The Maharashtra Premier League (MPL) the first ever official State premier cricket league in India, is all set to enter the third season. Designed at improving the overall quality of players in the State, as well as giving a platform to players from various districts of Maharashtra, has gone up step by step, as far as quality is concerned.

The evolutions the MPL, - a joint venture by Maharashtra Cricket Association and the Sakal Media Group has gone through are quite interesting. The first season saw good cricket, batsmen friendly conditions, day games, plenty of runs, fours and sixes, and some big and enthusiastic crowds in the cricket loving city of Pune.

MPL-II, in 2010, underwent some superb changes, with the introduction of Kookaburra balls, matches being played under lights at one of the best cricket stadium in the country (D Y Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai). The biggest and most important change was that 17 matches, including semi-finals and final, were shown live on Neo Cricket. That provided players from all over the State an opportunity to showcase their talent and abilities to a nationwide audience.

MPL was already looked at as one of the talent hunting event for IPL franchisees. With MPL going on television, it increased its reaches even further. By the end of MPL-II, there were as many as six cricketers from the State, who were signed by IPL teams, which is a proof of how successful the league already is.

Going into MPL-III, the league is back to its hometown, Pune, a city that often sees big crowds for matches. So what we have got now, is batting friendly pitches at Deccan Gymkhana, PYC and Poona Club, and Kookaburra balls, which are not as easy to smack around as the SG balls, mostly used in domestic cricket, are.

MPL-I

The 11-day long first edition in 2009 - a joint venture between eight teams - drew an impressive crowd of over 20,000 at its opening ceremony in Pune. In the first season, the player auction saw a total of 112 players going under the hammer. Each team was given a purse of Rs 6 lakh, in which they had to buy 14 players. Middle-order batsman Kedar Jadhav became the highest paid player at Rs 1.6 lakh, bought by Sindhudurg Sailors.

The first edition was not short on celeb value, with stars of the ilk of Shreyas Talpade, Vaishali Samant, Swapnil Bandokar, Avdhut Gupte and Mahalaksmi Iyer attending the opening ceremony.

After 11 days of pulsating action at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana and the Deccan Gymkhana grounds, Raigad Royals was crowned the first-ever MPL champions. In all, 9,109 runs were scored in 1,182.3 overs, including 817 fours and 295 sixes in 31 matches. A total of 417 wickets were also taken. Raigad Royals' dominance of the tournament was evident from the fact that two of their players, Digambar Waghmare (best fielder) and Harshad Khadiwale (Man-of-the-Series) won the individual awards. The best batsman’s award went to Amit Patil of Sinhagad Supremos, while Torna Tigers’ Kiran Adhav was adjudged the Best Bowler of the tournament.

It was a tournament that gave platform to a number of players to make their mark. The likes of Kiran Adhav and Shrikant Mundhe soon got a recall based on their MPL performance to the State team that went on to tour Bangladesh, after being ignored in the recent past, which proved that the tournament was a success on that front as well.

Soon, Kedar Jadhav (Delhi Daredevils), Aditya Dole (Rajasthan Royals) and Harshad Khadiwale (Kolkata Knight Riders) were signed by Indian Premier League (IPL) franchisees. To top it all, the Maharashtra team won All-India knockout T20 tournament of BCCI, one of the biggest titles ever won by the state.

MPL-II

The MPL-II had many more different things, compared to MPL-I, as already mentioned.

The MPL's second season auction saw the Poonawala-owned Serum Institute backing out of the bidding process. This created a chance for other aspiring franchise-owners to get into the scene for ownership of the franchise. After hectic bidding, the JMJ group won the one-team auction with a very impressive bid of Rs 43.25 lakh.

The amount exceeded all expectations, and was in fact much more than the cost of the eight teams taken together in MPL's first season. To keep interest in player auctions alive, the players were given an option to leave their franchises. Similarly, franchisees were also given an option to release some players. MPL-II's player auction saw 62 players, a mixture of new and released players, being put up for bids by the teams.

Hosted by popular cricket commentator Charu Sharma - who also hosted the first season's auction - the player auction also saw the maximum purse for the teams increased to Rs 3 lakh. Besides this, the teams were also given the option of having as many as 16 players in their squad.

Much-touted Kedar Jadhav kept his promises alive by becoming the highest-paid player in the MPL for the second year running. The Torna Tigers stunned the auction by spending their entire purse of Rs 3 lakh on the dashing middle-order batsman, who quit his first season team Sindhudurg Sailors.

Adding to the excitement was the announcement that MPL-II has its second international coach – Geoff Lawson (Torna Tigers), after ex England international Dermot Reeve (Raigad Royals) became the first in Season 1. Reeve for the second year running will coach Raigad Royals in 2010.

To add to their prize acquisition of Kedar Jadhav, the Torna Tigers roped in former Aussie great Geoff Lawson as their head coach. The second edition also saw the increase in the prize money by more than double to Rs 15 lakh. It turned out to be a low-scoring tournament overall, with Sinhagad Supremos denying Raigad Royals their second title in as many years in the final.