After sitting on the edge, the Badminton Association of India (BAI) can heave a sigh of relief. The player auction of the inaugural Indian Badminton League (IBL) will finally take place on July 22 at New Delhi.
The twice-postponed auction was supposed to be held on Friday but was put off as the last franchise, Mumbai, was purchased by the trio of legendary cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, Tollywood actor Nagarjuna and former Andhra Ranji player V Chamundeswarinath, only on Wednesday.
Pune went to the Burman family, the owners of Dabur India Ltd. Mumbai and Pune were the last two franchises unsold till yesterday. The franchises reportedly asked for few more days of postponement before the date was set for July 22.
For BAI, the development means a victory of sorts. The IBL will be held in six cities from August 14-31. The richest badminton league in the world will feature some of the top players in the world. However, it is all but sure that there will be no participation from China and South Korea. China will hold their national championship during that time.
The IBL will be played under the Sudirman Cup format and will be televised live in more than 100 countries. The BAI had run into rough weather because of uncertainty regarding the participation of a few players but things have finally fallen into place. The biggest star attraction will be world number one Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia. Consequent to the possible non-participation of China, the likes of Chen Long, Deu Pengyu, Li Xuerui, Wang Yihan and Wang Shixian will miss the tournament.
Six teams, namely Hyderabad HotShots, Karnataka Kings, Lucknow Warriors, Mumbai Masters, Pune Vijetas and Rajdhani Smashers will play 90 matches.
The IBL will have 150 players as part of the auction to fill the 66 available spots. Saina Nehwal, Ashwini Ponappa, Jwala Gutta, Parupalli Kashyap, PV Sandhu and a yet-to-be-named foreign player are the six icon players with a base price of $50,000.
Each team will have 11 players, with a maximum of four foreigners and one mandatory under-19 player from the local catchment area.
Former international Sanjay Sharma said that IBL is a great concept. “The Indian players, particularly the younger ones, will stand to gain with the start of IBL. With the success of Saina Nehwal, Sindhu, Kashyap and others, badminton has become very popular in the country. The IBL could be an ideal platform to take the game to the next level. In fact, badminton is the only game where we have six players in top 50 in the world ranking,’’ he said.
