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IPL Exhibition Matches Likely To Be Played Outside India, Reveals Chairman Arun Dhumal

Aashay Chopade

Arun Dhumal is the chairman of IPL (Source: @chasingtarget/X.com)Arun Dhumal is the chairman of IPL (Source: @chasingtarget/X.com)

The IPL is the biggest franchise T20 league in the world, and India is the biggest cricket market. Many big countries and companies are eager to tap into the cricket market in India, and one of them is Saudi Arabia. Recently, the IPL mega auction was held in the Saudi Arabian city, Jeddah, and there have been sponsorship deals between state-owned companies and franchises as well.

IPL To Unlock New Frontiers

Now, in a conversation with EspnCricinfo, Arun Dhumal, the IPL chairman has opened up on IPL's connection with Saudi Arabia. There have been reports that Saudi Arabia is keen to directly invest in IPL. Arun Dhumal on his part stated that these are all speculations, and as a part of ICC, Saudi Arabia is looking to grow cricket in their country with the diaspora from cricket playing nations of South Asia.

"It can't be 'yes' or 'no' because there is no proposal to be discussed; it is just media speculation "There's nothing that we can do about media speculating. "Saudi Cricket as such is part of ICC. "They're wanting to make some investments in cricket so that cricket becomes more relevant in that part of the world, given the diaspora from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh… There's a lot of aspirations and demands from those guys that more cricketing activity should happen there."

Dhumal also denied any direct investment by Saudi Arabia in IPL and added that the idea behind having a mega auction in their country was to give them a taste of the popularity of IPL.

"There has been a lot of speculation as to any talk between IPL and BCCI and Saudi Cricket with regard to their interest in IPL. I would want to categorically deny any of that. The idea was to give them a flavour of what IPL is all about. When you see the kind of numbers that happened there with regard to this mega-auction, everybody was startled as to how big this game is."

However, the IPL chairman shared an interesting aspiration where he mentioned that they might host exhibition matches overseas that can help the league and the game to grow further.

 "If that makes sense, for the purpose of growing cricket and giving them the flavour of the IPL, it can be thought of," he said. "But [there is] no discussion as of now."

Dhumal suggested that the idea of the Champions League is not out of the question, and if the time allows, they might bring back the tournament.

 "It was done before the opportune time for that kind of event," Dhumal said. "I would not say no to anything but everything depends on whether we have an availability of time… If it creates value for cricket at a global stage, definitely we can look at that."

The Indian Premier League is currently in its 18th edition, and with plans of increasing the number of matches in the league, franchise cricket is likely to dominate the cricket calendar in the future.