The establishment of the Indian Premier League

With India winning the-WT20 the BCCI started to see the T20 format as a great success and they wanted to commercialize the success of this format into a profit generating machine. Hence they came up with a concept of Franchise Cricket. This Franchise Cricket was a tournament played between different franchises representing different regions in India. This tournament was known as The Indian Premier League more popularly known as the IPL. This format which followed the Premier League of England as well as the NBA of USA was introduced by the then-BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi. Cricket for the first time got to draw relevance with sports like Football & Basketball.

Zee Entertainment Enterprises in the year 2007 introduced a similar league known by the name- Indian Cricket League (ICL). This league was a rival to IPL. Since this league wasn't sanctioned by the International Cricket Council (ICC), the BCCI took legal action against this league and banned all the Cricketers and experts involved in this league for which they seeked support from the ICC. They even raised their prize money of IPL to prevent some of the big names of T20 Cricket from joining the ICL. It was later announced that IPL will take place during April-May 2008.

The following were the franchises who bid themselves for the inaugral IPL:-

So you can see from the above data, there were 8 franchises that came up in 2008 from Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Punjab, Hyderabad, Bangalore & Jaipur. Also there were some big names who gave their bids like the India Cements, Indiawin Sports Pvt. Ltd. (A Reliance subsidy), GMR Group, Red Chillies Entertainment, Kingfisher, etc. Mumbai was the most expensive franchise followed by Bangalore with a value of almost US $112 Million!

These teams were also known by their acronyms-

Chennai Super Kings- CSK

Mumbai Indians- MI

Delhi Daredevils- DD

Kolkata Knight Riders- KKR

Kings XI Punjab- KXIP

Deccan Chargers- DC

Royal Challengers Bangalore- RCB

Rajasthan Royals- RR 

These teams also had to pay a certain sum of money to the BCCI as a participation fee which was going to be used towards the welfare of the players involved. While for the first time a player auction was going to be conducted. The teams were needed to get into bidding wars and the one who was willing to pay the maximum amount to a certain player had to right to get that player represent their team. Some franchises wanted to have a one local player as their icon which would lead to the teams spending less amount of them because of the stature they had achieved in Indian Cricket and their fans. So Sachin represented Mumbai, Sehwag- Delhi, Ganguly- Kolkata, Yuvraj- Punjab, VVS Laxman- Deccan Chargers and Rahul Dravid- Bangalore.

Another attraction was the involvement of Overseas players. Seldom do you see a Ganguly & Ponting representing the same team while Shahid Afridi having to face Shoaib Akhtar from the opposition which only became possible through IPL. Some Overseas players had a great influence on young budding players of India, For eg: Ravindra Jadeja playing under Shane Warne.

The IPL also gave a chance for youngsters lacking opportunities to showcase their talent against worthy opposition. Someone like Swapnil Asnodkar had become a known name in Rajasthan during his exploits in the 2008 IPL. Someone like Yusuf Pathan got to show how destructive he can be in this format.

There were also lots of awards and incentives given to the players to encourage them to perform better. Highest run-scorers were given Orange Cap trophy while highest wicket takers of the season were given a Purple Cap trophy. The players who held the top spot in between the tournament wore Orange Cap & Purple Cap respectively during the match.

The IPL governing council also ensured the game was played well within the spirit and hence the team which played in the spirits of the game were awarded Fair Play Award. The points to the teams were allotted by the Umpires at the end of each game. The team with the best average points was awarded at the end of the season.

This tournament become a festival of Cricket where there was a lot of glamour, money, image, sponsorship deals, luxuries and hefty pay cheques at stake. With every good thing, there is always something bad that is involved. With all the attraction, IPL also became a heaven for betting and gamblers who get involved in putting a heavy amount at stake. With increasing greed, these people started becoming bookies offering the players a deal of spot-fixing. This in turn put the purity of game under scrutiny. In 2013, Indian Cricketer Sreesanth along with his team mates Ajith Chandila, Ankit Chavan were found guilty of spot-fixing. All 3 of them received life bans from playing Cricket. However, Sreesanth was cleared of playing Cricket after being proven innocent in 2019.

Chennai Super King's co-owner's relative Gurunath Meiyappan & Rajasthan Royals team-owner Raj Kundra were also involved in illegal betting which lead to the suspension of Chennai and Rajasthan for 2 years between 2016 & 2018.

Although these are only some of the controversies involving this otherwise great league that changed the dynamics of Cricket. Tournaments like Australia's Big Bash League (BBL), Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), Carribean Premier League (CPL), Ram Slam T20(now defunct), Pakistan Super League (PSL), Afghanistan Premier League (APL) & Mzansi Super League (MSL) took inspiration from IPL and established their own leagues that got success as years past.

Infact, these T20 leagues became a boon for players who failed to establish themselves in International arena and neither getting opportunities in domestic arena to make a career out of it. These players only need to seek NOCs from their respective Cricket Boards and they can play in all of these throughout the year!