Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League (often abbreviated as IPL), is a Twenty20 cricket
competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and chaired by the Chairman & Commissioner IPL, BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi. The first season of the Indian Premier League commenced on 18 April 2008, and ended on 30 June 2008 with the victory of the Rajasthan Royals against Chennai Super Kings in the final at the DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai. As the second season of the IPL coincided with multi-phase 2009 Indian general elections, the Indian Central Government refused to release the Indian paramilitary forces to provide security, saying the forces would be stretched too thinly if they were to safeguard both the IPL and the elections. As a result, the BCCI decided to host the second season of the league outside India. On 24 March 2009, the BCCI officially announced that the second season of the IPL will be held in South Africa.Though India did not host the second season, the format of the tournament remained unchanged from the 2008 season format.
The third season of IPL is scheduled to be held in India from 12 March 2010 over a period of 45 days Four new venues, Nagpur, Vishakhapatnam, Ahmedabad and Dharamsala, have been added. Other changes include removal of icon playersand granting permission to players who were involved in the Indian Cricket League to play in the tournament.
Cricket
is a bat-and-ball team sport that is first documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had developed to the point where it had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas and by the mid-19th century the first international matches were being held. Today, the game's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), has 104 member countries. With its greatest popularity in the Test playing countries, cricket is widely regarded as the world's second most popular sport, after association football.[The ICC oversees both men's and women's cricket.
The rules of the game are known as the Laws of Cricket. These are maintained by the ICC and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which holds the copyright. A cricket match is played on a cricket field at the centre of which is a pitch. The match is contested between two teams of eleven players each. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible without being dismissed ("out") while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the other team’s batsmen and limit the runs being scored. When the batting team has used all its available overs or has no remaining batsmen, the roles become reversed and it is now the fielding team’s turn to bat and try to outscore the opposition.
There are several variations in the length of a game of cricket. In professional cricket this ranges from a limit of 20 overs per side (Twenty20) to a game played over 5 days (Test cricket). Depending on the form of the match being played, there are different rules that govern how a game is won, lost, drawn or tied.
