MUMBAI: The BCCI has decided to add to new franchises to the Indian Premier League from the 2022 season, the auction for which will be held in May.
BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, secretary Jay Shah and other board members reportedly held a meeting on Saturday to chart out a plan of action for the new teams.
“The 10 team IPL will roll on from next year and the bidding process and finalisation of the new franchises will be completed by the month of May this year (before its 2021 edition has come to an end). Once the teams are finalised, they can start their operational work which takes considerable time,” a senior BCCI official told PTI.
The IPL last had ten teams in 2011, when Kochi Tuskers Kerala and Pune Warriors India were part of the competition. It bears noting that with the introduction of two new teams, a new competition format was also created. This new format entailed 74 matches and was introduced since retaining the format used for an eight-team tournament (entailing 60 matches), where teams compete in a double round-robin tournament, would meant 94 matches having to be played to complete the event.
It currently takes a shade under two months to execute a complete season of the IPL. But with two new teams coming in, how the BCCI manages a longer IPL and whether it can ensure the availability of foreign players for an extended period are some of the things that are still unclear.
When the announcement to expand the IPL was first made last year, Mumbai Mirror disclosed that the Adani Group and Sanjiv Goenka Group were two parties definitely interested in bidding for a new IPL team.
Subsequent reports had suggested that the two new franchises would be from Ahmedabad (home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah), and the other from Kanpur, largest city of Uttar Pradesh and home state of state chief minister Yogi Adityanath, the third most visible face of the ruling BJP party.
