IPL to have new format, 74 matches
After weeks of deliberation, the Indian Premier League governing council has come out with the new format of the tournament for the next three years. The fourth edition of the tournament will be played in 2011, and will have 10 teams – two more than the previous editions.
The number of matches for the next editions of the IPL have been increased to 74, instead of 60, but the number of games that each team plays in the league stage is 14 – seven home and seven away – which is the same as the previous three editions.
The new format will see the 10 teams divided into two groups of five each. The first round will be based on a round-robin format. The five teams in each group will play against the other teams of their own group on a home and away basis. Each of the five teams in each group will also play four of the five teams of the other group in one match – either home or away – and will play the fifth team in the other group at both, home and away. This makes it a total of 14 games for every side. The team a particular side plays once or twice will be decided based on drawing of lots in this complex format.
The top two at the end of the league stages will qualify for the semi-final, and play in match A. The third and fourth placed team will make it to the quarter-final, say, match B. The winner of match A will automatically enter the final. The winner of match B will play the loser of match A in the second semi-final, match C. The winner of match C will play the winner of the match A.
The tournament will start five days after the end of the next edition of the cricket World Cup, which will have its final played on April 2 next year. It was also decided that the franchises will be able to retain four players each from the previous editions of the IPL squads, which will have a maximum of three Indian and two foreign players. To offset this advantage that the old franchises will have, the two new team-owners of Kochi and Pune will be allowed to buy four players each from the auction list – who are not already signed up by the previous eight franchises.
It was also decided that the retention of players can only happen if both, the team and the player accepts the same. The contract between the player and the team could be of any amount, but the team will have a nine million dollar purse to spend on their squad consisting of a maximum of 30 players. This is two million dollar more than what they had last year. However, if the first player they retain will cost them $1.8 million of the purse, while each of the subsequent three retentions will bring it down by $1.3 m, $900,000 and $500,000. In essence, if the team decides to retain all its four players, they will be left with only $4.5 million to spend on the auctions.
The IPL governing council has also decided that after the next edition of the IPL, no season will be played after April. Due to the hot summer months of April and May, exhaustion and injuries have been on the rise, and it was decided that the games will end by middle of April.
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