The 2018 Indian Premier League

Twenty20 Cricket is widely considered to be the most exciting format of the traditional game. While there are plenty of T20 tournaments throughout the year, the Indian Premier League or IPL, is the largest and most prestigious of them all. Founded in 2007, the IPL is the most attended league in the world and is growing each year. To date it is the sixth most attended sports league worldwide and has a brand value of US$5.3 billion.

The IPL is held each year in April/May. The 2018 tournament will be the 11^th running of the event and will take place from the 7^th of April and run to the 27^th of May.

The Teams for IPL 11

This year, 8 Teams are scheduled to play, including the Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals who were suspended for two years following their owner’s involvement in the 2013 IPL betting case.

The rest of the 6 competing teams include the Delhi Daredevils, the Kings XI Punjab, the Kolkata Knight Riders, the Mumbai Indians, the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Sunrisers Hyderabad. The teams can acquire players by trading players, signing in replacements or as is most common, by bidding on players at the annual IPL auction. The best players in the world sign up for the IPL auction where they set their base price.

The team that bids the highest, get the best players. For those players that are unsold, there is a chance that they can be signed in as replacements. The rules state that each squad must have between 18 and 25 players with a maximum of 8 overseas players. A team can only play 4 of their 8 overseas players in a game.

The Tournament Setup

The Indian Premier League tournament involves each of the 8 teams playing each other, once at home and once away in a double round-robin T20 format. Once the round-robin has been completed, the top 4 teams based on aggregate, proceed to the playoffs. The top 2 teams then play the first qualifier and the winner moves into the final. The losing team then plays the winner of the second qualifier which is played between the third and fourth ranked team. The winner of the third qualifier then joins the first team in the final.

IPL Betting

In 2017, the Mumbai Indians beat the Rising Pune Supergiant by 1 run to be crowned IPL Champions for the third time. This year promises to be a top-class affair with plenty of betting opportunities for punters and sports enthusiasts. With IPL betting, punters can place match bets, round bets, prop bets as well as outright bets. If you want to check out the latest odds, you can find everything you need at William Hill, Paddy Power, 888 Sport, Winner Sports, Betway Sports and Titan Bet.