Now, City to host IPL 7 final

In a move that will delight the cricket fans of the City, the Indian Premier League Governing Council (GC) decided to move the IPL 7 final match – slated for June 1 with June 2 being a reserve day – to Bangalore from Mumbai.

Though Bangalore has the distinction of hosting the inaugural match of the IPL in 2008, it has never seen a final played at the M Chinnaswamy stadium. The general practice has been that whichever franchise wins the title gets their city to host the final of the next edition. By that convention, Mumbai Indians being the defending champions, Wankhede was scheduled to host IPL-7 final besides the Qualifier 2.

However, due to some issues regarding the conduct of the first two matches in Mumbai, a miffed BCCI awarded the final to Bangalore. The Qualifier 2 will be held at Wankhede though.

The council, however, maintained: “Considering that 20 matches of the ongoing season have already been played overseas, the GC decided to try and take the playoffs to as many different stadia as possible. Several venues had expressed their interest in hosting the playoffs.”

In a meeting held in Mumbai on Saturday, the GC also shifted Qualifier 1 and Eliminator from Chennai to Kolkata and Mumbai (Brabourne Stadium) respectively.

The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, which was to host the match, had expres­sed its inability to do so as the Tamil Nadu Municipal Corporation didn’t give “NOC” to three stands which, it claims, were illegally constructed.

The GC members also expressed their dismay at the on-field incident involving Kieron Pollard and Mitchell Starc during the game between Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore on May 6 and unanimously expressed the view that the game in question was not played in the right spirit.