ICC board meeting, larger capacity in Ahmedabad reason behind shifting IPL final: Arun Dhumal

Higher seating capacity and an ICC board meeting scheduled around the IPL final were among the reasons behind shifting the May 31 summit clash from Bengaluru to Ahmedabad, league chairman Arun Singh Dhumal told PTI on Thursday.

Higher seating capacity and an ICC board meeting scheduled around the IPL final were among the reasons behind shifting the May 31 summit clash from Bengaluru to Ahmedabad, league chairman Arun Singh Dhumal told PTI on Thursday. The norm is the IPL winners get to host the final the following season, but on Wednesday, the BCCI awarded the final to Ahmedabad, which hosted the title clash last year as well. Chinnaswamy Stadium, the site of the horrific stampede that killed 11 people during the victory celebrations of RCB, roughly has a capacity of 40000 while Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad can accommodate more than 130,000. Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) expressed its disappointment at not being given the opportunity to stage the final. Speaking to PTI, Dhumal explained why the BCCI decided to shift the venue. ''See ideally it should have been Bengaluru. We checked up with KSCA. Because what happened last year (stampede), they had some challenges. State government needs to give free tickets to legislators and KSCA has some other commitments for their members. ''Stadium capacity is also not that high. Very few tickets were available there for league games as well. Since IPL final attracts people from around the world, we need to have a larger inventory (of tickets) available for fans. We would have the ICC board meeting around that time too, a lot of members are coming for that. ''Considering all, definitely we all thought a larger venue would be more appropriate. Keeping the convenience of fans as well as international guests coming in for ICC board meetings, we decided on Ahmedabad,'' said Dhumal. Asked about Ahmedabad regularly hosting the final attracting negative attention, Dhumal said: ''No, ideally the winning team gets the final but given the issues we touched upon, it becomes untenable to have it in Bengaluru. Lets say if CSK won last season we would surely do it in Chennai.'' Recent acquisitions of RR, RCB show strength of IPL =================================== Both RCB and RR recently drew winning bids for close to USD 2 billion from new investors. The sale of teams is subject to BCCI approval. Dhumal said the IPL brand has done wonders for all their stakeholders in terms of ROI over eighteen years. ''Definitely it shows the strength of this league which is growing with every passing season. It's just been 18 years and we've seen what it has done to all our partners. ''We are very happy for each one of them. There is no other league as the IPL. And that is why IPL is No. 1 'Make in India' brand post Independence. ''Definitely we'll go through the documents and we'll do all the due diligence required to make sure that the process followed is fair and transparent,'' he said. Increase in number of games likely post 2027, more teams not needed ============================================= The number of games were gradually supposed to increase to 94 in the current cycle lasting till 2027. However, the international calendar did not allow the IPL expansion in terms of matches. Dhumal said the BCCI will push for more games in the new media rights cycle with the existing 10 teams. ''With the given set of teams, only we can go for the more number of matches. So it doesn't make sense as of now to increase the number of teams. ''Because in case we have to have equal number of home and away matches, from 74 we can go up to 94. ''That would be the ideal situation. But since the bilaterals are locked in till 2027, and we would need a bigger window to raise the number of games from 74 to 94. So we are looking for a bigger window post 27 bilateral cycle. In case we can get that, definitely we will try to have 94 games,'' he added.