The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2016 schedule

The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2016 will be the 9th season of the immensely popular T20 league played in India. This year the IPL will be sponsored by the Chinese mobile giants Vivo and hence is named as Vivo IPL 9. The schedule for the IPL 9 has been released and the tournament will begin on April 9th and end on May 29th, 2016.

This year, the tournament will not feature two of its most popular teams in Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, as both the teams were suspended for two years, up to 2017. In their place, two new franchises, The Rising Pune Supergiants, owned by the Intex group and Gujarat Lions, owned by the a consortium led by Sanjeev Goenka were chosen from cities of Pune and Rajkot respectively. These two teams will be a part of the tournament for the next two years.

The Rising Pune Supergiants will be led by MS Dhoni and features players like Ajinkya Rahane, Kevin Pietersen and R.Ashwin. While the Gujarat Lions will be led by Suresh Raina and has Brendon McCullum, Ravindra Jadeja and Aaron Finch in its ranks.

The IPL governing committee will want to see this season of IPL to begin on a positive and slam-bang mode, as this season has been marred with controversies and the ban on the two most famous and popular teams in the league.

The schedule of the upcoming season of IPL was awaited by all the fans of the T20 league and the IPL will kick off on 9th April with Mumbai Indians taking on Rising Pune Supergiants at the Wankhede Stadium. According to the schedule, the first qualifier will be played at Bengaluru on 24th May, while the eliminator and the second qualifier will be played in Pune on 25th May and 27th May respectively.

The final of the IPL will be played on 29th of May at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

Here is the complete schedule.