Vijay TV to telecast Celebrity Cricket League matches

Cricket fever’s long tail continues as a new four team contest kicks off with two matches on 4 June in Bangalore.

The Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) has, for the first time, created a platform where film fraternities of the South and Bollywood will battle each other to be one up on each other through cricket. The matches that will be played are unlike the many cricket matches that have a mix of both cricketers as well as film actors; the four CCL teams comprise male members from Mumbai, Tamil, Telugu and the Kannada filmdoms.

The four teams are Mumbai Heroes with Salman Khan as captain, and Suneil Shetty as vice captian from Bollywood; Tamil Rhinos with Surya as captain and Abbas as vice captain from kollywood; Telugu Warriors with Venkatesh as captain and Vishnu as vice captain from Andhra Pradesh; and the Karnataka Bulldozers with Sudeep as captain and Dhruv as vice captain from Sandalwood.

The owners of the teams are: Mumbai Heroes Sohail Khan; Chennai Rhinos – AMR Construction, GVR Infrastructure and the Prayusha Group with Bharati Cements as team sponsors.

Telugu Warriors – the Manjeera Group through Vishnu Manchu; Karnataka Bulldozers – AKK Entertainment Limited through Ashok Kheny, the managing director of the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise Ltd (NICE);One of the ambassadors of the CCL is Shreya Sharan.

The opening ceremony in Bangalore will see about 1200 folk artists performing live with the main act by Sonu Niigaam along with the main leads of the Kannada movie ‘Prasad’ with Arjun Sarja and Madhuri Bhattacharya as hosts. Bhattacharya, along with Sandalwood actor Ambareesh, is the ambassador of the Karnataka team.

Informs CCL director Vishnu Induri, ”We have purchased airtime for airing the matches live from Sahara One nationally for Hindi and English broadcast, from Star’s Vijay TV for Tamil broadcast, from Maa TV for the Telugu broadcast and from Star’s Suvarna TV for Kannada broadcast. The IPR remains with us. Depending upon future circumstances, we may sell broadcast rights to a channel.”

For the next season, the organisers of CCL plan to add two more teams to the tourney – from the Malayalam and the Bengali film industry.

The schedule of the seven match tourney is:

June 4 in Bangalore 3pm: Chennai Rhinos vs Telugu Warriors and at 7pm: Karnataka Bulldozers vs Mumbai Heroes

June 5 in Chennai 1pm: Karnataka Bulldozers vs Chennai Rhinos: and at 5pm: Telugu Warriors vs Mumbai Heroes

June 11 in Vizag 3pm: Karnataka Bulldozers vs Telugu Warriors: and at 7pm: Chennai Rhinos vs Mumbai Heroes

June 12 in Hyderabad 5 pm: Finals.


Courtesy - Indiantelevision