The former Indian head coach Ravi Shastri has predicted that there might be two editions of IPL in the same year in the future, but the format of one edition might be different from the other.
According to Ravi Shastri, while the original edition of the IPL will continue to take place in the league format where every team plays each other twice, home and away, and then the playoffs take place including two qualifiers, an eliminator, and a final, the second edition might be played in a different format where teams will be divided into two groups and top two from each group will be qualifying for semis as it happens in T20 World Cup.
Shastri was speaking on The Tuffers and Vaughan Cricket Show and when he was asked what the future of IPL might look like, he said the demand for IPL cricket is very high and it is beneficial not just for the players or the cricket boards, but it generates employment and business opportunities for a lot of people around the game, whether they are umpires, commentators, camera crew, hotel owners and so on.
IPL creates a whole market that is good for all: Ravi Shastri
Shastri thinks because the demand is so high and it’s beneficial in terms of creating a whole market and generating employment opportunities for various groups of people, IPL will continue to expand and the possibility of the IPL taking place twice a year in the future can’t be ruled out at all.
IPL has been expanded only recently with two more businessmen buying the franchise ownership rights of Gujarat and Lucknow respectively from BCCI for over a billion US dollars.
One of them, Gujarat Titans, straightaway won the IPL title as well, under the captaincy of Hardik Pandya in their debut season. Ravi Shastri thinks this was not the last IPL expansion that the cricket world saw and the no. of IPL teams can go up to 12 in a few years.
