One of our most popular post was about the mock jersey for the new Pune IPL team. Well mock ups apart, Sahara the company which has the franchise rights for Pune’s IPL team has revealed the name the IPL team will go by. So the team in Pune will be called Sahara Pune Warriors. It as also released the logo for the new team.
It is not surprising that Sahara chose to call the team Warriors as Pune was the capital of the Maratha Kingdom formed by the warrior clans in Maharashtra. The price tag of the team is some 370$ million, making it the most expensive in IPL.
The team will play its matches in a newly built stadium about 25 kms away from the main city.
So do you think they will rock the IPL next year. I guess we can make a better estimation after the grand auction of players later this year.
It was just in the 8th over after the game resumed on Sunday that Team India went to the top in the ICC Test rankings.
Post-match…
As continuation to Aditya’s post, India won the match and the series at the historic Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai against Sri Lanka making India top the ICC Test Ranking in history! The play resumed on Sunday being candy in India’s pocket, India just required 4 wickets without allowing Sri Lanka 59 runs to mark the win. Just allowing 35 runs, India bagged 4 wickets and made their day, rather year!
Series summary
A confident Dhoni and his men kept tact from the first test match itself at Ahmedabad, which was drawn. In the second test match at Kanpur, India had a big win marking Gambhir, Sehwag and Dravid’s ton, making the series 1-0. Now with Sunday’s win, India won the series 2-0 marking Sehwag’s double ton. He missed a triple ton (and a record) just by 7 runs. Nevertheless, he is the man-of-the-match and the man-of-the-series.
Even with Jayawardene’s double ton in the Ahmedabad Test, Indians managed a draw.
For India to stay on top…
India had managed to stay on top in ODI ranking for less than 24 hours with a win in Compaq Cup. South Africa won a match against England which made India slip to No.2. Event this position melted and India slipped back to No.3 when India lost the series to Australia, who took over the top position fron No.3.
But the case of Test Matches is different. For India to lead the board, they need to keep the aim in their mind to play good. A forthcoming series India in Bangladesh is coming up in January 2010. India needs to show to the world that they can be No.1 for a long time.
Dhoni has been marked India’s most succesful skipper now. He is yet to lose a match as skipper in Tests. India overall played 10 matches with Dhoni as skipper and won seven with three draws.
For all you cricket enthusiasts… here’s your chance to choose your favorite cricketers, create your dream 11 and earn some points!
Dream11 Gaming Pvt Ltd recently launched Dream11.com – the first graphical fantasy cricket game in India, conceptualized to provide cricket lovers with an exceptional fantasy cricket experience.
With the buzz around the T20 World Cup, you could make the most of cricket by creating your team of the cricketers you love from across the world and earn points depending on how those cricketers perform in real life matches.
Manage your virtual team with features like:
Live scores
News updates
Player profiles
Statistics
Standings
Things you could do:
You could compete with other Dream11 users for the top position on the leader board
You could challenge competitors as well as connect with friends over cricket using
Dream11 Web Messenger
Scraps
Other community features, etc.
There will soon be tools available to customize and personalize content on the home page.
Harsh Jain, founder, chairman and managing director says,
“Fantasy Sports is a huge market globally and considering the packed upcoming cricket calendar, we believe that the time is just right for Indian audiences to connect with fantasy cricket. We assure our users of the best ever fantasy cricket interface and pledge our commitment to constantly innovate in this category.”
The Champions League Twenty20 tournament has expanded the participation window from 8 to 12 teams now. The additional teams will be the domestic champions from West Indies, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. India will now have the participation from the top 3 teams of the IPL.
Last year the first Champions League had been scheduled to feature two teams each from India, Australia, South Africa and England. However, it was later postponed after the terror attacks in Mumbai.
The $6 million prize money tournament will now be held from October 8 – October 23 in India.
All 12 teams will be divided into four groups of three each to play on a league basis.
The top two teams from each group will move on to the second stage.
The four top teams from the second stage will play the Semifinals.
From India, the league topper Delhi Daredevils will participate along with the two finalists of IPL-2.
The teams for the Champions League include:
#
Team
From
1
Victoria
Australia
2
New South Wales
Australia
3
Cape Corbas
South Africa
4
Eagles
South Africa
5
Otago
New Zealand
6
Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies
7
Wayamba
Sri Lanka
8
Deccan Chargers
India
9
Royal Challengers
India
10
Delhi Daredevils
India
11
To be decided
England
12
To be decided
England
The two English teams will be decided after the domestic Twenty20 championship in August.
In an interview to Daily Telegraph, the IPL commissioner – Lalit Modi has dropped a hint that the IPL could be held twice a year.
In Modi’s own words:
“The IPL will be based in India, but the second season (of a year) that we are planning gives us the chance to see if a market exists and we are seriously looking at what we can do with it”
The response that IPL-2 got from cricket fans in South Africa has definitely encouraged Modi to think bigger now and he is looking at various possible opportunities.
Now the big question that arises is whether or not there is any scope for another IPL within the same year? We already have the World Cup T20 happening every alternate year, annual Champions League starting this year, other ODI series and Test matches that happen all the year around… wow, isn’t that a lot of cricket?
Do you think it could end up being too much of T20 to handle? How will it impact the audience of test matches and ODIs, I wonder…?
Pradip Sangwan’s body language was showing every fear of a rookie bowler bowling against a gifted player. Viru did a costly mistake to introduce him when Nannes was punished for five consecutive fours in the very first over.
Full credit goes to Gilli. He put all his experience of playing finals and winning them. He not only scored runs but killed opponents attitude to play the game to win from the very first over. Even Viru seemed confused when Gilli was in full flow. Only Nehra was looking confident and positive.
With the record of fastest fifty in IPL in just 17 balls, he is also having height strike rate and score (85). This player is unstoppable in full flow. This style of hammering down the ball was introduced by West Indians in early 70s. Richards, Lloyd, Sobers played with the hammer in hand. Recently, Lara had that magic in his bat. In late 80s and early 90s, Aussie era started and won three world cups. Gilli was integral part of the team and Aussies success.
Now, morals are charged up and opponents must be thinking of tightening the screws against him. Another Aussie making his mark with quick 24 in 15 balls was Symonds. A player out of Gibbs, Symonds, Rohit, Gilli and others with quick fire 40-50 runs can make 250+ runs possible. And yeah, this total seems very very difficult for any team in finals.
It’s all ifs and buts but, with such a stunning performance, Deccan Chargers has become strong contender for holding the shining IPL trophy.
Keeping in view the huge popularity of the IPL-2, even Nazara Technologies is trying to cash on the cricket mania by introducing a range of mobile phone games on the Indian Premier League. Nazara has tied up with the various cellular operators for these mobile games such as Airtel, Spice, Idea, Vodafone, BPL, Tata Indicom and Reliance.
The products:
Games
Wall papers
Color logos
Themes
Videos
Ring tones
Caller back ring tones
Games around IPL clubs – Delhi Daredevils, Deccan Chargers:
The games will be available at Rs.10 allowing the players to play up to 3 times.
Unlimited game downloads will be available at Rs.99.
Nazara is a Mumbai-based mobile entertainment company that focuses on the 100 million+ mobile subscriber base in India. They develop a range of branded and original mobile content that is highly relevant to the culturally diverse consumer base in the country.
Nazara has a subscriber base of 1.2 million and it expects to add another one million subscribers in this fiscal.
Here’s another creative piece of promotional campaign from Virgin Mobile – the Indian Hatke League (IHL) – an entertaining take on the Indian Premier League Cricket tournament (IPL). At the time when the fever of IPL-2 has absorbed the nation altogether, the Hatke League aims to leverage maximum benefits from the season (that started in South Africa on April 18).
This newly launched website is designed by Culture Mafia. It is more of an IPL-2 spoof, and that’s what makes it so much more fun.
M.A. Madhusudan, CEO, Virgin Mobile India says:
“The Indian Hatke League is all about interacting with the Indian youth and giving them a taste of some stimulating entertainment and sense of being part of a cricketing phenomenon in a HATKE way. For the Hatke champions, Virgin Mobile has some exciting prizes such as a Hyundai i20, Sony PSP and Virgin Mobile phones.”
The Matches
There will be over 20 day and night matches in this tournament.
The user will have the option to play for any of the eight teams participating in IPL-2.
Each team will have 11 players.
The Hatke Teams
Kakke’s XI Punjab
Delhi Dhinchaks
Rajasthan Muchhads
Mumbai Manoos
Royal ChillMaadis Bangalore
Deccan ChilliEaters
Kolkata Tram Riders
Chennai Super Muthus
Some Hatke team players
Characters are modeled and named after famous cricket personalities and icons, like:
Register online for an account under the team of your choice
Play the tournament for FREE!
Play as many times as you want
Submit your best score for each match individually
Practice matches?
The player has an option to practice anytime by choosing the team they want to practice against and improve chances of winning during the tournament.
Win Awesome Prizes!
Hyundai’s recently launched hatchback i20
Sony’s video game console Play Station
Virgin Mobile handsets
Prizes worth Rs 10 Lakh for Match Titles
Man of the Series
Most obsessed User
Top 10 fastest Sixes
Sixer of the Series
Other Prizes
Earn points for recommending a friend to the website that can be redeemed against Virgin Mobile connections for exciting merchandise
Play and get special online retail offers on products purchased from Virgin Mobile India website.
Download Indian Hatke League wallpapers, and interactive screen savers for free.
It also has come up with community and fan pages, for the teams, promoters and profiles of 50 key players, on social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc., for the Indian Hatke League. So don’t just keep sitting there. Register on the website to be a part of the tournament and win exciting prizes.
No wonder, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team has the highest brand value. They might not be a successful team at IPL this season, but they are definitely the best when it comes to marketing and creating brand awareness.
IPL is turning out to be a pure business. Big reputation does not get you bread and butter… if you do not fit into the business, you better be at home! Catch this – Jayasuriya was asked to sit out of the Mumbai Indian’s playing eleven, the other night by Sachin Tendulkar.
So, said that, it does not really matter if KKR are playing well or not, they have done there homework well. The rule is simple – if you are doing a business you need to have your budgets right.
KKR has set aside a good amount of money for their branding and marketing activities and even when they are not playing well, the strategy has been paying them well. Interesting would be to see, if KKR have been able to get back their costs, after the IPL gets over. Last season, they were truly ahead of all other IPL teams!!
Check out their official website and more importantly check out the download section in it. It is full of online marketing freebies… I guess good enough to keep the fans engaged and keep the buzz alive. 🙂
The download section features:
Web badges including the code that you may use to put on your web pages
Desktop alerts for KKR matches (can the alerts show KKR winning some matches?) 😛
Screensavers
Not sure how much all these online marketing strategies help play better cricket but it definitely helps in keeping the fans engaged.
I have not downloaded any of the freebies yet, so I am not sure how well they are designed. But, I am sure many of you would like to try out a few. If you do… then let us know. Also, interesting to know would be if there is any live blog using KKR’s WordPress theme or not.
Till then, let’s keep praying that KKR manages to break their losing streak. (7th consecutive loss today!)
This is one player, the KKR owners did not bargain for… with an alias as ‘Fake IPL Player’, this guy claims to be on the KKR team and is all set to wash the dirty linen for all to see and smell…
Interestingly, he has nicknames for all the players on the team (SRK-Winnie Dildo, Mallya-Mr Batlivala, Dada-Lord Almighty etc etc)… and leaks all the insider info to the world through his blog… well call it “spy-in-the-ranks” or a brilliant marketing strategy by the owners, they have got eyes glued in onto their team… all the Bollywood Masala finding its way into an equally addictive and insane format of cricket.
If this is the how the things are going to move ahead, what next: link-ups and breakups in the team… did anyone say casting couch during team selections???
