Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Salman Khan to buy an IPL team


Bollywood action hero Salman Khan is the latest cine star to join the Indian Premier League (IPL) and has expressed interest in buying a team. The bollywood star met Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi and expressed his desire to be the owner of an IPL team.Salman is eyeing an IPL team in the 2010 season. Modi said that Salman had approached to discuss all the pros and cons of buying an IPL team. Modi also confirmed that the actor would be buying one of the new teams and was not interested in any of the existing ones.

A lot of Bollywood actors are a part of the cash-rich T20 League with Shah Rukh Khan owning the Kolkata Knight Riders, Preity Zinta with partner Ness Wadia owning the Kings XI Punjab, and Shilpa Shetty, with Raj Kundra, owning the Rajasthan Royals.

The fourth season of the IPL in 2011 will see two new teams and they would be up for grabs through a bidding process later this year. This takes the total number of teams in 2011 season to ten teams. Auctions for two teams will take place in January 2010. The cities that would go under the hammer would be decided by December this year at the latest. Each team could fetch the BCCI anywhere between $200-300 million. Likely cities that could be auctioned are Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Vishakhaptanam and be the hometown for new teams.