MUMBAI: The BCCI recently had no option but to indefinitely suspend the Indian Premier League after it had completed only half its innings for 2021. Now by the looks of things, the Indian cricket board has also been forced to put on hold its publicly stated plan to float tenders for two new IPL teams.
“No discussion in this regard is happening at this stage in the BCCI. We don’t see any movement on this before July,” Sports Tiger quotes a senior BCCI official as having declared.
Multiple reports had previously suggested the new IPL teams would be finalized by the end of May. This would have given the new teams adequate time to delineate their plans for IPL 2022.
Earlier this year, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and board secretary Jay Shah had announced the inclusion of two more teams in the 15th edition of IPL, making IPL 2022 a 10 team affair. The BCCI had also decided that at the business end of IPL 2021, the tenders for the auctions of two new teams would be issued.
With BCCI set to postpone issuing a tender for new IPL teams and a 10-team IPL looking increasingly unlikely in 2022, it stands to reason that IPL 2022 will not see a mega auction as was being expected. Instead, a mini-auction, similar to the one that took place ahead of IPL 2021, is the more likely scenario.
