IPL 2018 To Start On April 7, Final On May 27

The eleventh edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) is all set to kick off on April 7 with the first game to be played in Mumbai. Since Mumbai Indians won the previous edition, they were the automatic hosts of the opening game of the T20 league. However, they will not face Rising Pune Supergiant, the finalists of the previous season, as the franchise has been replaced.

The opening ceremony of the T20 league will take place on April 6 in Mumbai, and the final of the tournament will also be played in Mumbai. The news was confirmed by IPL Chairman, Rajiv Shukla himself.

Already, there were reports that the IPL will start in the first week of April. Before IPL, the Indian team will be playing a T20I tri-series against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and will take rest of few weeks before being available for the T20 league.

Post the completion IPL; there will be another gap of two weeks before India play Afghanistan in their debut Test in Bengaluru. Post the completion of the Test match; team India will fly to Ireland and England after a few days.

This IPL season will also see a comeback of two IPL franchises viz Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings, who were banned for two years following the Lodha recommendations. They were replaced by Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions, both of whom had to make way for the comeback franchises for the upcoming season.

Before the start of the season, there will be a mega auction on January 27 and 28 in Bangalore where all the eight franchises will bid to buy players. Before the auction, all the franchises were given an option to retain three players.

They will have an opportunity to retain few more players (depending upon the number of players retained on the retention day) on the auction day by the use of Right to Match (RTM) card. A total of 578 players will be available for auction out of which 360 are Indians.

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