IPL 5 to have 76 matches; players' auction in Jan or Feb

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The players' auction for the fifth edition of the Indian Premier League will be held in late January or early February and the teams will play their games on a home-and-away basis with each of the nine franchises playing 16 games.

The change means that the cash-rich Twenty20 tournament reverts back to its original format, where all the teams played each other twice. In the upcoming season, each team is now going to play eight home games.

The nine franchises will go into the auction having an additional salary cap of USD two million to spend on players.

The players from the Kochi Tuskers Kerala franchise, which was terminated by the BCCI in September this year, will be part of the auction, the IPL Governing Council chairman Rajeev Shukla said in a statement.

The decisions were taken at the IPL Governing council's meet that took place here on Saturday. The IPL GC has also increased the number of players in each team from 30 to 33.

The number of foreign players in each team will be 11 instead of 10 while two more Indian players can be added to each team's roster.

However, the number of foreign players that can be part of the final XI will remain at four. There will also be an additional four play-off matches, to be held in Bangalore and Chennai, that will take the total tally of matches in the tournament to 76.

The IPL-5 season will commence in Chennai on April 4 and the final will be played at the same venue on May 27, 2012.

The trading window will open on December 15, 2011 and run through to January 20, 2012. There will be a short second trading window after the players' auction, informed Shukla.

The trading regulations will be as per previous seasons. There will be no financial cap on trading and franchises can only add to their squad, by way of trading, a maximum of 4 players who were bought in the 2011 auction, and they must stay within the squad composition regulations at all times.