The Indian Premier League (IPL) received two new teams for the the next two seasons of the cash-rich league.
RPG -Sanjeev Goenka group and Intex won the bids for the two new teams, which will be based out of Pune and Rajkot respectively.
Sanjeev Goneka's mobile company New Rising offered to pay the BCCI Rs 16 crore, while Intex proposed to pay Rs 10 crore for Rajkot.
A total of five bids were submitted after more than 20 companies had shown interest by picking up the Invitation To Tender (ITT) -- the Chettinad group failed in their bid to build a new team.
The teams were decided by a reverse-bidding process, wherein the winning teams basically proposed they would take the least amount from the BCCI, via sponsorship or broadcast rights avenues.
IPL 9 and IPL 10 will continue to remian an eight-team affair, as promised by the IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla.
The new teams in the IPL will now have the luxury to choose from the top five players each from Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR). The player draft has not begun yet. The trading window will open its doors on 15 December.
CSK and RR were suspended for two years based on the reports Lodha Committee, headed by Justice RM Lodha. With two teams out of the IPL for two years, Shukla decided to go with two new teams for 2016 and 2017, which paved the way for Pune and Rajkot to get their own franchises.
The two new teams had the luxury of choosing cities other than the six existing ones. Pune had a team by the name of Pune Warriors earlier, which was owned by Sahara chief Subrata Roy. But it was scrapped after a couple of seasons. Pune is all set to welcome their new team for the next two editions of the IPL.
Rajkot on the other hand has not had an IPL franchise before. But now, as they have one, they will be gearing to welcome their stars once the player draft and trading is completed by the end of this month.
