The league phase of the Indian Premier League’s upcoming season (IPL 2022), will be played across four venues in Mumbai and Pune, with the final taking place on May 29th, the Board of Control for Cricket in India informed on Friday through an official release. IPL Chairman Brijesh Patel had said on Thursday that the tournament will begin from March 26. The IPL will have 70 league matches this time, with the addition of the two new teams, Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans. The BCCI also explained in detail the format of the league phase and informed that a decision on the venues for the play-offs will be taken later.
“The IPL Governing Council at its meeting held yesterday made the following key decisions regarding the TATA IPL 2022 Season. The 15th edition of the Indian Premier League will be played in a bio-secure environment at a single hub 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 tournament will kickstart from 26th March, 2022 and the final will be played on 29th May, 2022. A total of 70 league matches will be played across four international standard venues in Mumbai and Pune. The venue for the playoff matches will be decided later,” BCCI said in its official release.
As per the breakdown of the matches, the Wankhede Stadium and DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai will host 20 matches each. The Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai and the MCA International Stadium in Pune will host 15 matches each.
Here’s the rest of the breakdown as explained in the BCCI release:
All teams will play:
4 matches each at Wankhede Stadium and DY Patil Stadium.
3 matches each at Brabourne Stadium (CCI) and MCA International Stadium, Pune.
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).
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 10 IPL teams will be divided into two virtual groups which are as follows
Group A: Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Capitals, Lucknow Super Giants
Group B: Chennai Super Kings, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Punjab Kings, Gujarat Titans
Here’s how the virtual groups will function according to the BCCI release.
|
|
Group A |
|
Group B |
|
1 |
MI(5) |
2 |
CSK(4) |
|
3 |
KKR(2) |
4 |
SRH(1) |
|
5 |
RR(1) |
6 |
RCB |
|
7 |
DC |
8 |
PBKS |
|
9 |
LSG |
10 |
GT |
Each team will play twice with the teams in their group and with the team in the same row in the second group. With the rest of the teams in the second group they will play only once during the season.
For Example: In Group A, MI will play 2 matches each against KKR, RR, DC, LSG. MI will also play 2 matches against CSK and 1 match each against other teams in Group B. Similarly, in Group B, RCB will play 2 matches against CSK, SRH, PBKS and GT. RCB will also play 2 matches against RR and 1 match each against other teams in Group A.
