Expectations are rising high as the first ever Indian badminton league date draws nearer. The competition will be held from 14-Aug to 31-Aug-2013, starting with the opening ceremony at Delhi and culminating with the finals that will be held in Mumbai.
The presence of all the top-level Indian badminton players as well as top-ranked overseas players is going to ensure that the competition play will be of a very high level. For Indian badminton fans this is a good opportunity to watch the world's best players in action in their home-towns.
The competition is going to have 6 teams, and will be played using a franchise model similar to the one followed in Cricket's IPL league. Each team will have a total of 12 players that will include a maximum of 4 foreign players from top badminton playing countries such as Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Korea and Denmark.
And here's the list of the six IBL teams that will be competing for the prize money which is over Rs.5 crore.
Mumbai Masters
Karnataka Kings
Hyderabad Hotshots
Rajdhani Smashers
Pune Vijetas
Lucknow Warriors
By the way, don't these team names sound similar to their IPL counterparts in cricket?
If you are like me, no doubt at one point or another you must have wondered why Hyderabad cannot be called just as the Hyderabad team and Mumbai just as the Mumbai team.
The matches will be conducted in these 6 cities in the form of home-and-away matches for each of the teams in the 3-week long tournament.
And yes, the Indian badminton league finally seems to have caught the attention of the cricket-crazy media of our country. Newspapers reported that Sachin Tendulkar was interested in buying the Mumbai Masters team, and now I am hearing that Sunil Gavaskar will also be involved in the tournament in some way or the other.
Bollywood has not been left behind either. It's been reported that Aamir Khan, whom I admire, and who apart from being a great actor is a good badminton player is going to be one of the brand ambassadors. The other ambassador for the event is going to be badminton legend Prakash Padukone's little girl Deepika.
There is going to be a fair amount of money involved in the league as a lot of heavy-weight companies have shown interest in buying the franchise teams. Companies such as Dabur, PVP, and Sahara have already got the teams they want.
The base price for each teams had been pegged at Rs.6 crore. That's big money when it comes to badminton. The players are also going to be richer with the top 5 from each team earning 50000 US dollars and the next 5 earning half of that.
Check out this link for more info: http://www.iblschedule.com/ about Indian badminton league.
A good news for us badminton-fans is that all the badminton matches are going to be telecast live on Star Sports.
So here's wishing Indian badminton league a great success!
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