Stars can also play T20 in Celebrity Cricket League

Move aside IPL… Here comes CCL (Celebrity Cricket League), a tournament featuring teams from Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam film industries. The CCL is modeled on the IPL with each film industry having its own team of star players. The Kannada film team will have top film actors Puneet Rajkumar, Sudeep and Shivarajkumar. Similarly, Tamil film team will have superstars Vijay and Surya.

The franchises will be selected through competitive bidding. As many as 10 league matches will be played in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai in January. Recently, the CCL organisers held a meeting with the Kannada Film Artistes’ Association, which agreed to send a full- fledged team comprising top actors for the tournament.

This is for the first time that a cricket league is being organised among the South Indian film industries. A Hyderabad- based event management firm is behind CCL, which will be an annual affair for 10 years. According to the organisers, top corporate houses have already enquired about the franchise model. “ But we expect somebody connected to showbiz to hold the franchise,” the organisers said.

If the organisers are to be believed, Salman Khan is keen on buying the Bollywood cricket team while Surya wants to be a partner in the Kollywood Team.