The Orissa cricket team results in the last few years do not suggest anything to sit up and take notice. However the Orissa Cricket Board did take all by surprise after announcing its very own Orissa Premier League(OPL) in lines of the hugely popular IPL.

The secretary of the OCA, Mr Ashirvad Behera announced the organisation of the T-20 competition starting from May 22 with the sole aim to promote the budding young cricketers of Orissa and to provide them financial benefit. The competition will feature a total of 44 games and the winner will get a cash prize of Rs 4 lakhs while the Runners up will get Rs 2 lakhs.

It was also announced that the inaugural edition of the OPL will have 10 teams to be short listed from a list of 14 probables which include Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Rourkela, Berhampur, Sambalpur, Puri, Angul, Keonjhar, Jharsuguda, Kendrapara, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur and Balasore. The shortlist was made on the basis of top 10 highest bids with the base price for any franchise being Rs 4lakhs.

The bids started on May 3rd and closed on May 9th with teams from Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Balasore, Berhampur, Puri, Angul, Dhenkanal, Keonjhar, Rourkela and Jagatsinghpur. Team Bhubaneswar bought by LG infrastructure got the highest bid amount of Rs 54,99,999.

Similarly, the franchisees would be allowed to limit their expenditure to Rs 8 lakh to purchase the players.Each team would be allowed to purchase 18 players, of which a maximum of 12 would be graded players, while the remaining six would be from their catchment areas.The players were selected from OCA's list of around 300 players who would be graded from A to E on the basis of their past records.The base price of a grade A player was fixed at Rs 60,000, B was Rs 40,000, C Rs 30,000, D Rs 20,000 and grade E player (from local catchment areas) have a base price of Rs 10,000.A team will be allowed to field a maximum of eight players from grade A,B,C,D and a minimum of three players from grade E and teams would be separated in two groups and each team of the group would play two matches with each other, one at home and the other at away venue. The top two teams of the groups will move to semifinals.

And thus the much hyped competition has started off with bang in the state but it would be hoped for the sake of the game in the state that it stays true to what it stands for and the state actually gets some valuable players from the OPL apart from the OCA making profits.