $76 million. The Mumbai franchise owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) was the most expensive franchise with US$ 112 million.
The IPL works on a franchise system based on the American style of hiring players and transfer. The auction went on to fetch total US$ 723 million by the eight (8) franchises to own 8 teams.
Eight (8) teams will play 14 home and away games each (56 matches) before the semifinals and final, in Mumbai on June 01, 2008.
Sony TV is reported to have secured the IPL TV right for $1 billion. The Ten Network (Channel 10) secured the rights to broadcast the IPL matches LIVE in Australia.
Here are some of the key players of each team:
MUMBAI: Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Harbhajan Singh, Shaun Pollock, Robin Uthappa, Lasith Malinga, Dilhara Fernando, Ashle Prince, Luke Ronchi, M Thornely, Loots Bosman .
KOLKATA: Ganguly, Ponting, Shoaib Akhtar, Brendon McCullum, Chris Gayle, Ajit Agarkar, David Hussey, Ishant Sharma, Murali Kartik, Umar Gul, Tatenda Taibu, Salman Butt .
BANGALORE: Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Jacques Kallis, Zaheer Khan, Mark Boucher, Cameron White, Wasim Jaffer, Dale Steyn, Bracken, Chanderpaul, Noffke, Misbaul Huq, Razzak (Bdesh)
CHENNAI: Dhoni, Muralitharan, Hayden, Jacob Oram, Stephen Fleming, Parthiv Patel, Joginder Sharma, Albie Morkel, Suresh Raina, Ntini, Michael Hussey, Balaji, Parthiv Patel.
DELHI: Virender Sehwag, Daniel Vettori, Shoaib Malik, Md Asif, AB de Villiers, Dinesh Karthik, Farveez Maharoof, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Manoj Tiwary, Gautam Gambhir, Glenn McGrath.
HYDERABAD: VVS Laxman, Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Herschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi, Scott Styris, Rohit Sharma, Chamara Silva, RP Singh, Chaminda Vaas, Nuwan Zoysa.
MOHALI: Yuvraj Singh, Mahela Jayawardene, Sangakkara, Brett Lee, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Ramesh Powar, Piyush Chawla, Simon Katich, Ramnaresh Sarwan, James Hopes .
JAIPUR: Shane Warne, Graeme Smith, Younis Khan, Kamran Akmal, Yusuf Pathan, Md Kaif, Munaf Patel, Justin Langer, Shane Watson, Sohail Tanvir.
Find attached the official schedule and LIVE TV telecast from Channel 10 in Australia. So fastened your seat belt for many sleepless nights to watch some entertainment cricket or “tamashas” !! and be part of the history.1
***** IPL 2008 Official Fixture with TV Chedule for Australia (Channel 10) is attached in pdf format.
1 Nawshad765@hotmail.com, Sydney April 2008
