Indian Premier League IPL 2009 shifted out of India - BCCI

The Dance of Democracy forced the Dancing Cheerleaders and The Second Edition of Indian Premier League - IPL 2009 the 45 days Twenty Twenty Cricket (also called T 20 Cricket)  Carnival out of India as it was coinciding with the Indian General Elections.  Three countries where the tournament can be held are South Africa or England, or New Zealand. There were media reports to this effect already floating that as a deaparate measure BCCI will move the tournament out of India as millions are riding on the tournament.

Update: Gerald Majola from Cricket South Africa confirmed to PTI that they have been approached by BCCI for hosting the tournament.

New Date and Timing of matches:

The dates will remain as announced earlier ; Starting from 10th April 2009 till May 24th 2009.

Timings will be adjusted so that all the cricket matches will start for Indian Television audiences at 4:00 PM and 8:00 PM. For those who will watch the matches on ground the timings depending on the county will be as follows:

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1st Match 16:00 IST and 11:30 AM in South Africa and 10:30 AM in England.

2nd Match 20:00 IST so 13:30 AM in South Africa and 12:30 in England.

What this means is that number of in stadium audiences will be very small and team owners will stand to lose tons of monies in the form of ticket sales.

The decision was taken today by BCCI in its emergency meeting with IPL team franchisees. Those in attendance were Shahrukh Khan (SRK), Preity Zinta and Indian Richard Branson - Vijay Mallaya. SKA sounded patriotic in saying that elections were the first priority in this country and the same views were echoed by Priety Zinta. The decision was announced by Shashank Manohar - President of Broad for Cricket Control in India.

Lalit Modi IPL Commissioner and Chairman of IPL has suggested that the tournament will be held outside India (In either South Africa or England as per media reports) and talking with media people clarified that there will be 56 matched with 2 matches happening every day so IPL will have to be held in ONE country and ruled out multiple venues.

This will be great for the Indian Television audiences and advertisers as they will get to see the matches in their prime time, but for the host country it will mean low ticket sales.

As the generation is becoming fast paced t 20 cricket that gets over in about three hours is the latest rage in India. Cricket is anyways a religion and national obsession.

This was the second edition of the multi million sports extravaganze that took Indian Television by storm. This time various state governments had raised their hands as almost all the security forces will be involved in maintaining peace during the General Elections to be held during the same period.