The contest for the two new Indian Premier League teams will see a five-way fight. The deadline for the submission of performance deposit ($10m, approximately Rs46cr) expired on Friday. Of the 14 groups which had initially shown interest only five presented the deposit.
DNA has learnt that two consortiums from Pune — one led by Videocon’s Venugopal Dhoot and another by Anirudh Deshpande’s City Corporation, — one from Ahmedabad (Adani Group), Sahara and a consortium, believed to be headed by the Jaypee Group, have deposited the money at the IPL office here on Friday.
There is intense speculation over the involvement of Union minister Shashi Tharoor but it was not known which consortium he is going to be associated with. Sources say he will be part of a consortium that will form a team in Kochi. And it is likely that the Jaypee Group will form an alliance with the minister for the Kerala franchisee. The minister, however, could not be reached for a
comment.
When contacted, Lalit Modi said he cannot comment on this as the IPL will not know who is part of which consortium only on Sunday.
At this stage, however, it is not known which party will bid for which city. The parties are required to reveal their teams only at 10 am on Sunday. By 5 pm on Friday, they were only required to give a demand draft for Rs46 crores, a pre-qualification to be part of the bidding process.
Meanwhile, the two Pune city parties confirmed their participation in the bidding. “We’ve deposited the money. We will go all out for a team,” Venugopal Dhoot, the chairman of Videocon, said. He also confirmed that his group will bid for Pune. Deshpande, the head of City Corporation, also said that he is vying for Pune franchisee.
“Today we did not have to mention about the city we’re interested in but we will bid for Pune,” Deshpande said.
Sahara said they are part of the process but they have not yet decided on which city team they would be vying for.
The two new teams will be announced after a governing council meeting in Chennai on Sunday. However, it would be interesting to see if all five parties will be in race by then. The base money for a bid is $225
million.
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