New Delhi, Sept. 5: The Indian Premier League governing council on Sunday unveiled a heavily-modified schedule for the 2011 season, diluting the existing home-and-away format for the games to make up for the addition of two new teams to the competition.
The 10 IPL franchises will be divided into two groups of five for the next three years with a total of 74 matches per season compared to 60 played this year.
In the new format, each team will play the other four in their group home and away, which means the league stage will consist of 40 matches.
The three top teams from each group will then progress into another round of home and away matches, which will comprise of 30 games, followed by the semi-finals, a third-place playoff and a final.
The 2011 season is tentatively scheduled to begin on April 2, five days after the World Cup ends.
Despite the change in scheduling, teams will still get to play 14 home and away games — as they’ve been doing for the past years — although in a slightly convoluted format. However, had the current format adopted as it is, the IPL-4 would have stretched to 94 matches.
Teams have also been allowed to retain four players in their squads from the last event — a maximum of three Indians and two from overseas, with the rest going into the auction pool scheduled for the second week of November.
The cap for each team to spend on the players at the auction was raised to $9 million, from the earlier-stipulated $7 million.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India also said it would manage all player contracts directly from now on. “All player contracts will now be managed by the BCCI and signed by the BCCI along with the franchise and the player,” Board secretary N. Srinivasan said.
IPl Revamped
Format
* Teams split into two groups, but will be ranked together in one league table as in the old format.
* Each team will play the other four in their group home and away , it will play four of the teams in the other group once (four matches, either home or away) and it will play the remaining team in the other group twice, both home and away.
* First and second in the league table will contest a playoff.
Third and fourth will play each other in a knockout. Loser of first playoff will play the winner of knockout to decide the second finalist. Winner of first playoff will play the second finalist in the IPL-4 final
Player retention
Four players can be retained with following cap:
* $1.8 million per year for the first player retained
* $1.3 million per year for the second player retained
* $900,000 per year for the third player retained
* $500,000 per year for the fourth player retained
Catchment areas
MI: Mumbai, Baroda; RCB: Karnataka, Goa; DC: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa; CSK: TN, Railways; DD: Delhi, UP, Uttaranchal; KXIP: Punjab, Haryana, HP, J&K; KKR: WB, J’khand, North-East states; RR: Rajasthan, Gujara; Pune Warriors: Maharashtra, Vidarbha; Kochi: Kerala, Services, Madhya Pradesh