No Chennai Super Kings, Tamil Nadu to Have Its Own Premier League

Tamil Nadu's fans have surely missed Chennai Super Kings in the recently-concluded Indian Premier League season, but the state will now have its own T20 league in August-September.

A Superme Court order may have kept former cricket super boss N. Srinivasan away from the Indian cricket Board, but the former BCCI chief is back to the front with the Tamil Nadu Premier League.

The tournament's design is almost a replica of the IPL - eight franchises, a players draft in July, salary caps, anti-corruption unit and of course, live television. As Tamil Nadu Cricket Association president, Srinivasan has got STAR India to become the official broadcast partners.

Eight teams were identified after a bidding process in Chennai on Thursday. It fetched the TNCA a neat Rs 33 crores with Thoothukudi Sports & Entertainments Private Limited making the highest bid of INR 5.21 crore for the ownership rights of the Thoothukudi team.

A players draft will be held in July where the state's cricketers will get an opportunity to make a quick buck. Tamil Nadu's big-ticket international players like Murali Vijay, Dinesh Karthik and Ravichandran Ashwin may play depending on their availability.

"We are not going to have an auction," Srinivasan said. "Whoever has bid the highest will get the first pick of players listed and it will keep repeating from one to eight (players) and again starting from one. We are going to suggest a modest salary cap, around Rs 60 lakh and see how it develops."

TNCA is obviously careful about match-fixing and betting. Chennai Super Kings are serving a two-year ban because their team official Gurunath Meiyappan (Srinivasan's son-in-law) was involved in betting.

Srinivasan is confident CSK will return to IPL in 2018. He said Chennai's image hasn't suffered and "CSK will come in without any external intervention."