IPL 2024: Marquee cricket league ready for 17th season – here’s all you need to know

The 17th edition of the Indian Premier League is all set to begin on Friday with a high profile clash between the reigning champions Chennai Super Kings and the Royal Challengers Bangalore at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.

With 2024 being an election year in India, there were questions of the league being shifted out of the country. On March 25 however, the BCCI confirmed that the entire tournament will be held in the country. The last time India underwent general elections back in 2019, the Indian Premier League was held in the country.

But twice before that – back in 2014 and 2009, the league was held in the United Arab Emirates and South Africa respectively.

Initially, the BCCI had announced the schedule only for the first two weeks of the tournament. On Day 4 of the tournament however, the Board announced the entire schedule.

The Chepauk Stadium in Chennai will host the final on May 26, along with the second qualifier on May 24. Ahmedabad will host the first qualifier and eliminator on May 21 and 22, respectively.

After a long and successful home five-match Test series against England, the IPL will usher in the Twenty20 fervour, with the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup scheduled to start in June, shortly after the marquee franchise league ends.

Here’s all you need to know about IPL 2024:

Format

Just like last season, teams will be divided into two groups.

Each team plays the other in their particular group twice, while they will play four teams in the other group once, and the remaining fifth team in the other group twice.

The top four teams overall will move into the play-offs, with the top two teams playing Qualifier 1 and the third and fourth placed teams playing the Eliminator. The loser of Qualifier 1 and the winner of Eliminator will then clash in the Qualifier 2 for a spot in the 2024 Indian Premier League Final against the winner of Qualifier 1.

New Rules

The IPL will now allow bowlers to bowl two bouncers per over this season, going away from the one per over rule.

Moreover as per reports, a smart review system will be introduced for the first time in the league. This means that the third umpires will now have multiple camera angles to give their decision when the teams ask for Decision Review System, or the DRS.

As per the smart review system, the third umpires will be now seated alongside the Hawk-Eye operators, meaning that the role of match director in reviews will become null and void.

Auction

The ten franchises competing in the 2024 IPL retained a total of 173 players ahead of the player auction, which was held in December last year.

The auction was held outside of India for the first time ever and Mitchell Starc, who was snapped up by the Kolkata Knight Riders for Rs 24.75 crore, emerged as the most sought after player.

A total of 72 players, including 30 foreign cricketers, were picked up during the auction. The ten teams combined to splurge a total of Rs 230 crore in the auction.

Besides the auction, the trade window was highly active this time around. Multiple players were traded between teams before and post the auctions – the most notable being Gujarat Titans’ captain Hardik Pandya’s move to his former team Mumbai Indians.

Captaincy changes

Shubman Gill will make his IPL captaincy debut this season as he takes over the reigns of Gujarat Titans, replacing Pandya.

Moreover, the Mumbai Indians have appointed Pandya as the captain, moving away from their long-time leader Rohit Sharma.

While Shreyas Iyer is expected to take over as the captain of Kolkata Knight Riders after missing out on last season with an injury, the Delhi Capitals have announced Rishabh Pant as their skipper.

Pant had missed out the 2023 IPL following his life-threatening car crash in December 2022 and the Capitals were led by Australian batter David Warner.

Meanwhile, there is a captaincy change at the Sunrisers Hyderabad as well with Pat Cummins replacing South African Aiden Markram. The Sunrisers had splurged Rs 20.50 crore to secure the services of the Australian skipper in the auction.

The biggest change of all however comes from the Chennai Super Kings camp just a day before the start of the league. Opener Ruturaj Gaikwad will take over as the captain, replacing five-time champion Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Dhoni had stepped down as the the Chennai team’s captain two years back in 2022 with Ravindra Jadeja taking over the responsibility, but the decision was reversed midway into the competition.

Teams

Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni, Moeen Ali*, Deepak Chahar, Tushar Deshpande, Shivam Dube, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajay Mandal, Mukesh Choudhary, Ajinkya Rahane, Shaik Rasheed, Mitchell Santner*, Simarjeet Singh, Nishant Sindhu, Prashant Solanki, Maheesh Theekshana*, Rachin Ravindra*, Shardul Thakur, Daryl Mitchell*, Sameer Rizvi, Mustafizur Rahman*, Avanish Rao Aravelly, Devon Conway*, Maheesha Pathirana*

Gujarat Titans: Shubman Gill, David Miller*, Matthew Wade*, Wriddhiman Saha, Kane Williamson*, Abhinav Manohar, B Sai Sudharsan, Darshan Nalkande, Vijay Shankar, Jayant Yadav, Rahul Tewatia, Noor Ahmad, Sai Kishore, Rashid Khan*, Joshua Little*, Mohit Sharma, Azmatullah Omarzai*, Umesh Yadav, Shahrukh Khan, Sushant Mishra, Kartik Tyagi, Manav Suthar, Spencer Johnson*, Sandeep Warrier

Lucknow Super Giants: KL Rahul, Quinton de Kock*, Nicholas Pooran*, Devdutt Padikkal, Ayush Badoni, Ashton Turner*, Deepak Hooda, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kyle Mayers*, Marcus Stoinis*, Prerak Mankad, Yudhvir Singh Charak, David Willey*, Arshin Kulkarni, Shamar Joseph*, Arshad Khan, Mayank Yadav, Mohsin Khan, Ravi Bishnoi, Yash Thakur, Amit Mishra, Naveen-ul-Haq*, Shivam Mavi, M Siddarth

Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya, Rohit Sharma, Dewald Brevis*, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Tilak Varma, Tim David*, Vishnu Vinod, Mohammad Nabi*, Arjun Tendulkar, Shams Mulani, Nehal Wadhera, Jasprit Bumrah, Kumar Kartikeya, Piyush Chawla, Akash Madhwal, Luke Wood*, Romario Shepherd*, Gerald Coetzee, Shreyas Gopal, Nuwan Thushara*, Naman Dhir, Anshul Kamboj, Shivalik Sharma, Luke Wood, Kwena Maphaka*

Rajasthan Royals: Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler*, Dhruv Jurel, Kunal Rathore, Donovan Ferreira*, Tom Kohler-Cadmore*, Shimron Hetmyer*, Riyan Parag, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rovman Powell*, Shubham Dubey, Ravichandran Ashwin, Abid Mushtaq, Trent Boult*, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Sen, Sandeep Sharma, Navdeep Saini, Adam Zampa*, Nandre Burger*, Avesh Khan

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf du Plessis*, Glenn Maxwell*, Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar, Anuj Rawat, Dinesh Karthik, Suyash Prabhudessai, Will Jacks*, Mahipal Lomror, Karn Sharma, Manoj Bhandage, Mayank Dagar, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj, Reece Topley*, Himanshu Sharma, Rajan Kumar, Cameron Green*, Alzarri Joseph*, Yash Dayal, Tom Curran*, Lockie Ferguson*, Swapnil Singh, Saurav Chauhan

Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer, KS Bharat, Rahmanullah Gurbaz*, Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford*, Andre Russell*, Manish Pandey, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine*, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc*, Dushmantha Chameera*, Phil Salt*, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman

Punjab Kings: Shikhar Dhawan, Jonny Bairstow*, Prabhsimran Singh, Jitesh Sharma, Harpreet Bhatia, Rilee Rossouw*, Shashank Singh, Sam Curran*, Liam Livingstone*, Atharva Taide, Rishi Dhawan, Sikandar Raza*, Shivam Singh, Chris Woakes*, Ashutosh Sharma, Vishwanath Singh, T Thyagarajan, Harshal Patel, Harpreet Brar, Arshdeep Singh, Kagiso Rabada*, Nathan Ellis*, Rahul Chahar, V Kaverappa, Prince Choudhary

Delhi Capitals: Rishabh Pant, Tristan Stubbs*, Abishek Porel, Kumar Kushagra, Ricky Bhui, Shai Hope*,  Prithvi Shaw, David Warner*, Mitchell Marsh*, Yash Dhull, Swastik Chikara, Pravin Dubey, Axar Patel, Lalit Yadav, Vicky Ostwal, Sumit Kumar, Anrich Nortje*, Mukesh Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed, Kuldeep Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Jake Fraser-McGurk*, Jhye Richardson*, Rasikh Salam

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Pat Cummins*, Glenn Phillips*, Upendra Singh Yadav, Heinrich Klaasen*,  Abdul Samad, Aiden Markram*, Rahul Tripathi, Mayank Agarwal, Travis Head*, Anmolpreet Singh,  Washington Sundar, Abhishek Sharma, Shahbaz Ahmed, Sanvir Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Marco Jansen*, T Natarajan, Mayank Markande, Nitish Reddy, Umran Malik, Wanindu Hasaranga*, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Fazalhaq Farooqi*, J Subramanyan.

— * denotes foreign players. Squads updated as of 11am on March 21, 2024.

The 2024 IPL will be broadcast on the Star Sports network and will be LIVE streamed on Jio Cinema