Indian Premier League

Indian Premier League (IPL), Indian professional Twenty20 (T20) cricket league established in 2008. The league, which is based on a round-robin group and knockout format, has teams in major Indian cities.

The brainchild of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the IPL has developed into the most lucrative and most popular outlet for the game of cricket. Matches generally begin in late afternoon or evening so that at least a portion of them are played under floodlights at night to maximize the television audience for worldwide broadcasts. Initially, league matches were played on a home-and-away basis between all teams, but, with the planned expansion to 10 clubs (divided into two groups of five) in 2011, that format changed so that matches between some teams would be limited to a single encounter. The top four teams contest three play-off matches, with one losing team being given a second chance to reach the final, a wrinkle aimed at maximizing potential television revenue. The play-off portion of the tournament involves the four teams that finished at the top of the tables in a series of knockout games that allows one team that lost its first-round game a second chance to advance to the final match.

With the advent of the IPL, almost overnight the world’s best cricketers—who had seldom made the kind of money earned by their counterparts in other professional sports—became millionaires. The owners of the IPL franchises, who included major companies, Bollywood film stars, and media moguls, bid for the best players in auctions organized by the league. At the outset of the IPL, the well-financed Mumbai Indians had the league’s biggest payroll, more than $100 million. It cost the Chennai Super Kings $1.5 million to secure the services of Mahendra Dhoni in the initial auction for the 2008 season and the Kolkata Knight Riders $2.4 million to sign Gautam Gambhir, the opening batsman for the Indian national team, in the bidding for the 2011 season.

The eight founding franchises were the Mumbai Indians, the Chennai Super Kings, the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Deccan Chargers (based in Hyderabad), the Delhi Daredevils, the Punjab XI Kings (Mohali), the Kolkata Knight Riders, and the Rajasthan Royals (Jaipur). In late 2010 two franchises, Rajasthan and Punjab, were expelled from the league by the BCCI for breeches of ownership policy, but they were later reinstated in time for the 2011 tournament. Two new franchises, the Pune Warriors India and the Kochi Tuskers Kerala, joined the IPL for the 2011 tournament. The Kochi club played just one year before the BCCI terminated its contract. In 2013 the Deccan Chargers were replaced in the IPL by the Sunrisers Hyderabad.

The first tournament, held over 44 days in 2008, was won by the Rajasthan Royals, one of the smaller-market franchises, captained by Shane Warne, the great Australian bowler. In the wake of the IPL’s success, other cricketing countries scrambled to grab some of the riches by forming their own domestic T20 leagues.