After much speculation over the last few days, it has now been confirmed that the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be staged in South Africa this year.

The Twenty20 competition was moved out of India due to security reasons, and a revised fixture list for the 59 match tournament will be announced shortly.

“We are very happy to confirm that South Africa will host the 2009 DLF Indian Premier League tournament,” IPL chairman Lalit Modi said in a statement following a meeting of the event’s organisers and Cricket South Africa (CSA).

“The South African public loves T2O cricket and CSA successfully hosted the inaugural ICC World T20.

“Both these factors weighed heavily in South Africa’s favour, and we look forward to a successful and exciting tournament being held at venues throughout South Africa,” Modi said in the news release.

We suspect that the affordability of South Africa as a destination along with good weather, excellent facilities and a large population of Indian and South Asian descent also helped swing the decision in South Africa’s favour. 

Either way, this is a huge vote of confidence in South Africa and we are sure that the tournament will be a great success.

Tags: cricket, ipl, South Africa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm and is filed under South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.