Gilchrist is vice-captain of Deccan Chargers in IPL

It's official now. Indian Premier League (IPL) Team Hyderabad were the first to list their team after the auction, during which they had played it smart with skipper VVS Laxman sacrificing his icon status in order to bag marquee names like Adam Gilchrist and Andrew Symonds. Not to mention Scott Styris, Shahid Afridi and Chaminda Vaas.

The team was officially unveiled as the Deccan Chargers. They will sport a tagline too: the Unstoppables. A charging bull - signifying strength, power and aggression - will adorn the logo while red and gold will be the team colours.

"We've chosen red and gold because the former signifies boldness and aggression, while the latter is a symbol of divinity and fortune," said J Krishnan, CEO, Team Hyderabad.

None of the overseas players made it to the official launch but there was a video post of the Chargers' vice-captain Gilchrist. "I've got to know that I'm the vice-captain of the team very recently, but trust me when I say there will be no boundaries between the players," said the recently-retired Aussie swashbuckler.

Deccan Chargers: VVS Laxman (capt), Adam Gilchrist (VC), Andrew Symonds, Herschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi, Chamara Silva, Chaminda Vaas, Scott Styris, Nuwan Zoysa, Rohit Sharma, RP Singh, Arjun Yadav, Pragyan Ojha, DB Ravi Teja, D Kalyankrishna, P Vijay Kumar, Venugopala Rao, N Sarvesh Kumar, Sanjay Bangar and Haladhar Das.

Head coach: Robin Singh. Asst coach: Kanwaljit Singh. Cricket managers: Shishir Hattangadi and Vijay Mohan Raj.

Countries given IPL player veto

Dubai: An agreement for countries to be given a right of veto over their players appearing in IPL has been concluded between the ICC and Indian cricket chiefs.

The ICC, in a statement issued after a two-day board meeting at its Dubai headquarters said nation-versus-nation contests "must always be given the highest possible priority".

To that end, it had agreed a standard-form contract with the BCCI, the owner of the IPL, which would give countries absolute discretion to lodge an objection to a player from its country playing in the IPL.

This would be respected by the IPL, with the player in question not selected by his franchise. It added that this objection could be lodged up to two years after that player's retirement and that members' "bilateral commitments" (e.g. Tests and limited overs internationals) would take precedence over IPL fixtures.

Seven IPL matches at Kotla

New Delhi: DDCA will stage seven IPL matches from April 19. DDCA has decided to invite all former Test cricketers and current Test and first class cricketers to watch all the IPL matches at Delhi, an official release said.

Itinerary: April 19: Delhi vs Jaipur; April 30: Delhi vs Bangalore; May 8: Delhi vs Chennai; May 15: Delhi vs Hyderabad; May 17: Delhi vs Mohali; May 22: Delhi vs Kolkata; May 24: Delhi vs Mumbai.

Royal Challengers: Dravid To Shake a Leg

Rahul Dravid will exhibit his hitherto unknown dancing skills. Rahul, Zaheer Khan and Virat Kohli the captain of the under-19 world cup winning team will all be featured in the music video to be directed by Sanjay Gupta - producer/director of hindi movies.

Allan Amin will be the action director for the shoot. Allan shot to fame with his stunts sequences in Dhoom.

DLF-IPL: Pepsi to be the Official Drink

Pepsi Cola has signed up an deal with the IPL to be the official and only drink of the IPL tournament. Pepsi paid $12.5 million dollars to become the exclusive drink of the 8 teams in the fray.

The sponsor money will be divided among the 8 teams

IPL Delhi: Delhi Daredevils Is A Well Balanced Team

Virendra Sehwag was disappointed when they could not bag star bowler Ishant Sharma. Ishant the bean pole fast bowler from Delhi was bought by Karnataka for a whopping $950,000 dollars. The Delhi Daredevils did not have that kind of money to buy Ishant but are very happy with the team they have got.

Sehwag said that the team is well balanced with the right mix of good batsman, bowlers. They also have the right mix of youth and experience. He said of the all the IPL team Delhi had the best fielding side.

The Delhi Daredevils boasts of the New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori and Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik.

Indian players in the team include Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik, Manoj Tiwary, Shikhar Dhawan, Mithun Manhas, Rajat Bhatia, Pradeep Sangwan, Mayank Tehlan, Yo Mahesh and Amit Mishra.

The IPL has to be globally governed'

"The IPL should fit in with the rest of the cricket and not disrupt it. The governing body has to be seen as governing and you can't have one member state just going off at a complete tangent, because it disrupts everything else. It may be early days and we may find out where the IPL fits into the global scheme of things. But the IPL will isolate the vulnerable countries." Sanjay Manjrekar, Ian Chappell and David Lloyd analyse the impact of the IPL on world cricket

Tickets for IPL matches

It seems Ticketpro will be handling all the ticketing for the IPL. Not only there will be online booking of tickets, but there will be booking through mobile phones as well.

Let’s see how much this system will be transparent. With the amount of money involved in the league one can expect a lot nexus between franchise, sponsors, cricket association etc. Already there was a conflict between Kolkata franchise and Cricket Association of Bengal(CAB) regarding percentage of sharing of tickets for IPL matches at Eden Gardens. Similar conflicts can be expected at other venues also.

One more issue, how much the tickets will be priced. Will there be pricing based on demand and supply model similar airline ticketing system ? Let’s wait and watch. I have already heard many rumours that the minimum price of the ticket will be around 5000 INR ! Will tickets at all the venues be priced the same? Or will it be that tickets in Bangalore will be more expensive than in Jaipur (Since bored software engineers are more likely to pay higher prices to watch the matches).

The pricing of the tickets is very important, as the organizers have to make sure that the tickets are cheap enough for stadiums to be full to make the matches exciting, but expensive enough to make some profits. There are going to be 8 matches in a short amount of time, and this is very different from the usual routine of 1-2 ODI matches every 2 years. Lets see what the BCCI and it’s associates make of this opportunity.