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The IPL’s governing council has finally revealed the league’s format for next season. The 2011 season – as well as the two years after – will have 74 matches, down 20 games on what was previously thought but still up 14 matches on this year’s campaign.

The 10 IPL franchises, including newcomers Kochi and Pune, will be divided into two groups of five; each team will play each other home and away in its group. Then, and this is where it gets confusing, each team will play 4 of the 5 teams in the other group once, either home or away. Each team will also play the remaining team in the other group twice, home and away. Despite there being two different groups, all 10 teams will be ranked together in one league. 

This all means that every team will play 14 league games – the same amount as the first three seasons. A random draw will decide the composition of the groups as well as who plays whom across the groups once and twice.

Once the group stages reach their conclusion, the top four teams from the league will qualify for the play-offs. The teams that finish first and second in the league table will play the first play-off, which in effect is a semi-final. The teams that finish third and fourth will play what is effectively a quarter-final. Next, the loser of the first game will play the winner of the second game in a game that will decide who will join the winner of the first game in the final.

After all that is the now customary Champions League qualify match and, of course, the final.

If you don’t understand, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, here is a simpler run-down of the play-offs:

Game 1: Team 1 vs Team 2

Game 2: Team 3 vs Team 4

Game 3: Winner Game 2 vs Loser Game 1

Final: Winner Game 1 vs Winner Game 3

CLT20 qualifiers: Finalists and Loser Game 3

The play-offs come in an interesting format though they should be praised as it gives a clear incentive for teams to finish in the top two places in the league table. In past seasons, when a team has been virtually guaranteed a semi-final slot from early on, it would leave a few ‘dead’ games towards the end of the league stage. However, with this play-off system, teams will be desperate to finish in the top two places as they will be given two bites of the cherry for a slot in the final.

Overall, though, it is a confusing format, and you wonder how easy it will be for fans to follow. To be fair, it was always going to be difficult to find the balance between how many games money-hounding franchise owners and stakeholders want and how many matches would be too much for the fans to consume. In the end, the governing council has come up with a bloated and disjointed format. We will have to wait until April to see how it pans out.

The IPL governing council has also solved the issue of player retention.

Each of the eight franchises who participated in the 2010 season will be able to retain up to four players but only a maximum of three Indians. The retained players must have been part of the franchise’s registered squads for the 2010 season. The rest of the players will go into the auction scheduled for the second week of November.

IPL IV will start on April 7 – just five days after the final of the Cricket World Cup.

The Indian Premier League will expand the number of franchisees to 10 franchisees with the addition of two new franchisees for the IPL 2011 season onwards. The IPL Management has already put application forms for the two new teams on sale. There are twelve cities in contention for the two new teams which include Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Indore, Cuttack, Gwalior, Visakapatnam, Rajkot, Pune, Vadodara and Kochi. The first eight cities already have cricket stadiums while stadiums are in construction in the last four cities. The base price for the bidding for the two new franchisees are $225 million which is more than four times the base price of $50 million when the original eight franchisees were auctioned in 2008. The number of games in IPL would also increase to 94 games from the year 2011 instead of the present set of 59 games.

As per reports, the IPL Management has also set tougher conditions for applying for the two new teams. One of the major conditions is that the bidder has to have at least $1 billion (Rs.4,580 crores) and if a group makes a bid, it must contain an individual or a single party with that amount of money. As per the IPL’s tender condition, the bidders should submit a Rs 460-crore bank guarantee to participate in the bidding process. The IPL has set a base price of US $ 225 million per franchise. Many are also speculating that Ahmedabad might be one of the strongest contenders for an IPL team. The Ahmedabad based billionaire Gautam Adani-owned Adani Group has also submitted its bid for a new franchisee.

Videocon Industries-led team called P Sports Vision is supposed to have placed bid for Pune franchisee. There are also reports that the guardians of the laws of cricket, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is also supposed to be running for the Pune franchisee. The other prominent bidders might include Sahara Group, Jaypee Group and ICICI Ventures. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel is also speculated to have placed bid for either Pune or Nagpur franchisee. Bollywood stars like Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn had also showed interest though there is no confirmation if any film stars have bid for any team this time round. There have been 11 bids supposed to have been submitted till now for the two new teams.

The winning bids for the two new franchisees would be revealed on Sunday, March 7 at 1200 IST. Many are speculating that Pune and Ahmedabad might have good chances of hosting the two new teams though everything would be revealed only this Sunday.