New Era Of Cricket

T20 is a new form of Cricketing game which is completely different from its traditional predecessors Test matches and ODI matches. Twenty-Twenty widely known as T20 is the first thing that pops into a Cricket fan’s mind hearing about IPL – The Indian Premier League, which was introduced first time in April, 2008 by the approval of Cricket Governing body ICC (International Cricket Council).

T2 0 has been around for quite sometime now being played only on domestic levels by International Cricket Playing nations specially by the countries in Asia which include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. however T20’s were first discussed by the English Cricket Board in 1998 and speculations emerged through media that Test and ODI matches, which are considered by many as the real form of Cricket would be dumped.

Later, BCCI the governing and administrating body of IPL – The Indian Premier League took this amazing format of Cricket to a whole new level by introducing some new rules, which involved 20 Over’s being played by each competing team hence shortening the game play and limiting it to 3 to 4 hours of entertainment. But that just wasn't enough for the fans and to push the excitement further more Auctions of International Team Players from different Cricket Playing nations was introduced which involved some of the Champion Nations like Sri Lanka, Australia, West Indies, Pakistan and India itself.

The concept is some what similar to football league matches in which players from different International Teams form one single team of 11 players. BCCI was the first Cricketing Board to introduce this concept in the Cricketing World, because they knew how fascinating it would be to have Stars from different Countries in one team competing against a team of equal caliber.

The first IPL season was played in 2008 and was won by a team considered under-dog through out the tournament, it was Rajhistan Royals, and the only team having less number of International Players which were Michael Clark – Australian, Sohail Tanveer – Pakistani, Graeme Smith – South African and Shane Warne – Australian. After its first season IPL was considered a mega hit event in this shorter version of Cricket called T20 and BCCI decided to continue it every year.

With second season being played in South Africa, Third IPL tournament is being organized by the BCCI and will kick off in March, 2010. However this time controversies surround this Hype'd event as Pakistan Cricket Team Players were not bought by any of the Team Franchises in the auction that took place on January 19, 2010, despite of Pakistan Team winning T20 World Cup last year in 2009. Critics and fans from both sides believe this bias attitude was due to the political instability between the two countries.