Shane Warne explains how IPL enabled cricket to become 2nd most popular sport on planet

Former Australian cricketer Shane Warne took to the microblogging website Twitter and expressed his thoughts on the addition of the two new teams in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Warne suggested that the amount of money involved in the IPL has enabled cricket to be the second most popular and the biggest sport on the planet. On Tuesday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that the Lucknow and Ahmedabad franchises will play in the IPL starting from the 2022 season. 

After a successful bid by many capitalists, the Lucknow-based franchise was bought by RPSG Ventures Ltd for a mammoth amount of INR 7,090 crores and the Ahmedabad franchise was bought by the Irelia Company Pte Ltd (CVC Capital Partners) for a staggering amount of INR 5,625 crores. In his tweet, Shane Warne mentioned the price of the teams and hailed BCCI president Saurav Ganguly and everyone else on the board. He also congratulated both the new teams, who will lock horns with the rest of the eight teams in the tournament. 

'BCCI is happy to welcome the two new IPL teams,' says Saurav Ganguly

In the announcement by BCCI on the official website of IPL T20, board president Ganguly said that BCCI is happy to welcome the two new teams from the 2022 season of IPL. He congratulated the owners of the teams for their successful bids. Talking further about the teams, Ganguly said, “The IPL will now go to two new cities in India viz in Lucknow and Ahmedabad. It is heartening to see the inclusion of two new teams at such a high valuation, and it reiterates the cricketing and financial strength of our cricket ecosystem. True to IPL’s motto of ‘Where Talent Meets Opportunity’, the inclusion of two new teams will bring more domestic cricketers from our country to the global stage. The ITT process included two interested bidders from outside of India, which strongly emphasizes the global appeal of the IPL as a sports property. The IPL is proving to be a wonderful instrument in globalizing the game of cricket. I am keenly looking forward to IPL 2022.”

(Image: iplt20.com/BCCI/Shutterstock)