The highly anticipated Indian Premier League 2022 is all set to kick off from March 26 as the lung-opener match has also been decided. The four-time champions Chennai Super Kings (CSK) will take on two-time title-holders Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to mark the beginning of the upcoming edition of IPL, a source in the know confirmed Sports Tak.
Not just this, it's likely that around 25 per cent crowd will be allowed for initial matches as per the Maharashtra state government direction. Percentage of permitted crowd might be increased looking at the Covid-19 situation at that time.
Earlier, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that the IPL 2022 season will get underway on March 26 and the final will be played on May 29. The 10-team season in IPL 2022 will have 74 matches, including 70 league stage matches which will be played across four venues in Mumbai and Pune.
The BCCI said that IPL 2022 will be played in a bio-secure environment and the decision to pick only two host cities was taken to "avoid air travel which is considered as a major threat for the spread of Covid-19 infection, thereby affecting the players and the League/matches."
The 10 teams will play a total of 14 league matches (7 home matches and 7 away matches) totalling to 70 league matches, followed by the 4 playoff matches. Each team will play 5 teams twice and the remaining 4 teams only once (2 only home and 2 only away). The venues for the play-offs and the final will be decided on a later date, the BCCI added.
The 10 teams have been drawn into 2 groups 5 each. Mumbai Indians headline Group A while Chennai Super Kings are headlining Group B. To decide on the above, teams have been assigned in two virtual groups based on the number of IPL Championships won followed by the number of Final matches played by the respective teams.
The league matches of the upcoming IPL edition will be held across four venues - iconic Wankhede stadium, Cricket Club of India (Brabourne stadium), DY Patil Stadium and Maharashtra Cricket Association stadium at Gahunje in Pune.
The addition of two new franchises has prompted the league to have two separate groups. The teams in each group were decided based on the number of titles won by the franchises and the number of appearances in the final of the IPL. Therefore, Mumbai Indians (MI) with five titles and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) with four titles were drafted first.
IPL 2022 Group A Teams:
1) Mumbai Indians (MI)
2) Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)
3) Rajasthan Royals (RR)
4) Delhi Capitals (DC)
5) Lucknow Super Giants (LSG)
IPL 2022 Group B Teams:
1) Chennai Super Kings (CSK)
2) Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH)
3) Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB)
4) Punjab Kings (PBKS)
5) Gujarat Titans (GT)
CSK Squad: Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ambati Rayudu, Moeen Ali, MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Shivam Dube, Deepak Chahar, Dwayne Bravo, Robin Uthappa, KM Asif, Tushar Deshpande, Maheesh Theekshana, N Jagadeesan, Hari Nishaanth, Subhranshu Senapati, Mukesh Choudhary, Simarjeet Singh, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Bhagath Varma, Prashant Solanki, Chris Jordan, Dwaine Pretorius, Devon Conway, Adam Milne, Mitchell Santner.
KKR Squad: Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana, Shreyas Iyer, Sheldon Jackson, Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Pat Cummins, Shivam Mavi, Varun Chakravarthy, Sam Billings, Anukul Roy, Rasikh Salam, Abhijeet Tomar, Pratham Singh, Aman Khan, Ramesh Kumar, Ashok Sharma, Tim Southee, Alex Hales, Mohammad Nabi, Umesh Yadav, B Indrajith, Chamika Karunaratne.
