New Delhi: The Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) may replace Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals with new franchise from Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat states in the next season of Indian Premier Leauge ( IPL). Sources told India TV that they eight businessmen has show interest is the two new teams.
BCCI is exploring options to replace CSK and RR for the 2016 IPL season, after Lodha Committee banned both the teams.
The board is learned to have identified seven potential cities for these franchises on the basis of their revenue potential and infrastructure. Preliminary indications are that at least eight business groups may be interested in owning team.
The strong contender cities are Ahmedabad and Lucknow or Kanpur, the sources said. The strong bidders for these two new IPL teams are Ahemdaba based Adani Group and Noida based Jay Pee group.
Other Interested IPL team bidders are UK-based tycoon Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, the Dhoots of Videocon, South Africa-based Ajay Gupta, Munjals of Hero Group, Harsh Goenka and Prasad Potluri of Telangana-based PVP Ventures.
Earlier, the Supreme Court-appointed committee, headed by former Chief Justice of India R M Lodha imposed a two-year ban on IPL franchises Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings. The committee found Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra guilty of betting and imposed a lifetime ban on both of them.
The committee, in its inquiry had indicted Meiyappan and Kundra for betting during IPL 8. The match fixing and betting scandal even tainted then Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president and owner of CSK franchise Narayanaswami Srinivasan.
Srinivasan had to step a side on SC order and was not allowed to contest next BCCI president election.
