IPL 2019 is going to begin soon. Now on Thursday (7th March), the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) chief Vinod Rai revealed the timing of the upcoming IPL season.
Historically, the IPL matches mostly started at 20:00 IST. The double-games day had the timings of 16:00 IST (04 pm IST) and 20:00 IST (08:00 pm IST) respectively. From the last year, there was strong speculation that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) would change the timings of the IPL matches. According to the speculation, the night matches were going to begin one hour earlier, which means those games would start at 19:00 IST (07:00 pm IST).
However, the BCCI decided not to change the match timings in the last season. Now, once again, the timings haven’t been changed for the new IPL season.
On Thursday, the CoA chief Vinod Rai has confirmed that the IPL 2019 matches will begin on 16:00 IST (04.00 pm IST) and 20:00 IST (08.00 pm IST).
According to PTI, Vinod Rai told, “Matches will begin at 8 pm.”
However, the playoffs of the tournament, including the final, will begin at 19:00 IST (07:00 pm IST). According to the media reports, many franchises have wished to stick with the 20:00 IST timing.
A team official told PTI, “We welcome BCCI’s decision to retain the match timings. Like last year, we wanted the games to have an 8 pm start. This time, we were not yet approached by the BCCI regarding match timings but we were eagerly awaiting its decision.”
IPL 2019 will begin on 23 March
The IPL 2019 will start on 23 March. The defending champion Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will play the opening match of the tournament at M.A. Chidambaram Stadium (Chennai).
However, the IPL committee hasn’t announced the full fixture of the tournament yet. They have only announced the first two weeks’ schedule of IPL 2019. The committee has announced the match schedule from 23rd March to 5th April. The remaining fixtures will be announced after the dates of general elections are made public.
Recently, the CoA decided to not organise an opening ceremony in this IPL season. They will donate all those money to families of the Pulwama martyrs.
Like the previous year, the same eight teams will participate in the IPL 2019. Apart from CSK and RCB, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), Mumbai Indians (MI), Kings XI Punjab (KXIP), Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Delhi Capitals (DC) will participate in IPL 2019. Delhi Daredevils (DD) has changed the name to Delhi Capitals in last December due to the partial ownership changes.
CSK and SRH played the last season’s final where CSK beat SRH by eight wickets (with nine balls remaining). It was the third IPL title for CSK which is the joint most in IPL history. Mumbai Indians has also won three IPL trophies.