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Mumbai: After all the hungama and action at the player auction in January, the bidding for the two new teams for the 2011 season of the Indian Premier League turned out to be a damp squib.
On Sunday, after deliberating for close to two hours here, the IPL's governing council decided to scrap the bids and invite fresh ones.
A new tender will be put out on Tuesday, March 9 and the submission deadline for the tender is 10 am on March 21. The bids will be opened on that day in Chennai.
While the base price of the teams remain USD 225 million, the IPL has removed a few clauses that inlcude the net worth clause of USD 1 billion and an advance guarantee of USD 100 million clause.
All the existing tenders were not opened and returned to the bidders.
Murmurs had been on ever since the tenders were floated on February 21 whereby the base price of the two teams were pegged at USD 225 million dollars, almost double of what was paid by Mukesh Ambani for Mumbai Indians that at USD 111.9 million was the most expensive buy at the first team's auction.
However, prior to the start of the meeting, the price had not seemed like a detterent with many top corporates entering the fray.
Ahmedabad, Pune and Nagpur were tipped as the frontrunners in a group that also included Kanpur, Dharamsala, Indore, Cuttack, Gwalior, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Vadodara and Kochi.
Adani Enterprises, Sahara Group and ICICI were in the fray for the Ahmedabad team, while Videocon Enterprises was tipped to be the favourite for the Pune franchise.
Also, in a reflection of the Indian Premier League becoming the Indian Bollywood League as the league is referred to by 'fake IPL blogger' in his book, Bollywood stars were associated with this bidding as well.
There were reports of Abhishek Bachchan partnering Videocon for the Pune team, while Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor were present at the bidding in Mumbai on Sunday.
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