Everything to know about Indian Premier League: IPL 2020

The 13th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be commencing from September 19 in UAE. It will be a 53-day long tournament which will include 56 league games and 4 playoff matches.

The league will be played at 3 venues - Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi. Dubai and Abu Dhabi will host 21 matches each while 14 matches will be played at Sharjah. The venue for the playoffs is yet to be decided.

There will be 10 matches to be played in the afternoon. IPL matches are expected to start at 3:30 PM IST for the afternoon games and 7:30 PM IST for the evening matches. Double header matches are expected to be played at the weekend only. The final IPL 2020 schedule is expected to be announced in the upcoming days.

A total of 8 teams will be participating in the league. Rohit Sharma led team, Mumbai Indians will be playing the tournament as defending champions. MS Dhoni, who recently announced his retirement from International Cricket, will be back as captain of Chennai Super Kings, who were the runner ups last time.

Virat Kohli, captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore, will hope his team gives a good fight this season after a poor performance last season; RCB finished 8th in the points table in IPL 2019. Shreyas Iyer will be leading Delhi Capitals for the second time as a full-time captain. DC finished 3rd in the points table last season but lost in the playoffs to CSK.

Kings XI Punjab will be lead by a new captain - KL Rahul, who has been in tremendous form since last year. Dinesh Karthik is once again handed over the duties to lead Kolkata Knight Riders. David Warner will be back as leader of Sunrisers Hyderabad who finished at 4th place in IPL 2019. Australian Batsman Steve Smith will play as captain for Rajasthan Royals.

Here is a full list of team squads that will be participating in IPL 2020.

1. Royal Challengers Bangalore - Virat Kohli (C), AB de Villiers, DevduttPadikkal, Gurkeerat Singh, Aaron Finch, Shahbaz Ahamad, Joshua Philippe, Pathiv Patel, Pawan Negi, Shivam Dube, Moeen Ali, IsuruUdana, Pavan Deshpande, Christopher Morris, Kane Richardson, Dale Steyn, Mohammaed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Umesh Yadav, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal

2. Mumbai Indians - Rohit Sharma (C), Anmolpreet Singh, Ankul Roy, Sherfane Rutherford, Suryakumar Yadav, Chris Lynn, Saurabh Tiwary, Aditya Tare, Ishan Kishan, Quinton de Kock, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Rahul Chahar, Digvijay Deshmukh, Prince Balwant Rai Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, JaspritBumrah, Jayant Yadav, Mitchell McClenaghan, Trent Boult, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Mohsin Khan

3. Chennai Super Kings - Ambati Rayadu, Monu Singh, Murali Vijay, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni(C), Jagadeesan Narayan, Asif K M, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis, Karn Sharma, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Shane Watson, Sam Curran, Deepak Chahar, Harbhajan Singh, Imran Tahir, LungisaniNgidi, Mitchell Santner, Shardul Thakur, Piyush Chawla, Josh Hazlewood, R. Sai Kishore

4. Delhi Capitals - Shreyas Iyer (C), Ajinkya Rahane, Keemo Paul, Prithvi Shaw, Shikhar Dhawan, ShimronHeymyer, Rishabh Pant, Alex Carey, Marcus Stoinis, Lalit Yadav, Chris Woakes, Avesh Khan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Sandeep Lamichhane, Axar Patel, Harshal Patel, Ishant Sharma, Kagiso Rabada, Mohit Sharma, Tushar Deshpande, Amit Mishra 

5. Kings XI Punjab - Karun Nair, Arshdeep Singh, Chris Gayle, Darshan Nalkande, Gowtham Krishnappa, Hardus Viljoen, Harpreet Brar, Mayank Agarwal, Nicholas Pooran, Sarfaraz Khan, Prabhsimran Singh, KL Rahul (C), Mandeep Singh, Glenn Maxwell, Chris Jordan, Deepak Hooda, James Neesham, Tajinder Dhillon, Ishan Porel, JagadeeshaSuchith, Mohammad Shami, Ravi Bishnoi, Sheldon Cottrell, Murugan Ashwin 

6. Kolkata Knight Riders - Andre Russell, Harry Gurney, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Lockie Ferguson, Nitish Rana, Prasidh Krishna, Rinku Singh, Shubham Gill, Siddhesh Lad, Eoin Morgan, Tom Banton, Rahul Tripathi, Dinesh Karthik (C), Nikhil Shankar Naik, Sunil Narine, Pat Cummins, ShivamMavi, Varun Chakaravarthy, Chris Green, Kuldeep Yadav, Sandeep Warrier, Pravin Tambe, M Siddharth

7. Rajasthan Royals - Riyan Parag, Shashank Singh, Steve Smith, Robin Uthappa, David Miller, Manan Vohra, Jos Butler, Sanju Samson, Anuj Rawat, Ben Stokes, MahipalLomror, Shreyas Gopal, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tom Curran, Ankit Rajpoot, Jofra Archer, Mayank Markande, Rahul Tewatia, Varun Aaron, Jaydev Unadkat, Kartik Tyagi, Andrew Tye, Oshane Thomas, Anirudha Ashok Joshi, Akash Singh

8. Sunrisers Hyderabad - Kane Williamson, Abhishek Sharma, David Warner (C), Manish Pandey, Priyam Garg, Virat Singh, Jonny Bairstow, Shreevats Goswami, WridhhimanSaha, Vijay Shankar, Mitchell Marsh, Mohammad Nabi, Fabian Allen, Sandeep Bavanaka, Sanjay Yadav, Abdul Samad, Basil Thampi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Billy Stanlake, Rashid Khan, Sandeep Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Siddarth Kaul, Syed Khaleel Ahmed, T Natarajan 
Catch on to regular IPL 2020 cricket news, updated points table, match scoreboards on the website.

Recap of IPL 2018 & 2019 stats and records made

New-season of the Indian Premier League is just around the corner, which makes this a perfect time to recap what all happened in the previous 2 seasons of the tournament.

1. Highest Individual score by an Indian - Rishabh Pant is best known for his aggressive batting and powerful hitting. During the IPL 2018 season, he scored the highest individual score by an Indian - 128* against Sunrisers Hyderabad. During this innings, he broke the previous record score of 127 held by Murali Vijay. 

2. Scoring 500 plus runs in five different seasons - ViratKohli is probably one of the most consistent players in the world. During the IPL 2018, Kohli added another feather in the cap by scoring more than 500 runs in a season for the fifth time in his IPL career. He is the only player to achieve this feat until now.

3. Most sixes in a match - Match 24 of IPL 2018 between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings saw a record-breaking 33 sixes in a match. Interestingly, the previous record of most sixes hit in a match too included CSK; a total of 31 sixes were hit in that game.

4. Lowest IPL score for Mumbai Indians - The match between Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2018 was a low scoring yet a thrilling game. Mumbai restricted Hyderabad to a modest total of 118 in the first innings. Sunrisers, in the second innings, defended their second-lowest IPL score in the history as they bundled out Mumbai for a mere 87 runs. This total was the lowest score for MI in IPL history.

5. Highest IPL score on captaincy debut - ShreyasIyer was handed over the captaincy duties for Delhi Capitals in the middle of the IPL 2018 season. In his first match as captain, he took on the challenge and scored 93 runs. Iyer's score became the highest IPL score on a captaincy debut.

6. The biggest defeat for KKR - IPL 2018 saw Kolkata Knight Riders losing their match against Mumbai Indians by 102 runs. This turned out to be their biggest defeat for Knight Riders in terms of runs as they were bundled out for 108 chasing Mumbai's 210. This also turned out to be MI's second-biggest win by runs.

7. The highest number of sixes in a season - IPL 2018 turned out to be an explosive high scoring season. A total of 872 sixes were hit during the season, which is an all-time high.

8. Most number of batsmen scoring 500+ runs in a season - Another reason why IPL 2018 was a high scoring season was batsmen getting more than 500 runs that year. A total of 8 players went past scoring 500 runs in 2018 which is a record broken after 5 seasons. IPL 2013 saw seven players scoring more than 500 runs.

9. The worst collapse in IPL history - Delhi Capitals made an embarrassing record in IPL 2019 when they lost 7 wickets for 8 runs. While chasing a total of 167, Delhi was in a comfortable position to win the game but suddenly lost complete track of the game when they needed less than 20 runs to win. Sam Curran registered his first hattrick in IPL in that game. 

10. Lowest super over score defended - In a match between Delhi Capitals and Kolkata Knight Riders, the game went to the super over after both teams ended up scoring 185. Capitals finished their super over scoring 10. Knight Riders sent in Andre Russell but could only score 7 runs as KagisoRabada defended the lowest score in a super over. 

11. Most numbers of dots bowled in an innings - In IPL 2019, a game between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders saw a record number of dot balls being bowled by a bowler in 4 overs. Deepak Chahar bowled 20 dot balls in 4 overs while taking 3 wickets to restrict Knight Riders for 108 runs. 

12. Most sixes by a player in IPL history - Chris Gayle became the first player to hit 300 sixes in IPL. His total number of sixes ended up at 316 at the end of the IPL 2019 season. The batsman with the most number of sixes after Gayle is AB de Villiers who has smashed 212 of them.