Dubai: The Indian Premier League (IPL) will have two new teams for the year 2016 and 2017: Pune and Rajkot. Sanjiv Goenka’s New Rising consortium has bagged the Pune team while Intex Mobile will be the franchise-holders of the Rajkot team.
These teams are coming in place of Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings — the two franchises who were suspended for a two-year period from the tournament following the report of the Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha Committee on the spot-fixing and betting scandal in the IPL 2013.
Several top players from Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings will now be available for auction to the two teams.
Harsh Goenka’s RPG group, Chennai-based cement major Chettinad Group and Axis Chemicals were the other bidders. Many believed that the Chettinad Group, owned by former BCCI president and industrialist A.C. Muthiah would be able to win the bid in place of Chennai Super Kings, who had their base in Chennai.
New Rising bid minus 160 million rupees while Intex quoted minus 100 million rupees in the reverse bidding process, through which the new franchises were chosen. Under reverse-bidding process, a franchise that claims the least from the BCCI’s coffers (mainly earned from broadcast and sponsorship fees), wins and investors were encouraged to bid for lower than the base price of Rs 400 million set by the IPL.
Goenka is a stakeholder in the Kolkata Games and Sports Pvt. Ltd consortium that owns the football franchise Atletico de Kolkata in the Indian Super League.
Intex is a Delhi-based smartphones manufacturing company.
The IPL announced that the new franchises will be taking part in a player draft on December 15, where both teams will pick five players each from a pool of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals players. New Rising will get to pick the first player from the 10-player pool as they finished as the lowest bidder. Intex will pick the second player and both teams will alternate on their picks thereafter.
India’s ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who led Chennai for eight seasons with distinction, will be the first in the list to he picked and Pune will go for him straightaway being the lowest bidder.
Dhoni had captained Chennai to victories in 2010 and 2011 and his team finished runners-up on four occasions.
Addressing the media, BCCI president Shashank Manohar said that board stood to earn profits with the two new franchises declining to accept money from the central revenue pool.
Subhashish Mitra, the executive director and group company secretary of New Rising went on to state that they were looking at serving the sport.
Keshav Bansal, owner of Intex and a great sports enthusiast said: “In India, cricket is the biggest thing. The idea is to get the best out of that. Nothing bigger than the IPL to connect with the youth, which is our target audience. Gujarat is a great cricket-loving state.”
The ninth edition of the IPL will be held from April 9 to May 29.
