Indian premier league - the story

marquais_v

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
The leafy suburb of Wimbledon in South West London is synonymous the world over with the game of tennis, but it was here that a massive new idea for the sport of cricket was conceived.

In late June last year, while the rain that marked the 2007 English summer was disrupting the famous Championships, two men met in a nearby house to discuss a very different event.

Lalit Modi, Vice-President of the Board of Cricket Control for India, spoke to Andrew Wildblood of the International Management Group (IMG), a company with a vast experience in the whole area of sports management.

Modi, who studied in America and had long since wanted to re-energise the Indian domestic game, was seeking a view on whether it would be possible to put together a Twenty20 cricket league based on the model of the franchise system commonplace in the United States.

“Funnily enough, it was similar to an idea we had already kicked around informally within our office,” recalls Wildblood, Senior Corporate Director of IMG India. “I thought that with a combination of BCCI resolve and IMG’s expertise we could find a way.”

A second meeting took place in a London hotel before Modi moved on and it was decided there and then that the vision could become a reality in 2008.

Wildblood smiles at the memory: “I remember going home that night and telling my wife and her saying to me ‘How on earth are you going to do that?’ “
 
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