New Delhi: Dec 9 : The next edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be held from April 9 after two new franchisees -- Rajkot and Pune -- were added to the event as replacements for Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals.
The tournament will begin five days after conclusion of the ICC World Twenty20 which will also be hosted by India. The ninth edition of the hugely-popular but controversy-marred League will conclude on May 29.
BCCI, which announced the two franchises on Tuesday, stated that the draft for the new teams will be held on December 15.
The new teams will pick from among players, who were part of CSK and RR. Players from CSK and RR will be divided into two groups of capped and uncapped and the top names will be sold through the draft system.
The two new teams will have a minimum of Rs 40 crore and a maximum of Rs 66 crore to buy their players. The cricketers who will remain unselected will go to general pool to be available for fresh auction, scheduled for February 6 in Bengaluru.
In the draft, Pune will get to pick the players first because they were the lowest bidders. Intex will pick the second player and both teams will alternate thereafter.
For the ten players chosen, the BCCI has applied the same money brackets it put in place two years ago when the other six franchises were allowed to retain five players.
The first player gets Rs 12.5 crore, the second Rs 9.5 crore, the third Rs 7.5 crore, the fourth Rs 5.5 crore and the fifth Rs 4 crore. An uncapped player stands to earn Rs 4 crore if he is picked.
Irrespective of the IPL fee agreed between the franchise and the retained player, a fixed amount will be deducted from the franchise’s salary cap per player retained.
Meanwhile, it was revealed that all the five bidders who were in fray -- Harsh Goenka of RPG properties, Axis Clinical and Chettinad Cement being the other three — had opted for more than one city from the nine available. The four bidders other than Intex all had Pune on their roster.
New Rising bid Rs minus 11 crore for Nagpur. Intex also bid for Nagpur and Visakhapatnam, but quoted Rs 10 crore for each of the two cities. Chettinad, meanwhile, quoted Rs 27 crore for both Pune and Chennai.
RPG bid Rs 17.88 crore for Pune and Rs 20.88 crore for Rajkot. Intex bid Rs 10 crore for both Kanpur and Visakhapatnam. Axis, meanwhile, quoted Rs 15 crore for both Nagpur and Kanpur and Rs 10 crore for Pune.
The bidding process lasted for about an hour and was a two-part exercise: the first half involved determining the mandatory technical eligibility of the five bidders followed by a check on the the financial eligibility of the five bidders.