IPL And Cricket Australia Resolve Sponsorship Row

Finally, finally the row that was threatening the participation of the elite Australian cricketers seems to have been resolved. Extensive talks between IPL and CA seems to have at last borne fruit. Two of the cricketers have alreay signed the contract and the rest of the players are being contacted to get them to sign the contracts before the Sunday deadline.

Now, the next issue is the Australian tour of Pakistan. If it goes ahead then current players like Ricky and Bret Lee won’t be able to play in the IPL but if the tour is cancelled or postponed due to security considerations then we can see them in action.

Minimum Bid Amount for Players

[All amounts in US$]

Shane Warne will be the Indian Premeir League’s most expensive signing, at a cost of US$400,000 for the first season, set to kick off in April 2008

Australia

Justin Langer 175,000

Sri Lanka

Farveez Maharoof: 150,000,

Sangakkara: 250,000,

Jaywardene: 250,000,

Muttiah Muralitharan: 250,000,

Sanath Jayasuriya: 250,000,

Nuwan Zoysa: 100,000,

Dilhara Fernando: 150,000,

Chaminda Vaas: 175,000,

Lasith Malinga: 200,000

Pakistan

Mohammad Asif 225,000,

Shahid Afridi: 225,000,

Shoaib Akhtar: 225,000,

Younus Khan: 225,000

West Indies

Shivnarine Chanderpaul 175,000

New Zealand

Daniel Vettori 225,000,

Jacob Oram 200,000,

Scott Styris 150,000,

Brendon McCullum 175,000

South Africa

Loots Bosman 150,000,

AB de Villiers 175,000,

Albie Morkel 200,000,

Graeme Smith 225,000,

Herschelle Gibbs 225,000,

Shaun Pollock 200,000,

Ashwell Prince 150,000,

Makhaya Ntini 175,000,

Mark Boucher 175,000,

Jacques Kallis 200,000.

Indian players deserve high prices

Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi on Wednesday said the young Indian players deserve the exhorbitant prices that they received in the players' auction in Mumbai.

"The Indian team are the Twenty20 World champions so I had no doubt they would touch the high price," Modi said on Wednesday.

"And you are playing in India for an Indian franchise so there is no reason why the Indian players should not be getting the highest, they deserve it and I am very happy to say they have got it."

India's ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni received the highest bid with the Chennai team paying him US $ 1.5 million for his services, which is around Rs. 6 crore.

India's newest pace sensation Ishant Sharma, who was purchased by Shahrukh Khan's Kolkata outfit for US $ 9,50,000 was the second highest for India. Sharma was closely followed by all-rounder Irfan Pathan with a package of US $ 9,25,000 from Preity Zinta's Mohali team

The other Indian players from the Twenty20-winning World Cup squad to hit the jackpot were: RP Singh to Hyderabad for US $ 8,75,000, Harbhajan Singh to Mumbai for US $ 8,50,000, Robin Uthappa to Mumbai for US $ 8,00,00, Rohit Sharma to Hyderabad for US $7,50,000, Gautam Gambhir to Delhi for US $ 7,25,000, S Sreesanth to Mohali for US $ 6,25,000.

Bangalore franchise owner and billionaire tycoon Vijay Mallya said the structure of the IPL was such that all the teams were desperate to have as many Indian players as possible in their squad.

"One of the reasons that the Indian players went for such a huge price is because of the structure of the IPL," the liquor baron said.

"You could have only four foreign player playing on the field at one time, so obviously every franchise has to have a large number of Indian players, who were in short supply because even if you take the entire Indian squad and add others among the eight franchises obviously each one of them was very, very valuable.

"It gives the Indian players the opportunity to earn some money and get rewarded for performance which is a great thing," Mallya explained.

Kolkata franchise owner and Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan stressed that money is not the sole reason behind his investment in the Indian Premier League.

"We are not here just to throw money and make money, there is a huge amount of passion involved.

"Every sport is important and culture of sport has to be brought into this country as a professional option," Shah Rukh said, adding that he hoped with the advent of IPL more and more youngsters would chose sports as their career.

Mallya hoped that the IPL was modelled on the lines of the English Premier League and America's National Football League and would only help in improving the domestic structure of the sport.

"As far as expectation from the IPL is concerned we all know about the English Premier League and the National Football League in the USA.

"Such domestic high-profile tournaments are not uncommon in the world today and I guess it was only a matter of time that India in consistent with our own prosperity and forward movement would one step ahead of the traditional Duleep Trophy and the Ranji Trophy and have a strong vibrant professional league allowing players to truly participate in the growing prosperity of the sport," he said.

Preity Zinta, part-owner of the Mohali team, also echoed their words and said she was delighted with her choice of players.

"It will enhance the standard of competition at the domestic level. We are happy that we are taking part in the event. I am satisfied with the team," she said.

source:rediff.com

Chennai Super Kings

The IPL Chennai Team Will Be from now on known as the Chennai Super Kings. This was announced at a function organised by the owner of the IPL Chenna team India Cements at a city hotel.

According to the organisers of the function Chennai Super Kings was chosen from over 25 thousand names that were submitted to it in a contest that was run by India Cements.

The logo of the team was also unvieled during the function attended by present and former players, TNCA members and K. Srikkant. A lion in the background and of the name of the team in solid lettering in the foreground will be the logo.

Srikkant will be the brand ambassdor for the Chennai Super Kings.

DRESS CODE:

Chennai Super Kings who are first IPL Team to get a name officially will be attired in blue and yellow. The colors represent fire and infinity and will be apt for the fearless kings of Chennai which has long history of being ruled by the fearless kings of Chera, Chola, Pandya and Pallava dynasties.

Super is the more colloquial and much preferred by the youth of Chennai. Tamil super star Rajni Kant was Super King Rajni Kant before he became Super Star Rajni Kant. People love to use the word Super for good/great things in Chennai hence the name for their team will be apt.

IPL Team's Local Players Catchment Areas

The IPL governing council has released the list of catchment areas for the local players for the IPL franchisees to buy players from.

Mumbai: Mumbai, Maharashtra and Vidarbha Cricket Association
Bangalore: Karnataka, Goa and Services
Chennai: Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Railways
Kolkata: Bengal, Jharkhand, Tripura, Assam and Sikkim
Hyderabad: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa
Delhi: Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh
Mohali: Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and J&K
Jaipur: Rajasthan, Gujarat, Baroda and Saurashtra

FIrst Match at Bangaluru

The first match of the much-awaited Indian Premier League (IPL) will be held in Banglaore in April, while the semi-finals and the final will be in Mumbai, a top IPL official announced in Mumbai on Friday.

"The final will be played June 1 and the semi finals May 30 and 31. These matches will be in Mumbai," IPL commissioner and chairman Lalit Modi told reporters after a meeting with the eight franchise owners and representatives of the match staging associations.

Modi said the IPL board has the option of staging these important matches either at the Brabourne Stadium of the Cricket Club of India (CCI) or the DY Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai. "I guess they will choose CCI," he said.

The opening match of the Indian cricket board-promoted tournament, based on Twenty20 matches, will be played between business tycoon Vijay Mallya's Bangalore and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata side at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium April 18.

This was decided by the IPL governing council at a meeting in which the marketing strategy and guidelines were also thrashed out.

Modi said the International Cricket Council (ICC) umpires would officiate the matches.

"Seven or eight ICC Elite Panel umpires and 16 Indian umpires would officiate. The match referees are being appointed and we already have the anti-corruption and anti-doping measures in place," he said.

On Cricket Australia's (CA) demand that its sponsors should not clash with those of the IPL, Modi said that no national team sponsors would get protection in the IPL.

"No team sponsors will get protection from IPL," he said.

IPL will offer $3 million prize money while the Champion's Twenty20, to be contested by two teams from India Australia, England, South Africa and Pakistan, will offer $5 million.

IPL will feature eight franchises in the first season, with each team playing seven home and away games against each another. IPL hopes to grow the eight franchises to 16 by 2010.

The IPL governing council comprises seven members. Besides Modi, the other members are: former Indian cricket board president IS Bindra, board vice-president Chirayu Amin and Delhi District and District Cricket Association president Arun Jaitley besides former Indian captains Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shashtri.

Bret Lee Hails IPL

Australian paceman Brett Lee claims the Twenty20 Indian Premier League phenomenon will revolutionise cricket the same way World Series Cricket did in the 1970s, reports said on Thursday.The world's leading cricketers scooped huge paydays at the IPL auction in Mumbai on Wednesday with 77 players featuring in an unprecedented sell-off for the 44-day Twenty20 tournament, starting on April 18.As the billionaire owners of the new Twenty20 franchises made some players into instant millionaires, Lee said it would be another defining moment for the international game."If we look back in 10 years time this is going to be a massive landmark in cricket I think," Lee told Sydney's The Daily Telegraph Thursday."It's a bit like when the World Series started."World Series Cricket was set up in opposition to the cricket establishment between 1977 and 1979 and organised by media mogul Kerry Packer for his Australian television network.Lee, who was signed to play for Mohali for $900,000, said the IPL should be embraced and was confident it would not undermine or threaten tradition formats."It's completely different from Test cricket, it's completely different from one-day cricket," Lee said.Senior opening batsmen Matthew Hayden said he joined the IPL's ranks to be part of history and saw Twenty20 cricket as the way of the future. "I get the feeling that the IPL and other Twenty20 competitions will lead to significant changes in cricket, not dissimilar to the way Super 14s has moved rugby forward," Hayden told The Australian."If I was a consumer of the game I'd want to go and see it because it's bloody exciting.Hayden, 36, also said Twenty20 had given him a new lease of life."The shorter versions of the game have sparked my interest in the way I train and the passion for my game as well," he said.But the money-spinning IPL has not been wholly embraced with Melbourne's The Age newspaper, describing it as "grubby business.""Sport is at its best when spectators feel that players share their cause. Indian Premier League cricketers will have time only to learn to love their pay clerks and their first-class seats on the first flight out," the newspaper said.