Champions League in Chennai

India's three leading cricket centres, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai, will host the inaugural Twenty20 Champions League in December, organisers said on Thursday.

The six-million dollar tournament, featuring eight T20 club sides from India, Australia, South Africa, England and Pakistan, will be held from December 3-10, League chairman Lalit Modi told reporters here. Modi, who organised the hugely successful Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 competition earlier this year, said the match schedule will be announced later. But he confirmed Mumbai as the venue of the final on December 10.

The eight teams are IPL finalists Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings, Western Australia and Victoria (Australia), Titans and Dolphins (South Africa), Middlesex (England) and the winners of Pakistan's Twenty20 League to be held next month.

The teams will be divided into two groups for a preliminary league, with the top two advancing to the semi-finals. "I believe we have a concept that will inspire and motivate the future generations of club, state and county cricketers, while accelerating the development of the game globally," said Modi. "I am confident that this will be a true global event, the scale of which the cricketing world has not seen outside of the World Cups."

The tournament has been sandwiched in the eight-day break between England's one-day series in India which ends on December 2 and the first Test which starts in Ahmedabad on December 11.

The pan-Asian ESPN-Star network secured the 10-year commercial rights for the tournament for a whopping 900 million dollars earlier this month, paying an additional 75 million dollars as marketing costs.

The second edition of the Champions League will be enlarged to 12 teams and will take place between September 25 and October 10 next year, said Modi. The recent boom in Twenty20 cricket, sparked by the lucrative IPL, has led to growing concerns about the future of traditional Test and one-day cricket.