Lucknow, Ahmedabad to join eight franchises in IPL 2022

The 2022 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be a 10-team event. The bidding of the two new IPL teams was held in Dubai today and after some intense bidding war, RPSG group and investment firm CVC Capital won the ownership rights of the two new franchises. While there were six cities in contention, CVC capital opted for Ahmedabad at a whopping price of INR 5000 crores, while RPSG Group picked UP capital Lucknow as their home base with a winning bid of 7090 crores.

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"A lot of planning and calculation has gone into our bidding. I give credit to personal staff for winning the bid," RPSG group owner Sanjeev Goenka, who had previously owned Rising Pune Supergiants, who played two seasons of IPL said to Cricbuzz.

As many as 10 bidders, including star couple Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh, owners of Manchester United Club, and Adani Group also entered the bid . As far as cities are concerned, the bidders showed interests in Cuttak, Dharamsala and Guwahati as well but none could match the bids of RPSG Group and CVC capital.

Both Lucknow and Ahmedabad have international quality stadiums. While Lucknow has Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Stadium, Ahmedabad has Narendra Modi Stadium. Both stadiums have a capacity to host 50,000 and 1.32000 spectators respectively.

This is not the first time that IPL will be a 10-team event. Earlier, for a brief period, in 2011, two new franchises Pune Warriors India and Kochi Tuskers Kerala played the IPL. While Koch was terminated in 2011 after breaching BCCI’s terms and conditions, Pune withdrew in 2013 over financial differences with the board.