The Lanka Premier League (LPL) in 2020 is the inaugural edition of the tournament. The T20 competition will be held in the island nation of Sri Lanka in the months of November and December 2020. The tournament will have 5 teams representing different cities contesting for the maiden title win.
Five teams - Colombo Kings, Dambulla Hawks, Galle Gladiators, Jaffna Stallions and Kandy Tuskers will be featuring in the LPL. The tournament will begin on 21 November 2020 in Hambantota and the Final will be played on 13 December 2020 in Kandy.
The professional T20 league in Sri Lanka was founded in 2018 by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC). The competition was to be initiated in the same year itself. However, numerous administrative difficulties in the cricket board of Sri Lanka did not do any good for the tournament and it had to be postponed time and again.
Finally, SLC decided to conduct the tournament in 2020 with the number of COVID-19 cases not threatening a game of cricket in the country. However, the travel restrictions meant that the foreign cricketers would not have been able to play in the island nation. Therefore, another postponement took place and the competition has now been scheduled to start in November 2020.
The five participating LPL teams will play in a double round-robin stage i.e. each team will play every other team twice in the league stage. A total of 20 matches in the league stage will help to eliminate the team placed last in the points table.
The top four teams will qualify for the semi-finals, which will be followed by the Final.
The TV rights have not been finalized yet.
The entire tournament will be played in two cities of Sri Lanka. Hambantota will host the first 11 matches of the league stage before the remainder of the competition moves out to Kandy. In Hambantota, the picturesque Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium will witness live-action while the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium, also known as Muttiah Muralitharan International Cricket Stadium, has been readied to have the LPL 2020 in Kandy.
The 23-match affair will have some of the world’s best cricketers entertaining the fans on a daily basis. Top Sri Lankan cricketers like Angelo Mathews, Isuru Udana, Dinesh Chandimal, Niroshan Dickwella, Upul Tharanga, Lasith Malinga, Danushka Gunathilaka, Thisara Perera, Dhananjaya de Silva, Suranga Lakmal, Kusal Perera, Kusal Mendis and Nuwan Pradeep have been well distributed in different teams for the LPL.
Foreign stars like Chris Gayle, Paul Stirling, Shahid Afridi, Colin Ingram Hazratullah Zazai, Mohammad Amir, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Shoaib Malik, Asif Ali, Liam Plunkett and Wahab Riaz will also take the centre-stage over the month-long tournament.
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