Grit and glamour for IPL
AT 4.30pm this Saturday, the first ball of the VIVO Indian Premier League 2018 will be bowled at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, when defending champions the Mumbai Indians take on Chennai Super Kings on home soil in the 11th tournament of its kind.
An explosive match is expected to be in the offing when skipper Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and Jean-Paul Duminy take on the uber-talented Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo and Lungisani Ngidi.
While Indians are known to be gaga over the “gentlemen’s game”, they are equally crazy about Bollywood – and what is an IPL tournament without a bit of hip shaking?
According to reports, B-Town stars including Hrithik Roshan, Parineeti Chopra, Varun Dhawan and Jacqueline Fernandez will perform at the 90-minute opening ceremony in Mumbai which will end at around 4.15pm (SA time), 15 minutes before the toss.
Tickets are expected to be sold out at this cash-rich annual tournament of big hitters and record makers.
In 2007, the league was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The founder and commissioner of the league is Indian businessman and cricket administrator Lalit Modi.
He was responsible for the IPL’s relocation to South Africa in 2009 after it was found that fixtures of the tournament were going to clash with the Indian general election and would have resulted in a deficit of security.
The tournament is a Twenty20 cricket league usually contested in India. The format of the IPL sees eight teams representing eight different Indian cities participate in a round-robin style of league – with each team playing each other twice at both home and away stadiums.
When the league stage – which consists of 56 matches – comes to an end, only the top four teams on the log will progress to the play-off stages.
The IPL has quite an unusual knock-out system, which sees the top two teams play against each other in the first of two qualifying matches.
The winner is drafted directly into the final match. However, the loser is given another chance to qualify in the second of two qualifying matches.
In the intervening period of time, the third- and fourth-placed teams battle it out in an eliminator match, which sees only the winner progressing, unlike the first qualifying match.
In an encounter between the winner of the eliminator and the loser of the first qualifier, the winner of the second qualifier determines the other team that will progress to the final.
The IPL is the most-attended cricket league in the world. According to ESPN, the media rights for international bilateral cricket in India for the next five years will be sold via e-auction.
It will be the first time in sport history that media rights will be sold via an online auction.
During last year’s league, global valuation and corporate finance advisers Duff & Phelps Corporation valued the IPL brand at R62.7 billion.
Social media giant Facebook and search engine giant Google are just two of the names in the race for media rights to the multibillion-rand league.
As of the 2018 season, teams can only comprise 18 to 25 players, with a maximum of eight international players.
However, a team is only allowed to use four international players in their starting 11. A limit is placed on the salary of the entire squad, so that sponsorships do not interfere with the balance of calibre of the teams.
In an unfortunate turn of events, the IPL will be without former Rajasthan skipper Steve Smith and former Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper and big hitter David Warner.
After the ball-tampering controversy in the Test series between the Aussies and the Proteas, Cricket Australia banned the pair for 12 months, stumping their international cricket career.
The winning team will reportedly receive $4 million and the runners-up $2 million.
Third and fourth placed will earn around $1.5 million each.