Fantastic Opening

Dazzling fireworks that lit up the sky and a glittering opening ceremony attended by the top brass of the ICC and the BCCI kicked off the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL) in Bangalore on Friday evening.

In a spectacular ceremony before the lung-opener between Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders, the BCCI patted itself for heralding the start of a new phase in international cricket.

A packed house erupted in excitement as captains of the eight participating teams walked out to sign the MCC's Spirit of Cricket, under which the entire tournament will be played out.

BCCI President described it as a ‘historic day’ for international cricket and hoped that fans would maintain their interest for the next 44 days, which will see 59 matches.

Later in the night, the Kolkata Knightriders team went on to beat the Bangalore Royal Challengers convincingly.

Indian Premier League

Indian Premier League (IPL), a brainchild of BCCI or to be precise its vice-president Lalit Modi, is a Twenty20 league sanctioned by ICC. Eight franchise teams owned by business tycoons, Bollywood stars and media magnets feature in the league.

Each team will have a pool of 16 players, with a max of eight overseas players and a min of four U-22 players besides a min of four players from the catchment area as is fixed by the governing body. IPL franchises bought the best cricketers of the world thro' the players' auction held on Feb 20 in Mumbai. The franchises sans icon players - Chennai and Hyderabad - spent lavishly to net big fishes in the shape of Dhoni ($1.5m) and Symonds ($1.35m) respectively. Franchises bought players -Indian and international - of their liking from a pool of 77.

Each team will play seven others in the fray on home and away basis. The top four teams at the end of league stages will make it to semis' and bottom four will play classification ties. The inaugural event, involving 59 ties, will kick-off on Apr 18, when Mallaya-owned Bangalore Royal Challengers take on Kolkata owned by SRK at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. The franchise teams will battle it out for 44 days for a US$3m prize money.

IPL, the billion-dollar first-of-its-kind in cricket, is loosly modelled after the mega sporting events English Premier League (EPL) a football league in UK and MLB (Baseball league in North America). However the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: Will the much-hyped T20 league match EPL and MLB in magnitude or is this a gigantic bubble waiting to burst. Time alone will tell.

The teams that are going to take part in the inaugural IPL tournament are

• Mumbai Indians - Mukesh Ambani - Captained by Sachin Tendulkar
• Bangalore Royal Challengers - Vijay Malya - Captained by Rahul Dravid
• Chennai Super Kings - India Cements - Captained by MS Dhoni
• Delhi Daredevils - GMR Group - Captained by Virendra Sehwag
• Deccan Chargers - Deccan Chronicle - Captained by VVS Laxman
• Kolkata Knight Riders - Shah Rukh Khan/Juhi Chawla - Captained by Saurav Ganguly
• Kings XI Punjab - Preity Zinta/Ness Wadia - Captained by Yuvraj Singh
• Rajastan Royals - Emerging Media Group - Captained by Shane Warne