1. lternate title: IPL
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Indian Premier League (IPL), Indian professional Twenty20 (T20) cricket league
established in 2008. The league, which is based on a round-robin group and knockout
format, has teams in major Indian cities.
The brainchild of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the IPL has developed
into the most lucrative and most popular outlet for the game of cricket. Matches
generally begin in late afternoon or evening so that at least a portion of them are played
under floodlights at night to maximize the television audience for worldwide broadcasts.
Initially, league matches were played on a home-and-away basis between all teams,
but, with the planned expansion to 10 clubs (divided into two groups of five) in 2011,
that format changed so that matches between some teams would be limited to a single
encounter. The top four teams contest three play-off matches, with one losing team
being given a second chance to reach the final, a wrinkle aimed at maximizing potential
television revenue. The play-off portion of the tournament involves the four teams that
finished at the top of the tables in a series of knockout games that allows one team that
lost its first-round game a second chance to advance to the final match.
With the advent of the IPL, almost overnight the world’s best cricketers—who had
seldom made the kind of money earned by their counterparts in other professional
sports—became millionaires. The owners of the IPL franchises, who included major
companies,Bollywood film stars, and media moguls, bid for the best players in auctions
organized by the league. At the outset of the IPL, the well-financed Mumbai Indians had
the league’s biggest payroll, more than $100 million. It cost the Chennai Super Kings
$1.5 million to secure the services of Mahendra Dhoni in the initial auction for the 2008
season and theKolkata Knight Riders $2.4 million to sign Gautam Gambhir, the opening
batsman for the Indian national team, in the bidding for the 2011 season.
The eight founding franchises were the Mumbai Indians, the Chennai Super Kings, the
Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Deccan Chargers (based in Hyderabad),

2. the DelhiDaredevils, the Punjab XI Kings (Mohali), the Kolkata Knight Riders, and
the Rajasthan Royals (Jaipur). In late 2010 two franchises, Rajasthan and Punjab, were
expelled from the league by the BCCI for breeches of ownership policy, but they were
later reinstated in time for the 2011 tournament. Two new franchises, the Pune Warriors
India and the Kochi Tuskers Kerala, joined the IPL for the 2011 tournament. The Kochi
club played just one year before the BCCI terminated its contract. In 2013 the Deccan
Chargers were replaced in the IPL by the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
The first tournament, held over 44 days in 2008, was won by the Rajasthan Royals, one
of the smaller-market franchises, captained by Shane Warne, the great Australian
bowler. In the wake of the IPL’s success, other cricketing countries scrambled to grab
some of the riches by forming their own domestic T20 leagues.
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