User:Sidharth Saiju

Kochi Tuskers Kerala (Template:Lang-ml) is a franchise cricket team that plays the Indian Premier League representing the city of Kochi, Kerala. The team was one of two new franchisees added to the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the 2011 season, alongside the Pune Warriors India. The team franchise is owned by Kochi Cricket Pvt Ltd., which is a consortium of multiple companies.

Winning the auction

The auction for expanding the initial eight franchises for the IPL was held on March 22, 2010. The cities involved in the auction were Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Cuttack, Vadodara, Kochi, Indore and Gwalior. Two new teams were selected out of 12 teams, which bid for 2011 IPL matches. Sahara Group made the highest bid in the auction and chose to base its team in Pune, at the cost of ₹1,702 crore. Rendezvous Sports World made the second highest bid of ₹1533.32 crores, and elected to base its team in Kochi. The two new franchises were sold for a combined sum of money, which was greater than the combined purchase price of all the original eight IPL franchises.

With the Kochi team and Pune team joining the list of IPL franchises, all four southern states in India have an IPL franchise, while Maharashtra has two IPL franchises.

Initial franchise issues (2010)

The franchise has been at the centre of many controversies since its inception. BCCI had given the franchise ultimatum to dissolve factionalism and infighting or face scrapping. After a series of lengthy meetings the company sent a letter to the BCCI requesting more time stating that the negotiations were in an advanced stage and they needed some more time to be sorted.

The BCCI announced that on 27 October it would decide the fate of the Kochi team and the BCCI insisted that the two cases of the Kochi Tuskers Kerala and Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals which were expelled are different. The IPL Governing council decided to give them a 30-day termination notice which meant that the franchise would have to reply to the notice within 30 days and if the IPL accepted their agreement then the franchise would no longer face the prospect of being terminated The Kochi promoters submitted a letter to the BCCI officials with regard to the revised structure of agreement hammered out between them. The BCCI governing council meeting was held on 28 Nov 2010 at Nagpur to decide the fate of Kochi franchisee. BCCI president Shashank Manohar said the board needed more time to discuss the issue and to take legal opinion and that the final decision on Kochi Tuskers Kerala will be taken on the BCCI governing council meeting at Mumbai on 5 December 2010. After much speculation it was finally announced by the BCCI that it was satisfied with the agreements signed by the franchise owners and the team would participate in the 2011 IPL Season.

Team name and Home ground issues (2011)

Kochi team management had announced "Indi Commandos Kerala" as the original team name in February 2011. The name and logo received much negative response from the fans worldwide. Things got worse by team management's further decision to drop "Kerala" from the team name and the reported move to Ahmedabad as the home ground; comparatively high entertainment tax in Kerala (36%) was cited as the reason for the latter. This invoked a mass response in the social networking sites, particularly in Facebook, forcing the management to ultimately change the team name and logo. As a result, a voting poll was setup in the official site and the fans were provided the option the vote between either Kochi or Kerala as the first part of the name and the second part of the name from any of Titans, Tuskers, Tigers, Commandos and United. Tuskers which won this polling was selected as the team name and the full name was released as Kochi Tuskers Kerala. The decision to change the home ground also was dropped by the team management when Corporation of Cochin decided to waive off a 50% in the entertainment tax which now is 18% per game.

Ownership

The old shareholding pattern of KTK was:

• Rendezvous Sports World (26%)
• Parinee Developers (26%)
• Anchor Earth (27%)
• Film Waves (12%)
• Anand Shyam (8%)
• Vivek Venugopal (1%)

Of the 26% held by Rendezvous Sports World in whose name the title rights were vested, the Gaekwads would only get (10%) free plus (1%) paid, Sunanda Pushkar (5%) and another (10%) was reserved for the brand ambassador for the team.

The new shareholding pattern is:

• Anchor Earth (31.4%)
• Parinee Developers (30.6%)
• Film Waves Combine (13.5%)
• Anand Shyam (9.5%)
• Vivek Venugopal (5%)
• Rendezvous Sports World (10%)

Sponsorships

Federal Bank, a major Indian commercial bank in the private sector, with headquarters in Aluva, Kochi, Kerala, will be the principal sponsor of Kochi Tuskers Kerala. The tickets for KTK's home matches will be sold through Federal bank branches and their website.The Ticket sales of Kochi Tuskers Kerala was officially started in a ceremony hosted at the Le meridian Hotel on March 28. Soon after, the tickets become available at the teams official ticketing partner website kyazoonga.com.

Lotto, an Italian sports goods manufacturer is the apparel sponsor for the team.

V-Guard, an electronics company and AVT, a tea brand are associate sponsors.

Venues

File:Kochi Stadium.jpg

Inside view of the stadium

Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi, which will host 5 home matches of Kochi Tuskers Kerala

File:KCA-Intl-Stadium-Edakochi.jpg

The new stadium at Edakochi (under construction ) will hold home matches from 2012

The Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) have started planning a new world class international stadium at Edakochi, an area which lies in west Kochi. The capacity of stadium is said to be 50,000. Kochi currently has Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium which has hosted several ODIs. The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at Kochi is a multi-use stadium owned by GCDA. Hence KCA has entered into an agreement to take the stadium on long term lease and has completely over-hauled the ground for hosting IPL matches. Kochi Tuskers will host 5 home matches at Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, until the new KCA owned stadium is ready by 2012. The rest 2 home matches will be played at the Holkar Cricket Stadium, Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Player Auction and Squad (2011)

Main article: 2011 IPL Players Auction

KTK bought 17 players from the IPL 2011 Auction by signing five specialist batsman those being Mahela Jayawardene VVS Laxman Brad Hodge Owais Shah Michael Klinger. The team signed six bowlers, the most notable being Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan others included Sreesanth, RP Singh, Ramesh Powar, Vinay Kumar and Steve O'Keefe. Four all-rounders were signed those being Ravindra Jadeja, Steven Smith, Thisara Perera and John Hastings. Two renowned Wicket-Keeper batsmen were signed up with Brendon McCullum who is the leading run scorer in Twenty20 Internationals and Parthiv Patel.

Team color

The jersey of KTK is purple hazes in orange T-shirt and orange trousers.

Fixtures

2011 Season

No.	Date	Opponent	Venue	Result
1	9 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Kochi
2	13 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Mumbai
3	15 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Mumbai
4	18 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Kochi
5	20 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Kolkata
6	24 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Jaipur
7	27 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Kochi
8	30 April	Template:Cr-IPL	Kochi
9	2 May	Template:Cr-IPL	Delhi
10	5 May	Template:Cr-IPL	Kochi
11	8 May	Template:Cr-IPL	Bangalore
12	13 May	Template:Cr-IPL	Indore
13	15 May	Template:Cr-IPL	Indore
14	18 May	Template:Cr-IPL	Chennai

Kochi Tuskers Kerala Roster
Batsmen 03 Owais Shah 05 VVS Laxman 17 Brad Hodge 18 Michael Klinger 19 Tanmay Srivastava 22 Deepak Chougule 25 Kedar Jadhav 69 Mahela Jayawardene (Captain) -- Y Gnaneswara Rao Wicket Keepers 20 Parthiv Patel 21 Sushant Marathe 42 Brendon McCullum -- Chandan Madan		All Rounders 11 John Hastings 49 Steven Smith 72 Stephen O'Keefe 01 Thissara Perera 26 Ravindra Jadeja 74 Raiphi Vincent Gomez 28 Balachandra Akhil -- Yashpal Singh -- P.Prasanth Bowlers 08 Muttiah Muralitharan 09 RP Singh 23 Vinay Kumar 36 Sreesanth 55 Ramesh Powar		Support Staff Coach: Geoff Lawson Assistant Coach: Hrishikesh Kanitkar Assistant Coach: Sanjay Bangar Batting Coach: VVS Laxman Physical Trainer: Craig Ranson Conditioning and Strength Trainer : Mario Villavarayan Sports Mechanics Consultant : Gurumoorthy Venkatesh