Since its inception in 2008, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has grown from a domestic tournament into a global phenomenon, reshaping the landscape of T20 cricket. It has set the blueprint for other T20 leagues across the world, introduced innovative cricketing rules, and catalysed the growth of the sport in non-traditional regions.

When the IPL launched, skeptics doubted whether a franchise-based T20 league could thrive in a place where cricket is a matter of national pride uniting the whole country. But the IPL’s fusion of cricket, entertainment, and glamour struck a chord with the masses. The league’s success was fueled by India’s rising middle class, increased disposable income, and the boom of satellite TV and internet connectivity. Within a few years, the IPL not only silenced critics but set a new global benchmark, inspiring most of the cricket leagues worldwide in some way or the other.

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Take England’s The Hundred, for example. Launched in 2021, this 100-ball tournament represents a radical shift from traditional formats. While not an exact replica of the IPL, it borrows key elements such as shorter matches, franchise branding, and fan-centric engagement. The league has also attracted significant Indian investment, with four IPL franchises—Mumbai Indians, Lucknow Super Giants, SunRisers Hyderabad, and Delhi Capitals—owning stakes in Oval Invincibles, Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, and Southern Brave. Notably, two of the remaining four teams are backed by Indian-American tech entrepreneurs, further underscoring India’s expanding influence in global cricket.

Similarly, South Africa’s SA20, launched in 2023, is a direct testament to the IPL’s dominance. All six teams—Joburg Super Kings, MI Cape Town, Pretoria Capitals, Paarl Royals, Sunrisers Eastern Cape, and Durban’s Super Giants——are owned by IPL franchises, highlighting the league’s financial muscle. This surge of investment has not only revitalized South African cricket but has also provided a crucial platform for local talent to shine on the global stage.

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The Caribbean Premier League (CPL), launched in 2013, has also felt the IPL’s ripple effect. While not as financially powerful as the IPL or SA20, it has attracted significant investment from Indian franchise owners. The Kolkata Knight Riders led the way by acquiring Trinbago Knight Riders, bringing their brand appeal and expertise to the Caribbean. This was followed by Punjab Kings and Rajasthan Royals owning St. Lucia Kings and Barbados Royals.

Even the USA, a country traditionally indifferent to cricket, has seen the IPL’s influence. Major League Cricket (MLC), launched in 2023, is backed by several IPL owners: Mumbai Indians (MI New York), Kolkata Knight Riders (Los Angeles Knight Riders), Chennai Super Kings (Texas Super Kings), and Delhi Capitals (Seattle Orcas). While still in its early stages, MLC has the potential to establish cricket in a market dominated by baseball and basketball, thanks to the IPL’s proven formula.

The International League T20 (ILT20) in the UAE also follows this trend, with fours of its six teams owned by IPL and WPL (Women’s Premier League) franchise owners.

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The Big Bash League (BBL), launched by Cricket Australia in 2011, was the first major T20 league to follow the IPL’s success. While it remains largely independent, its franchise-based model, entertainment-driven approach, and features like strategic timeouts reflect the IPL’s influence. The BBL has also introduced innovations such as the Power Surge, Bash Boost, and X-Factor rule, mirroring the broader impact of the T20 revolution.

However, unlike other leagues, the BBL has not seen direct IPL franchise investment due to Cricket Australia’s restrictions on foreign ownership. If these barriers were lifted, IPL owners could play a major role in expanding the BBL, just as they have in SA20, MLC, and ILT20.

Several leagues inspired by the IPL's model launched their women’s tournaments early, even before the Women’s Premier League (WPL). Australia’s Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL), England’s The Hundred Women’s Competition, and the Women’s Caribbean Premier League (WCPL) have all thrived, benefiting from the IPL-driven T20 revolution. The involvement of IPL franchises in these leagues has further professionalized women’s cricket.

Despite this, the WPL finally debuted in 2023—15 years after the IPL’s inception. Modeled after the IPL, it has transformed women’s cricket by offering high-profile exposure, lucrative contracts, and a competitive platform, much like its male counterpart. With growing investment and fan engagement, the WPL seems set to redefine the global landscape of women’s cricket.

The IPL’s financial clout is staggering. In 2022, its media rights sold for a record $6.2 billion, making it the second-most valuable sports league per match, behind only the NFL (The National Football League of USA). This extraordinary amount of revenue can be justified by the number of viewers who watch it - the 2023 IPL final attracted 505 million viewers on television alone. This has allowed IPL stakeholders to invest in infrastructure, player development and payments, and global expansion.

The financial resources have also positioned the IPL as a pioneer in sports technology, consistently enhancing the fan experience. It popularized innovations like Spidercam, ultra-motion replays, and augmented reality (AR) integrations in live broadcasts. While the Decision Review System (DRS) debuted in international cricket, the IPL played a key role in refining and normalizing its usage across formats. Additionally, the league has set new benchmarks in sports analytics and talent scouting, with franchises using advanced data models for player acquisitions and match strategies.

The IPL has also been instrumental in transforming Indian and International cricket by attracting top talent from around the world. It has created a melting pot of cultures and playing styles, raising the game’s overall standard. “Test cricket is amazing with the Ashes and other big series. But if you ask me, the IPL is above everyone—it’s the number one tournament in the world” AB de Villiers, one of the IPL’s most beloved overseas players, once said about the IPL tournament.

Despite its success, the IPL's packed schedule creates a conflict with international cricket. Players face difficult choices, and concerns are growing that franchise cricket is taking precedence over national and international fixtures.

Another debated issue is the BCCI’s restriction on active Indian male cricketers playing in overseas leagues. Interestingly, Indian women cricketers face no such restriction. Since 2016, players like Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Shafali Verma have been actively participating in overseas leagues like the WBBL and The Hundred. Looking ahead, the BCCI might also relax its stance for men’s cricketers. This can help them expand their skill sets and enhance their marketability beyond India.

As the IPL continues to expand its global footprint, its influence on cricket is only set to grow. With talks of adding more teams and tapping into new markets, the league is on track to become even more dominant. But with great power comes great responsibility. The challenge now is to strike a balance between commercial success and the long-term health of the sport. Can the IPL sustain its dominance without diluting the essence of cricket? Only time will tell. But one thing is certain—the IPL has already changed the game forever.

This article was originally published on our sister publication Cricketess.Com.

1. Number of Teams

• Indian Premier League (IPL) began with 8 teams in 2008 and expanded to 10 teams in 2022.

• Women’s Premier League (WPL) started with 5 teams and is yet to expand.

2. Squad Size & Composition

• IPL teams can have up to 25 players, with a maximum of 8 overseas players in the squad.

• WPL teams have a smaller squad size, with a maximum of 18 players, including up to 6 overseas players.

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3. Playing XI Rules

• In IPL, a team can field a maximum of 4 overseas players in the playing XI.

• In WPL, a team can field 4 overseas players, with an additional slot available for a player from an Associate Nation (such as UAE, USA, or Scotland).

4. Tournament duration and location

• IPL runs for nearly two months (from March 22 to May 25 in 2025) and follows a home-and-away format across multiple cities. A total of 72 matcheswill be played in the 2025 season, with the number possibly increasing in future editions.

• WPL is a shorter tournament, lasting around a month (from February 14 to March 15 in 2025). It was initially held in a single city (Bengaluru), expanded to two cities (Bengaluru and Delhi) in 2024, and further extended to four cities—Vadodara, Bengaluru, Lucknow, and Mumbai—in 2025. The 2025 WPL season will feature 22 matches.

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5. Tournament Format

• IPL follows a unique format where ten teams are split into two groups of five. Each team plays 14 league matches: twice against its group members, twice against a designated team from the other group, and once against the remaining four from the other group.

• The top four teams advance to the playoffs. The top two teams compete in Qualifier 1, with the winner securing a direct spot in the final. The third and fourth-placed teams play in the Eliminator, and the winner of this match moves on to Qualifier 2, where they face the loser of Qualifier 1 for a place in the final.

  When the IPL had eight teams, each team played every other team twice in a double round-robin format, totaling 14 matches per team. With the addition of two new teams, the BCCI introduced this revised format to balance the schedule and manage player workload.

• In the WPL, each team plays eight matches in a double round-robin format during the league stage, facing every other team twice. The team that finishes first in the league stage directly qualifies for the final, while the second and third-placed teams compete in an Eliminator to determine the second finalist.

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6. Auction Budget & Player Salaries

• IPL franchises have a much larger auction purse (INR 120 crore in 2025). The top players earn Rs. 15-20 crore+ per season. The highest paid cricketer of IPL is Rishabh Pant earning Rs. 27.00 crore during the 2025 auction.

• WPL teams have a smaller budget (INR 15 crore in 2025). The highest-paid WPL player so far is Smriti Mandhana (INR 3.4 crore in 2023)—significantly lower than top IPL salaries.

7. Financial Scale & Revenue

• IPL is one of the wealthiest sports leagues in the world, with television and digital media rights deals worth INR 48,390 crore (2023-27 cycle).

• WPL’s television and digital media rights were sold for INR 951 crore (2023-27 cycle)—a promising start but much smaller than IPL’s valuation.

8. Fan Following & Viewership

• IPL boasts a massive global audience, with millions tuning in every season. The 2023 IPL final alone attracted 505 million television viewers, while in 2024, JioCinema’s IPL coverage reached 620 million viewers.

• WPL, though still in its early stages, has shown impressive growth. In 2024, it recorded a cumulative TV viewership of 149 million and 109 million viewers on digital platforms. The first match of WPL 2025 alone was watched by 30 million viewers on TV.

9. Expansion & Growth Potential

• The IPL has expanded over the years, adding Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans in 2022, bringing the total number of teams to ten.

• The WPL is set to grow, with more teams likely in future seasons, but expansion hinges on a deeper pool of quality Indian women cricketers.

10. Impact and Cultural Significance

• IPL revolutionized cricket, blending sports with entertainment, and significantly influencing global T20 leagues with its franchise owners investing in them all across the cricketing world.

• WPL is slowly transforming women’s cricket by providing a professional platform, inspiring a new generation of female cricketers, and promoting gender equality in sports.

While still in its early stages, the WPL has the potential to revolutionize women’s cricket, much like the IPL did for men’s cricket. With rising investments, sponsorships, and salary caps, it could become the world’s biggest women’s T20 league.

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Age fraud has plagued Indian sports, particularly cricket, for decades. The issue keeps resurfacing, raising serious questions about the integrity of the game and the future of young athletes.

In November 2024, six Hyderabad players, including the designated captain of the Under-19 state team, were banned by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for age falsification. The players had been selected to represent the state in the Vinoo Mankad Trophy, a prestigious national Under-19 tournament. The fraud came to light after complaints from parents.

Women’s cricket has faced similar problems. In December 2022, just weeks before the inaugural Women’s Under-15 One-Day Tournament, 14 of Karnataka’s 25 probable players failed the age-verification test. Such cases, surfacing at regular intervals, show how deeply entrenched the problem is across genders and age groups.

Age fraud usually involves falsifying official documents such as birth certificates, school records or affidavits to make players appear younger than they actually are. The advantages of manipulating age can include extending eligibility for age-restricted competitions, gaining a competitive advantage over younger opponents, securing scholarships, government jobs and reserved seats in educational institutions, and even setting new national records.

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Sports such as football, badminton and athletics have also been significantly affected by age falsification. In many sports, the practice has become so normalised that people engage in it brazenly, with little hesitation.

For instance, in badminton, India’s second-most popular sport, a 2019 petition filed in the Karnataka High Court revealed that several Indian shuttlers, including some top players, had no hospital records to verify their birth certificates. Many claimed to have been born at home, while some offered explanations that were difficult to believe. In one case, a player’s father said that his child had been born in an auto-rickshaw on the way to hospital.

A parent of a junior badminton player highlighted the scale of the problem in an Outlook report, describing age-category tournaments as being “so adulterated by age fraud that they are like milk with 80 percent water.”

A striking example from athletics came at the 2019 National Inter-District Junior Athletics Meet (NIDJAM) in Tirupati, where 51 athletes were found to be overage and another 169 skipped the verification process altogether.

Over the past decade and a half, several initiatives have been introduced to address the problem. The National Code Against Age Fraud in Sports (NCAAFS), introduced in 2010, mandates age verification through various tests. However, its impact has been limited, partly because it does not prescribe penalties for falsifying age documents. Another problem is the lack of proper records maintained by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, making it difficult to identify and track habitual offenders.

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To address this gap, the government introduced the National Sports Ethics Commission Bill, 2016, which proposed criminal penalties for age fraud and related offences. However, the bill remains pending in Parliament, with no clear timeline for discussion.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also established a Sports Integrity Unit in 2014 to address corruption in sports. While the unit can recommend action against offenders, it does not have the authority to impose penalties itself.

The BCCI has also taken steps to tackle age fraud. In 2012, it introduced the Tanner-Whitehouse 3 (TW3) method to determine an athlete’s age. The method is considered more accurate than the previously used Greulich and Pyle (GP) method, with a margin of error of around six months compared with roughly two years for GP.

However, significant challenges remain. The TW3 method cannot be applied reliably to players older than 16, making it ineffective for verifying players who enter the system at the Under-19 or Under-23 levels. The test can also disadvantage athletes whose naturally higher bone density may make them appear older than they actually are.

P.S.M. Chandran, former director of sports sciences at the Sports Authority of India, points to another problem arising from an over-reliance on bone-age tests. In an article published in The Wire, he argues that instead of strictly verifying documents, sports organisations rely on costly yet inconclusive age tests, partly because the entire testing process creates financial opportunities for those involved in it.

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Rahul Dravid, former head coach and captain of the Indian cricket team, has been one of the most vocal critics of age fraud. In one of his lectures, he described the “scourge of overage players in junior cricket” as being no different from “fixing and corruption.” Dravid argues that prioritising short-term results not only undermines fairness but also sets a dangerous precedent by teaching young players that dishonesty is acceptable in the pursuit of success.

As Dravid explained, the consequences of age fraud are both far-reaching and deeply damaging. It undermines the integrity of the game, deprives deserving players of opportunities and creates an unhealthy environment in which winning at any cost becomes acceptable. For those who commit the fraud, being caught can result in bans, public humiliation and career setbacks. Meanwhile, honest players can face marginalisation, disillusionment and, in some cases, an early exit from the sport.

It is also important to recognise that responsibility for age fraud does not necessarily lie with the players themselves. In many cases, the manipulation happens when they are very young, leaving them unaware of what is being done or of its possible consequences. Experts believe that parents, coaches and officials often play a much bigger role in perpetuating the problem. At times, even parents may be unaware of the legal consequences of their actions.

In some cases, age falsification happens for reasons unrelated to gaining an advantage in sport. Particularly in the case of girls, reducing their recorded age by a few years has been a common practice in some small towns. “The intention isn’t to provide a sporting advantage but rather to give parents more time to make suitable marriage arrangements for their daughters,” says Dharmendra Singh, a cricket enthusiast from Agra.

The lack of strict action by authorities is also seen as one of the major reasons age manipulation remains so widespread in sports. Critics point, for instance, to the 2019 relaxation of age-fraud rules by the BCCI, which allowed banned players to participate in inter-club matches during the period of their ban.

Similarly, in 2020, the BCCI introduced a Voluntary Disclosure Scheme, allowing players to avoid suspension if they voluntarily admitted to falsifying their birth records.

This is also a larger question: when there is no criminal liability for a sportsperson found to have deliberately falsified their age, how effectively can age fraud in sports be discouraged?

Aahna Mehrotra, author of Law and Sports in India, advocates criminal punishment for those involved in age fraud. But she also stresses that such laws should take into account factors such as the athlete’s age at the time the fraud was committed — with lighter penalties where the athlete was a minor — as well as the extent of the discrepancy between the real age and the falsified records.

Experts believe that tackling age fraud is not a one-dimensional problem. In cricketing terms, it requires a 360-degree approach, much like the way modern players such as Suryakumar Yadav play the game. It requires a collective effort from all stakeholders, including sports bodies, governments, players, parents and coaches.

It could mean using advanced technologies for tamper-proof record-keeping and document verification, bringing greater transparency to the age-verification process, and ensuring that proven cases of fraud are properly reported and, where appropriate, dealt with under criminal law. Awareness campaigns aimed at players, parents and coaches could also help foster a culture of honesty and fair play.

Rahul Dravid said in his lecture that “the player who has faked his age might make it at the junior level not necessarily because he is better or more talented, but because he is stronger and bigger. We all know how much of a difference a couple of years can make at that age. That incident will have another ripple effect, an honest player deprived of his place by an overage player, is disillusioned. We run the risk of losing him forever.”

But age fraud causes even more damage than simply depriving an honest player of their rightful place.

As renowned cricket coach M.P. Singh explains, “Many individuals who engage in age manipulation may excel at the junior level, but they often struggle to meet the demands of cricket once they transition to the senior level. This practice not only undermines individual potential but also harms the nation and the sport by depriving the sport of the best talent.”

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