The upcoming IPL season will be a blockbuster and entertaining as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has announced some major changes for its 16th edition. It is going to be held in March 2023. Because of Covid-19, there was a huge impact on every single industry including sports. The BCCI changed the format and rules under the circumstances in those years. The league was played at neutral locations for the last three years. In 2020, the whole season was placed in UAE and in 2021-22 it was held in India but in a few selected places. 

But this time, the Indian Premier League will take place in “Home and Away format”. In this format the teams will be playing in their respective grounds all across India. There are two new teams added for this season and their names are Gujarat Titans and Lucknow SuperGiants. There will be a total of 74 innings played in 2023 IPL.

In the 2022 finals, there was a Guinness World Record stated at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat for the largest gathering to watch a T20 series. 

Format for the Coming Innings:

The season has 10 teams in total, that are divided into two groups with five in each and which team will face the other was also decided by a random toss done under the BCCI.

• There will be 74 matches and each team will have 14 innings each.
• In the total 14 innings, four teams in the group-I of five will have to face the other group two times each, one game will be in their home ground and the other one in their opponent’s one.
• And in the second group the 4 teams have to face the other once and the remaining one has to face others twice. 
• The distribution of points is very simple, the winning team will get 1 point, and the loser will get nothing. But if there is any draw or no result at the end of the match, then both teams will have 1 point each. 
• Four games are going to be played in the playoff stage with a page playoff system.

The Playoff System: 

1. Qualifier 1- Two top teams will play in this round.
2. Eliminator- This round will be conducted between the teams which ranked third and fourth.
3. Qualifier 2- In this round the loser of qualifier one and winner of eliminator round will face each other.
4. Finals- Finals will happen between the winners of qualifier 1 and 2.  

Rules and Regulations: 

There is a major change of rules in this 16th edition IPL, which is “Impact Player Rule”. There is a big hype after the auction happened in December 2022 and the teams released their retained and traded players list.

Impact Player is a method, where there are four players out of the 15 from the team, in which only one player can play as a substitute for the other player in the field at any time during the team’s inning by the end of the 14th over. 

• In the regulations released by the BCCI, only an Indian player can play as an Impact Player unless four overseas players are present in the team. 
• Only one international player can play as the Impact Player and there will be no 5th international player, who can take the field as a replacement.
• The team has to give four names for the Impact Players list during the toss along with the eleven playing players. And out of these four only one can be taken as the Impact Player by the team. 
• The captain of any team cannot play as an Impact Player.
• The captain has to nominate the names for the list.
• The Impact Player can substitute the field player anytime, it can be at the start of the match, after completion of any over, after a wicket, or after the retirement of the batter during the ongoing over.
• Any player who is getting replaced by the Impact Player cannot play again for the remaining inning whether it’s as a batter or a substitute fielder.
• If the team needs any retired batter in the fields again, then he can play.
• In the match, both teams have a chance to use their trump card (Impact Player) anytime in the match to turn the match upside down. But it is not compulsory to use this advantage.
• If an Impact Player takes the place of any injured player during the inning or any over, the injured player can not take part in the ongoing match again even in the mid-over fields.
• But if any Impact Player gets injured, the team can use a substitute fielder to replace him, but only when the umpire is satisfied by the situation.
• The substitute cannot bowl or can be a captain in the team.
• The penalty time for the batting and fielding teams will apply to the player off field, whenever the team uses their substitute, as per the conditions declared by the BCCI.
• There is an advantage for the teams in this season as they are having a DRS (Decision Review System) for the IPL, that will be used for no balls or wide balls decided by the umpire.

Wrap Up!  

This IPL season will be more iconic and entertaining as we are going to see some new formats and rules in the game. And it will also hype the competition level with some advantages between the teams. BCCI has made several changes and brought a new format to the game. This type of big change has not taken place in any season throughout the history of Indian Premier League. IPL is going to be in the list of top T20 series through time, as it already got its name under the world record of the largest number of people attending a cricket match.