Bollywood stars like Ranveer Singh, Parineeti Chopra, Varun Dhawan and Jacqueline Fernandez will set the stage on fire at the IPL 11 opening ceremony in Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium on April 7. According to the reliable sources which suggest that Witchcraft has won the bid to stage the opening ceremony which would also see a galaxy of former cricket stars, Bollywood and Indian Inc. This IPL opening will also see only two captains in MS Dhoni (Chennai Super Kings) and Rohit Sharma (Mumbai Indians) attending the ceremony.
The other six captains are Virat Kohli (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Steven Smith (Rajasthan Royals), Gautam Gambler (Delhi Daredevils), R Ashwin (Kings XI), Dinesh Karthik (Kolkata Knight Riders) and David Warner (Hyderabad) will be skipping the event due to logistic reasons.
Sources said that the Committee of Administrators (CoA) had earlier trimmed the budget of the IPL opening budget from Rs 30 crore to Rs 20 crore and also had strongly objected to unnecessary razzmatazz surrounding the event. The CoA had also raised issues as to why BCCI should spend so much on “entertainment” when cricket is the main attraction of the event.
To celebrate the 10th edition of the IPL last year and engage more fans, all the eight teams got the chance to stage an opening ceremony with their first home game. The Board had also foot the expenses of those eight ceremonies.