The 15th season of the most awaited cricketing league in the country is scheduled to begin today, on Saturday, March 26. This season of the Indian Premier League will start off with the opening match between defending champions Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders – the runner-up of IPL 2021.
This year IPL 2022 will witness a number of changes, from the introduction of two new franchises to two legendary skippers leaving their captainship – this edition will see many of the firsts in the history of the Indian Premier League. With the introduction of Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants, the 2022 season will have a total of ten teams at the group stage unlike 8 teams in earlier seasons.
The playing format has also been changed in IPL 15 – Ten teams are divided into two groups and each team will play twice against every other team in their own group, one match each against four teams of other group and twice against the remaining one team from the other group. Also, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli have stepped down as skippers of their respective teams and now Chennai Super Kings will play under the captainship of Ravindra Jadeja and Royal Challengers under Faf du Plessis.
Also Read: BCCI Re-introduces The IPL 2011 Format For IPL 2022
About today’s match:
The season-opening match between CSK and KKR will start at 7:30 pm today at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Both the teams will be playing under new skippers, CSK under first-time skipper Jadeja and KKR under their first-time captain Shreyas Iyer, who formerly led Delhi Capitals in previous seasons.
CSK Team:
The franchise retained their core MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Moeen Ali. The team after the auction: Ravindra Jadeja (C), MS Dhoni (WK), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Robin Uthappa, Ambati Rayudu, Shivam Dube, Devon Conway, N Jagadeesan, Subhranshu Senapati, Dwayne Bravo, Hari Nishanth, Bhagath Varma, Dwaine Pretorious, Mitchell Santner, Adam Milne, KM Asif, Simrajeet Singh, Tushar Deshpande, Chris Jordan, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Meheesh Theekshana, Prashanth Solanki, Mukesh Choudhary.
KKR Team:
KKR retained Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer and Varun Chakravarthy. The team now stands with Shreyas Iyer (C), Sam Billings (WK), Venkatesh Iyer, Ajinkya Rahane, Nitish Rana, Tim Southee, Shivam Mavi, Varun Chakravarthy, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Umesh Yadav, Chamika Karunaratne, Mohammad Nabi, Sheldon Jackson, Baba Indrajith, Rinku Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Aman Khan, Pratham Singh, Ramesh Kumar, Anukul Roy, Ashok Sharma, Rasikh Salam.
The 2022 season will be played at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai and MCA Stadium, Pune at the group stage and playoffs and the final will be played at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. The final is scheduled to take place on May 29.
Also Read: BCCI Announces Schedule for IPL 2022, Details Here
