The Indian Premier League has plans to bring in two more cities to the Twenty20 cricket by the year 2010. The higher officials of BCCI are in discussions to increase the franchisee to 10, from the present 8. In all likelihood, the two cities which would be brought in are going to be Ahmedabad and Kanpur. Additionally, Mr.Anil Ambani is already in talks with the IPL to buy the Ahmedabad franchise. He had earlier, lost the bid to own a franchise.

On the other hand the Sahara Group is in talks with BCCI to own the Kanpur franchise. It seems interested because it has a large presence in the city of Kanpur. According to a spokesperson of Sahara, they could not own a franchise earlier but whenever these new cities will be introduced, they sure would like to own a franchise.

There is a small glitch in this though. According to the contract, there cannot be any changes in the format of the IPL in the first couple of years. So, essentially increasing the number of cities to 10 is going to be a problem. However, if this step is taken, then the revenues will also get affected. It will have to be split accordingly, which inturn would mean that lesser money will be available for the existing teams. Hence, it might not be acceptable for the teams; hence this plan has been postponed till the third season of the Twenty20 format of cricket.

When asked, however, a Reliance spokesperson declined to comment on the whole issue. According to reports however, younger Ambani is actually ready to buy any franchise that is willing to sell, because he wants to enter Indian Premier League in Season Two itself. Earlier, in the month of January when the bids were going on for the teams, the debut bids were won by Vijay Mallaya for Bangalore at $111.6million. This was followed by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries who bought Mumbai for $111.9million and Deccan Chronicles for Hyderabad at $107million.

The other franchisees were won by different groups. The India Cements group won Chennai for $91million while Delhi was bought by the GMR Group for $84million. Emerging media became the owner of the Jaipur Group, who bought it for $67million. Kolkata was brought by Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment for $75.09million, while Ness Wadia and Preity Zinta won the bid for Mohali at $76million.