The Indian Premier League (IPL) is back in 2022 for the 15th edition with last season’s finalists kicking of proceedings this term on Saturday.
The first match between Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will be played in the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai today.
Notably, prior to the beginning of this edition, a mega auction was held to reshuffle the teams. Two new franchises also entered the fray this term.
The new teams are Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants. The entire edition will be played in Maharashtra and Gujarat with the venues being Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Ahmedabad.
This year's edition is being sponsored by Tata Group. Owing to Covid-19 protocols, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has allowed only 25 per cent of the stadium capacity, and the group games will take place in just four venues.
CSK won the last edition defeating KKR in the final. Both the teams will be with new captains following the mega auction. KKR will be lead by new signing Shreyas Iyer while Ravindra Jadeja will take over the mantle from longtime captain M S Dhoni.
Coming in as the skipper, Jadeja will look to address the absence of key first team players in Deepak Chahar, who is injured, and Moeen Ali being unavailable due to visa isses.
The new KKR captain Iyer will have to figure out who to open alongside Venkatesh Iyer, who had a great outing in the previous edition. KKR bought Alex Hales in the auction but he opted out of the tournament and his replacement, Aaron Finch will miss out the early part of the campaign.
The match will begin from 7.30pm and will be broadcast live on Star Sports channels like Star Sports 1, Star Sports 1 HD, Star Sports 3, and Star Sports 3 HD. In addition, the match will be streamed live on OTT platforms like Disney+ Hotstar, Airtel TV, Jio TV.
The squads in full:
CSK: Ravindra Jadeja (c), MS Dhoni, Moeen Ali, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Robin Uthappa, Dwayne Bravo, Ambati Rayudu, Deepak Chahar, KM Asif, Tushar Deshpande, Shivam Dube, Maheesh Theekshana, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Simarjeet Singh, Devon Conway, Dwaine Pretorius, Mitchell Santner, Adam Milne, Subhranshu Senapati, Mukesh Choudhary, Prashant Solanki, C Hari Nishaanth, N Jagadeesan, Chris Jordan, K Bhagath Varma.
KKR: Shreyas Iyer (c), Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, Sunil Narine, Pat Cummins, Nitish Rana, Shivam Mavi, Sheldon Jackson, Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Anukul Roy, Rasikh Dar, Chamika Karunaratne, Baba Indrajith, Ashok Sharma, Pratham Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Sam Billings, Ramesh Kumar, Mohammed Nabi, Aman Khan, Umesh Yadav.
