Indian Premier League

I.P.L Final 2008

Indian Premier League
Country(ies)	India
Administrator(s)	BCCI
Cricket format	Twenty20
First tournament	2008
Tournament format(s)	Double round-robin and Knockout
Total participants	8 (2008)
Current champion	Rajasthan Royals
Most successful	Rajasthan Royals (1title)
Qualification	Twenty20 Champions League (Possible tournament still in planning stages)
Most runs	Shaun Marsh (616)[1]
Most wickets	Sohail Tanvir (22)[2]
Official website	Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League (also known as the "DLF Indian Premier League" for sponsorship reasons, even occasionally just referred to as IPL), is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The first season of the Indian Premier League commenced on 18 April 2008, and ended on 1 June 2008 with the victory of the Rajasthan Royals in the final at the DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai.

Main article: 2008 Indian Premier League

A Chennai vs Kolkata match in progress at the M.A. Chidambaram Cricket Stadium

Teams play each other two times in a round robin system, with equal number of home and away matches. The top four ranking sides will progress to the semi-finals.

The eight teams taking part are Kolkata Knight Riders, Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, Hyderabad Deccan Chargers, Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Delhi Daredevils, and Kings XI Punjab

The inaugural 2008 tournament started on 18 April 2008 in Bangalore and lasts for 45 days, with 59 matches scheduled to take place.

The IPL 2008 tournament was won by the Rajasthan Royals on 1 June 2008.

Television and Sponsorship rights

For a term of five to ten years the IPL has brought the BCCI a princely sum of $1 billion, making the body even more lucrative than its previous tag that had already made it the richest board in world cricket.

More importantly, all these revenues fall under the Central Pool, 40% of which will go to IPL, 54% distributed to franchisees and 6% to prize money. The money will be distributed in these proportions till 2017, after which the share of IPL will be 50%, franchisees 45% and prize money 5%. ^[3]

[edit] Sponsorship rights

Indian real estate developer DLF Universal secured exclusive rights to the Indian Premier League title sponsorship worth INR 200 crore (over US$50 million) for five years. Hero Honda has been selected as an associate sponsor for five years in a deal worth US$22.5 million.^{[4] [5]}

In addition, soft-drink giant Pepsi secured the title as the tournament's Official Beverage by signing a five year deal worth USD 12.5 Million. The proceeds of the latter are to be shared equally by the league's franchise owners. ^[6]

Kingfisher Airlines has been named IPL's umpire partner with rights to advertise of umpire's clothes and also sponsoring third umpire decisions for five years. The deal is worth Rs. 106 crores (appx. US$ 26.5 million). ^[7]

Television rights

On 15 January 2008 it was announced that a consortium consisting of India's Sony Entertainment Television network and Singapore-based World Sport Group secured the global broadcasting rights of the Indian Premier League.^[8] The record deal has a duration of ten years at a cost of US$1.026 billion. As part of the deal, the consortium will pay the BCCI US$918 million for the television broadcast rights and US$108 million for the promotion of the tournament.^[9]

20% of these proceeds would go to IPL, 8% as prize money and 72% would be distributed to the franchisees. The money would be distributed in these proportions until 2012 after which the share of IPL would go up.^[10]

Sony-WSG then re-sold parts of the broadcasting rights geographically to other companies. Below is a summary of the broadcasting rights around the world.

Rules

The official rules for the tournament are here. Some of the Team composition rules are:

• Total squad strength of 16 players plus one physio and a coach.
• No more than 8 foreign players in the squad and at most 4 in the playing 11.
• A minimum of 4 local players must be included in each team.
• Not less than 4 players from the BCCI under-22 pool in each team.

The players accorded "icon" status are: Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag. Salary cap for all players per team is USD $5 mil. Under-22 players shall have a minimum annual salary of US$20,000 while for others it is US$50,000. Icon players are paid 15% more than the highest paid player in the auction.

Official website

The IPL negotiated a contract with the Canadian company Live Current Media Inc. to run and operate its portals and the minimum guarantee has been negotiated at USD 50 million over the next 10 years.^[16] The official website of the tournament is iplt20.com.

Franchises

The winning bidders for the eight franchises were announced on 24 January 2008.^[17] While the total base price for auction was US$400 million, the auction fetched US$723.59 million.^[18] The official list of franchise owners announced and the winning bids were as follows.

Franchise Earnings

The first season saw a huge success for the IPL that concluded on June 1 2008. Here is the balance sheet of each of the franchises earnings. It should be noted that during the first season no one had expected the franchises to break even since most of them had invested huge amounts, but even then the table below shows that some of them are already profitable from Season 1.^[19]

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 20
c. Gate Receipts - 14
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 69

 a. Franchise Fees - 45
b. Team - 20
c. Advertising & Admin - 20
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 85

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 0
c. Gate Receipts - 10
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 45

 a. Franchise Fees - 48
b. Team - 22 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 18
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 88

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 17 ;
c. Gate Receipts - 12
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 64

 a. Franchise Fees - 45
b. Team - 24 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 82

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 25
c. Gate Receipts - 12.8
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 72.8

 a. Franchise Fees - 36
b. Team - 24 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 73

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 20
c. Gate Receipts - 15.4
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 70.4

 a. Franchise Fees - 34
b. Team - 23 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 20
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 77

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 22
c. Gate Receipts - 9
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 66

 a. Franchise Fees - 30.4
b. Team - 25 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 68.4

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 34
c. Gate Receipts - 20
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 89

 a. Franchise Fees - 31
b. Team - 25 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 20
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 76

 a. Broadcasting Rights - 35
b. Team Sponsors - 16
c. Gate Receipts - 8
Total Revenues(a+b+c) - 59

 a. Franchise Fees - 27
b. Team - 13 crores
c. Advertising & Admin - 13
Total Expenses(a+b+c) - 53

• All Figures are in crores

Source: Refer 19 in reference section

Player signings

Main articles: Royal Challengers Bangalore, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils, Deccan Chargers, Kolkata Knight Riders, Kings XI Punjab, Mumbai Indians, and Rajasthan Royals

The players' auctions were held on February 20. The IPL placed icon status on a select few marquee Indian players. These players were Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, and Virender Sehwag. VVS Laxman initially named an icon player, later voluntarily opted out of his icon status to give his team (Deccan Chargers) more money to bid for players.^[20]

Controversies

The BCCI had found itself in the middle of many conflicts with various cricket boards around the world as a result of the IPL. The main point of contention was that signed players should always be available to their country for international tours, even if it overlaps with the IPL season. To address this, the BCCI officially requested that the ICC institute a time period in the International Tours Program solely for the IPL season. This request was not granted at a subsequent meeting held by the ICC. ^[21]

Conflicts with the England and Wales Cricket Board

Because the inaugural IPL season coincided with the County Championship season as well as New Zealand's tour of England, the ECB and county cricket clubs raised their concerns to the BCCI over players. The ECB made it abundantly clear that they would not sign No Objection Certificates for players—a prerequisite for playing in the IPL. Chairmen of the county clubs also made it clear that players contracted to them were required to fulfil their commitment to their county. As a result of this, Dimitri Mascarenhas remains the only English player to have signed with the IPL.^[22]

Another result of the ECB’s on-going fear of players fleeing to the IPL was a proposed radical response of creating their own Twenty20 tournament that would be similar in structure to the IPL. The league—titled the English Premier League—would feature 21 teams in three groups of seven and would occur towards the end of the summer season. ^[23] The ECB has already enlisted the aid of Texas Billionaire Allen Stanford to launch the proposed league.^[24] Stanford was the brains behind the successful Stanford 20/20, a tournament that has run twice in the West Indies.

Conflicts with Cricket Australia

The BCCI also experienced run-ins with Cricket Australia (CA) over player availability for Australia’s tour of the West Indies and CA’s desire for global protection of their sponsors. CA had feared that sponsors of the IPL (and its teams) that directly competed with their sponsors would jeopardize already existing arrangements. This issue was eventually resolved ^[25] and it was also agreed upon that Australian players would be fully available for the West Indies tour.

Conflicts with the Pakistan Cricket Board

Many players from the Pakistan Cricket Team who were not offered renewed central contracts (or decided to reject new contracts) decided to join the rival Indian Cricket League. Two such players—Naved-ul-Hasan and Mushtaq Ahmed also held contracts with English Counties. The PCB decided to issue No Objection Certificates for these players to play with their county teams on the basis that since they were no longer contracted to the PCB, there was no point in not granting them their NOCs. The latter did not sit well with the BCCI, as it went against the hard line stance they had taken on players who joined the ICL.

Conflicts with other Boards

Smaller boards like the WICB and NZCB have raised concerns over the impact the IPL will have on their player development and already fragile financial situation. Since players from smaller cricketing nations are not compensated as much, they have more motivation to join the IPL.

Media restrictions

Initially the IPL enforced strict guidelines to media covering Premier League matches, consistent with their desire to use the same model sports leagues in North America use in regards to media coverage. Notable guidelines imposed included the restriction to use images taken during the event unless purchased from Cricket.com, owned by Live Current Media Inc (who won the rights to such images) and the prohibition of live coverage from the cricket grounds. Media agencies also had to agree to upload all images taken at IPL matches to the official website. This was deemed unacceptable by print media around the world. Upon the threat of boycott, the IPL eased up on several of the restrictions.^[26] On April 15, 2008 a revised set of guidelines offering major concessions to the print media and agencies was issued by the IPL and accepted by the Indian Newspaper Society.^[27]

Even with the amended restrictions, specialist cricket websites such as cricinfo and cricket365 continued to be banned from providing live coverage from the grounds and from purchasing match images from press agencies. As a result, on 18 April several major international agencies including Reuters and AFP announced their decision to provide no coverage of the IPL.^[28]

Cheerleaders

The IPL has been criticised by a few politicians and feminists for bringing in foreign cheerleaders, which is seen by many to not be in the traditional spirit of the game, as well as being against some Indian sensibilities.^[29] Two cheerleaders from London were asked to leave the ground at Mohali “because of the colour of their skin” by Wizcraft International Entertainment, which handles the team Kings XI Punjab. Ellesha Newton and Sherinne Anderson, both from London and of African ancestry were allegedly barred from entering the stadium by employees of Wizcraft International Entertainment on the pretext that "people don’t like dark girls here".^[30] Both the girls also allege that an employee referred to them with the racial slur ″Nigger″.^[31]

Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said a probe would be initiated by the IPL only if the two women officially complain to IPL commissioner Lalit Modi.

BCCI and IPL officials are surprised that the two cheerleaders did not complain about the alleged racist behaviour while they were in India and spoke about it only after they returned to London.

"We have not received any complaint from any cheerleaders that they were asked to leave by the Mohali-based Kings XI Punjab franchise recently because of the colour of their skin," BCCI joint secretary M.P. Pandove said in Mohali ^[32]

Sreesanth - Harbhajan Singh altercation

On April 25, 2008, following the victory of his Kings XI Punjab's victory in the Indian Premier League over the Mumbai Indians at Mohali, Sreesanth was allegedly slapped under his eye by Harbhajan Singh, the captain of Mumbai. The incident came to light as Sreesanth was caught by TV cameras sobbing inconsolably on the field before the presentation ceremony. Sreesanth had since downplayed the incident saying he had no complaints against Harbhajan who was "like an elder brother" to him. Harbhajan's team had lost their third consecutive match when he apparently reacted violently to Sreesanth's approaching him and reportedly saying "hard luck". The footage of the slap has not yet been released for public viewing. The BCCI has launched an investigation into the incident and decided to ban Harbhajan for the remainder 11 matches of the Twenty20.^{[33][34][35][36]}

Winners

Most Recent Results and Ladder

Final: Chennai Super Kings v Rajasthan Royals at Mumbai - Jun 1, 2008
Rajasthan Royals won by 3 wickets (with 0 balls remaining)
Chennai Super Kings 163/5 (20 overs); Rajasthan Royals 164/7 (20 overs)^[37]

1st Semi-Final: Delhi Daredevils v Rajasthan Royals at Mumbai - May 30, 2008
Rajasthan Royals won by 105 runs
Rajasthan Royals 192/9 (20 overs); Delhi Daredevils 87 (16.1 overs)^[38]

2nd Semi-Final: Chennai Super Kings v Kings XI Punjab at Mumbai - May 31, 2008
Chennai Super Kings won by 9 wickets (with 31 balls remaining)
Kings XI Punjab 112/8 (20 overs); Chennai Super Kings 116/1 (14.5 overs)^[39]

Ladder

Team	Played	Win	Loss	Tied	No Result	Points	Net RR
Rajasthan Royals	14	11	3	0	0	22	+0.632
Kings XI Punjab	14	10	4	0	0	20	+0.509
Chennai Super Kings	14	8	6	0	0	16	-0.192
Delhi Daredevils	14	7	6	0	1	15	+0.342
Mumbai Indians	14	7	7	0	0	14	+0.570
Kolkata Knight Riders	14	6	7	0	1	13	-0.147
Royal Challengers Bangalore	14	4	10	0	0	8	-1.160
Deccan Chargers	14	2	12	0	0	4	-0.467