Visakhapatnam, Jaipur emerge likely adopted venues

In a meeting with the representatives of both the affected franchises in New Delhi on Friday, IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla gave four options to both the teams to choose their adopted home from.

Rising Pune Supergiants has given preference to Visakhapatnam.

Visakhapatnam and Jaipur are likely to emerge as the adopted venues for Rising Pune Supergiants and defending champions Mumbai Indians, following the Bombay High Court directive to move all the Indian Premier League games scheduled in Maharashtra in May in the wake of drought in the state.

In a meeting with the representatives of both the affected franchises in New Delhi on Friday, IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla gave four options to both the teams to choose their adopted home from.

“We gave four options to both the affected franchises – Raipur, Visakhapatnam, Kanpur and Jaipur,” Shukla said. “Mumbai Indians will reply by April 17 while Pune has given Visakhapatnam preference. We'll put the proposal of Pune team before Governing Council.”

Despite Mumbai Indians having sought two days to revert, Sportstar understands that the champion outfit may prefer Jaipur’s Sawai Mansingh Stadium over the other two cities. While Raipur is supposed to host two of Delhi Daredevils’ home games, Kanpur has been provisionally allotted two of Gujarat Lions’ home games. If Mumbai Indians choose any of these two destinations, then the IPL schedule will have to be further tweaked since one stadium cannot host two teams’ home games.

The only factor to be considered before finalising Jaipur would be the fact that Rajasthan Cricket Association remains suspended from the BCCI. However, the Rajasthan state sports council, which owns and governs the SMS stadium, has assured full support for staging IPL games.

Besides hosting seven league matches, the Pune and Mumbai stadia were also scheduled to host three of the four Playoffs. Shukla said those games are likely to be split between Bengaluru and Kolkata.

“We’ll propose before Governing Council that the final and Qualifier 1 be shifted to Bengaluru; Qualifier 2 and eliminator to Kolkata,” said Shukla.

Court application delayed

Shukla had announced in Rajkot on Thursday that the BCCI will request the Bombay High Court on Friday to allow the match between Rising Pune Supergiants and Mumbai Indians to be played in Pune on May 1 for logistical reasons. However, since the copy of the court order wasn’t made available to it till Friday evening, the application could not be filed. The application will now be filed either on Saturday or early next week.