When the IPL was first inaugurated in the year 2008, it was one of its kind. The world never witnessed a cricket league where players from all around the world come to play a league in one country. To make the league exciting, IPL committee had introduced many innovative things such as the orange cap for the highest run-scorer, purple cap for the highest wicket-taker, strategic timeouts and many such other things. All these were done lure the fans towards the league.
Till 2011, IPL has a very traditional format. The Top 4 teams would play the two semi finals and the winners would play the finals. But this format was changed in 2011. Many fans and experts argued that this way of entering the Finals is very unfair to the team finishing second and after much discussion a new IPL playoff format was introduced. This format actually awarded the top two teams who played well all through the season were given two chances to qualify rather than one single chance in the previous format.
IPL PLAYOFFS FORMAT
There are in total 8 teams in the Indian Premier League. Each team play a total of 14 matches each, 7 at home and 7 away. The total number of matches in the IPL is 56 before the playoffs. Each team fights to get into the top four to qualify for the playoffs. The playoffs system is said to be one of the fairest formats in the sporting field.
QUALIFIER 1:
The team with the maximum points after the end of 8 matches plays the team in the second position after 8 games.
The first position and the second positioned team play the first of two qualifiers. The winner of the qualifier directly books the spot for the finals.
ELIMINATOR:
The team standing on 3rd and 4th after the league stages are overplay the ELIMINATOR. The winner of the ELIMINATOR plays the loser of the qualifier 1 and
the loser of the ELIMINATOR is knocked out
QUALIFIER 2:
The qualifier is played between The winner of the Eliminator and the loser of qualifier 1. The Winner of the QUALIFIER 2 plays the winner of QUALIFIER 1 in the FINALS.