Lucknow Super Giants unveiled as new name for IPL franchise

The RP Sanjiv Goenka Group had earlier called the Pune franchise they acquired for two years the Rising Pune Supergiants

Lucknow Super Giants. That is the team name unveiled on Monday by IPL’s Lucknow franchise. The franchise, one of the two new teams to enter IPL last October, was bought by the RP Sanjiv Goenka group, a diversified Indian business group, for a record sum of INR 7090 crore (nearly USD 940 million).

This is not the RP Sanjiv Goenka group’s first tryst with IPL team ownership, or indeed with the team name. They had aquired a franchise in Pune for IPL 2016 and IPL 2017 – when two new franchises were given a term of two years thanks to the suspensions from the league of the Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals. They had then called their franchise the Rising Pune Super Giants, later changing the name in 2017 to Rising Pune Supergiant.

Alongside Lucknow, the other new IPL franchise was bought by global private equity giants CVC Capital, and will be based in Ahmedabad. The three players they bought ahead of the mega auction were Hardik Pandya for INR 15 crore, Rashid Khan for INR 15 crore, and Shubman Gill for INR 8 crore. As per the auction rules, the Ahmedabad’s franchise purse will be lighter by INR 38 crore – with the actual amount paid to Rashid and Gill subtracted since it stands higher than the slabs set by the IPL of INR 11 crore and INR 7 crore when three capped players are retained by a franchise. Ahmedabd will thus go in with INR 52 crore to spend in the auction.