The Indian Premier League (IPL) is being considered as the latest and one of the biggest revolutions in Indian Cricket. The IPL is a tournament that follows the latest version of Cricket, the Twenty20 format and is being run and managed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). A large number of corporate houses are associating BCCI as the sponsors of this mega tournament, with DLF being the title sponsor. The BCCI Vice President, Mr. Lalit Modi is playing the role of the Chairman and Commissioner of IPL. The BCCI inaugurated the IPL on 18th April, 2008 in Bangaluru with a view to bring more excitement in Indian Cricket and also to present this new version of Cricket to the Indian Cricket enthusiasts in a big way. The tournament is mainly played on a double round-robin league and knockout format and the winning team gets a huge amount of prize money.
The unique thing about the Indian Premier League is that, here the teams are run and managed by various corporate houses or the celebrities from different sects of the society. The owners of the teams have to go through a bidding procedure to buy the teams and after that, the cricketers are also put on auction. The managements of the teams take part in the auction and bid for their desired cricketer, with a view to make their team the strongest one among all others. All the cricketers from around the world, including the Indian cricketers are put on auction. The BCCI has actually followed the format of England`s most popular Football event, the English Premier League (EPL) for governing the rules and regulations of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
However, there are a few marquee Indian Cricketers, who have been bestowed upon with the `icon status` by the BCCI. The players are Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh, and Virender Sehwag. Though, the legendary Indian Cricketer VVS Laxman was initially given the `icon status`, he voluntarily opted out of this status for his team. The players with `icon status` are given the best offerings on behalf of the teams and they usually play for the state from where they belong to. While, Sachin play for Mumbai Indians and Sourav for Kolkata Knight Riders, the players like Rahul Dravid (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Yuvraj Singh (Kings XI Punjab) and Virender Sehwag (Delhi Daredevils) also play for their respective state teams.
A total of eight teams participated in the first edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the teams were Delhi Daredevils, Deccan Chargers, Kolkata Knight Riders, Kings XI Punjab, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, and Rajasthan Royals. The owners of the teams are Mukesh Ambani (Mumbai Indians), Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla Mehta and Jai Mehta (Kolkata Knight Riders), Vijay Mallya (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Deccan Chargers Sporting Venture (Hyderabad Deccan Chargers), N Srinivasan of India Cements (Chennai Super Kings), Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao of GMR Holdings (Delhi Daredevils), Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Mohit Burman, and Karan Paul (Kings XI Punjab), A. R Jha, Lachlan Murdoch, Suresh Chellaram of Emerging Media (Rajasthan Royals).
The BCCI follows the standard rules identified by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for Twenty20 Cricket, in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Each of the teams in IPL is required to have squad strength of at least 16 players plus one physio and a coach. Not more than 8 foreign players are allowed to be taken in the squad and a maximum of 4 foreign players can be kept in the playing XI. However, for the 2009 edition of IPL, the BCCI has allowed the franchises to take 10 foreign players in the squad. The number allowed in the playing XI remains unchanged at 4. The teams are bound to keep a minimum of 8 local players and a minimum of 2 players from the BCCI under-22 pool, in their squad.
According to the rules and regulations of the IPL, the teams play against each other twice in a double-round robin system, with equal number of home and away matches. The top four ranking teams, progress to the semi-finals and then the two top teams meet in the final and vie for winning the championship. The inaugural 2008 tournament lasted for 46 days, with 59 matches scheduled, out of which 58 took place and 1 was washed out due to rain. The Final match of the tournament was played between the Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings teams at the DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai. The Rajasthan Royals team became successful to win the trophy in the inaugural IPL. Shaun Marsh of Kings XI Punjab team became the highest run scorer of the tournament and Sohail Tanvir of Rajasthan Royals team became the highest wicket-taker.
After getting huge success with the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Boards of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is now planning to increase the number of franchises further. It is thinking of adding four new franchises from IPL 2010-11 and it would take the total number of teams to 12. The new franchises will be based on the cities like Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Patna-Ranchi, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, etc.
