India is not the only country where the IPL’s recently concluded auction is causing the media to go crazy. The Australian Media has covered the IPL thoroughly, with lots of speculation and “analysis” about what the future holds for IPL. A part of the reason maybe the recent “Monkey” controversy with the Indian team, but I’ll bet it’s also because of the astronomical pay packets that some of the starts are getting.

But the dreams of big money have started to expand, with Australian businessman Lachlan Murdoch, son of the famous media baron Rupert Murdoch starting to speculate that the IPL has to inevitable expand it’s franchise format overseas. It’s interesting to note that Lachlan Murdoch already owns a piece of the Jaipur team.

Is he trying to say that apart from the Indian cities, we’ll soon have a “Sydney” team? Seems far-fetched to me. For starters, the IPL is run by the BCCI not the ICC, and the BCCI has no real interest in an Australian team. The Australian market is rather small compared to the Indian market (I think all of Australia’s population is 20 million. Bangalore has more people than that). If the BCCI is going to add a new team, it makes sense to add another Indian city - Maybe Ahmedabad or even Pune.

Taking about new teams, have you folks noticed who did NOT win any franchise? Anil Ambani. That’s right. Mukesh Ambani, his elder brother, owns the Mumbai franchise. I believe that Anil did make a large bid for the Mumbai team, but his elder brother eventually won out. There were also rumours floating a while ago that Anil was trying to pressure the BCCI to add a 9th team, Ahmedabad.

Given that there is so much demand for new teams already within India, it is unlikely to move outside the country.

And the tournament has not even begun yet!