Reports: BCCI planning to replace CLT20 with mini-IPL

CSK won the 2014 edition of CLT20

According to reports, the Board of Cricket for Control in India (BCCI) is all set to replace the Champions League T20 (CLT20) with a mini Indian Premier League (IPL). This comes in the wake of previous reports stating that the CLT20 tournament was set to be scrapped as the popularity of the league had gone into crisis.

Indian Express reported this morning that BCCI is planning to bring in a new T20 league in place for the old CLT20 where top domestic clubs from different cricketing nations participated.

“The planning is on and we will have a meeting on this before this IPL gets over,” a BCCI official was quoted saying.

Earlier, BCCI's general secretary Anurag Thakur reportedly informed the joint owners of CLT20 – Cricket Australia, Cricket South Africa – India, about the scrapping of CLT20. The tournament was not seen as a popular league in terms of viewership, and a drastic fall in the numbers was troubling the boards.

“It (CLT20) was not serving any purpose, people weren’t attracted to it. We are looking at all possibilities of a substitute tournament to replace CLT20 and the initial idea is to have an IPL-2 so that Indian crowds could relate more to it,” the official added.

Besides this, it has also been reported that United Arab Emirates (UAE) might get to host the event. UAE hosted the first half of IPL 7 and now teams are quite popular there with the crowds.

CLT20 was launched in 2008 and since its inception four champions have emerged in the editions held till now. Two Indian teams – Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings – have won the tournament twice each, while Australia's New South Wales Blues and Sydney Sixers have triumphed once each.