Kochi is ready for IPL 2011!

A great news for all cricket lovers of Kerala. It's True....Kochi got an IPL team!.

The consortium from Kerala, Rendezvous Group, decided on Kochi as its base. Rendezvous Sports World Ltd emerged as the surprise package in the Indian Premier League's (IPL) bidding for two new teams. It won the rights for Kochi. The brain behind bringing together the five-member consortium was Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor. IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi said Tharoor helped Kerala to have a team of its own. Rendezvous Sports bid $333.33 million to get Kochi as the host city while Sahara Adventure Sports was the highest bidder at $370 million to bag Pune. The other groups that took part in the bidding were Adani and Videocon.

Pooja Gulati, director Rendezvous Sports World, said: "Cricket is now popular throughout India and it does not matter if Kerala is not known for cricket. The new IPL team will change that notion."

Modi said IPL will provide a venue till the stadium at Kochi comes up.
"Kerala Cricket Association is building a world class stadium. Till that is ready, IPL will provide an alternate venue."

The minimum base price is $225 m and the highest tender wins. The highest bid was of Sahara Adventure Sports Ltd for Pune was $370 million. The second highest was Rendezvous Sports Ltd $333.33 million and they bid for Kochi (Cochin). So the two new cities in the IPL are Pune and Cochin which will be part of the 4th season of the IPL (IPL 2011). They were bid for by Sahara Adventure Sports (Pune) and Rendezvous Sports Ltd (Cochin).

IPL season 4 will feature 10 teams and a total of 94 games will be played, from the existing 60.

Also, lemme list the prices of the 10 Franchisees (8 of them were bought earlier) below.....

1. Sahara Adventure Sports (For team Pune) : $370 million
2. Rendezvous Sports Ltd (For team Kochi) : $333.33 million
3. Mumbai Indians – Mukesh Ambani – $111.9 m
4. RCB – Vijay Mallya – $111.6 m
5. Deccan – T Venkatram Reddy – $107.01 m
6. CSK – N Srinivasan – $91 m
7. DD – GM Rao – $84 m
8. KXIP – Preity Zinta – $76 m
9. KKR – SRK – $75.09 m
10. RR – Manoj Badale – $67m

Hearty Congrats to Shashi Tharoor & Rendezvous Sports Ltd. It is a great feeling that Kochi entered into the list of IPL teams. We are desperately waiting for Team Kochi in action.

Cheers,
Jenson

twitter Hacked! : Monday Morning Madness

twitter accounts of Britney Spears, Prez elect Barack Obama & other celebrities hacked!
Hackers have accessed the accounts of a series of celebrities on the popular micro-blogging site twitter and left a variety of pornographic and dubious messages and links.
For example, the hacker, purporting to be US newscaster Rick Sanchez, wrote: "I am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today."
In the most serious breach of security for the burgeoning blogging site, beloved of the tech community, hackers have targeted more than 30 accounts including those belonging to Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Facebook, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and the Huffington Post. Twitter on Monday (Jan 5th 2009) said the hacker had broken into 33 accounts by gaining access to tools used by its support team.
"These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck," wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post. "We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We'll put them back only when they're safe and secure."
In the phishing attempt, scammers sent out email notifications purporting to be from Twitter that contained a link to a site "masquerading as the Twitter front page", wrote Stone in a blog post on Saturday. The object of the scam was to collect people's Twitter sign-in details, which would allow the phisher to send messages in the guise of the compromised user. In the event of a compromise, Stone said user passwords would automatically be reset and notification emails sent out.
According to the security company, thousands of Twitter members have reported receiving messages from friends inviting them to visit a website containing funny pictures, a blog and in some cases even the chance to win an Apple iPhone.
The hacking attack comes at a bad time for Twitter which is poised to break out of the tech community to become a mainstream social networking tool. Ev Williams, one of the site's founders, tweeted that the atmosphere at the office today was "focused anxiety".

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