MUMBAI: Following its meeting Thursday, the IPL governing council confirmed on Friday that the 15th edition of the Tata Indian Premier League will be played in a bio-secure environment at a single hub to avoid air travel, considered a major threat for the spread of COVID-19.
The tournament will kickstart from 26th March and the final will be played on 29th May.
The IPL will reportedly allow around 40% crowd capacity in the initial phase of the tournament, with the option to either increase or decrease numbers as per the Covid situation prevailing when world cricket’s richest annual tournament “shifts into high throttle”.
A total of 70 league matches will be played across four international standard venues in Mumbai (Wankhede Stadium – 20 matches, Brabourne Stadium [CCI] – 15 matches, DY Patil Stadium – 20 matches) and Pune (MCA International Stadium – 15 matches)
The venue for the four playoff matches will be decided later, the BCCI declared. Media reports have however, already as good as confirmed that the final will be hosted at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium.
All teams will play:
4 matches each at Wankhede Stadium and DY Patil Stadium.
3 matches each at Brabourne Stadium (CCI) and MCA International Stadium, Pune.
The 10 teams will play a total of 14 league matches (7 “home” matches and 7 “away” matches) totalling to 70 league matches, followed by the 4 playoff matches.
Each team will play 5 teams twice and the remaining 4 teams only once (2 only “home” and 2 only “away”).
To ensure this, the 10 teams have been divided into two virtual groups of five, based on a seeding system determined by the number of IPL championships won and the number of final appearances.
The two groups shape up as:
Group A: MI, KKR, RR, DC, LSG
Group B: CSK, SRH, RCB, PBKS, GT
Each team will play twice against the teams in their group and against the team in the same row in the other group. Against the remaining four teams in the other group, each team will play only once.
For example, KKR will play twice in the league stages against MI, RR, DC, LSG and SRH (the team in the same row in the other group). KKR will play only once against CSK, RCB, PBKS and GT.
The format is similar to that used for the 2011 edition, when IPL had two new teams in Pune Warriors India and Kochi Tuskers Kerala and 74 games were played.
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