A day after Lalit Modi announced that IPL have dropped all the controversial qualifiers, Kochi’s chance to an IPL team have grown a lot. Currently people who are interested to bid for Kochi are

• Ashok Piramal Group
• Jaypee Group
• Rosy Blue India Pvt. Ltd
• Anchor Electricals
• Muthoot Pappachan Group
• Mohanlal & Priyadarshan

Experts say with these developments, Kochi is going to be one of the top bid teams. Another city that is predicted to win is Ahmedabad with Adani Enterprises, Sahara Group and ICICI bidding for the city. Adani group and Sahara is all set to “show them the money”. Days till March 21st (last day of submitting bids) will be very tensed and only when they open the bids the same day will our anxiety be put to rest. Till than we can just hope for the best because as of now Kochi could not have a better chance. We have our fingers crossed. GO KOCHI!!

Cochin’s IPL-Team dream is just not ready to die. Thanks to the stiff qualification criteria,Mohanlal-Priyadarshan and company who was set to bid for Kochi dropped out of the race. But Lalit Modi’s efforts to sell the 2 teams went belly up thanks to very strict qualifiers.

The decision was made only after 3 companies submitted bids while 10 companies bought tender documents. These unopened tenders were returned to the bidders. The revised Invitation To Tender (IIT) will be made available on March 9th and the bids will be open on March 21 in Chennai. The 2 qualifiers that companies had a problem with was

• The company should demonstrate a net worth of nearly Rs. 5000 crores.
• The company that wins the auction needs to pay $100 million as advance guarantee.

According to the revised rules the Rs. 5000 crores net worth clause has been removed and winners need to pay only $10 million as advance guarantee.

The Muthoot Papachan group (who was reportedly backing Mohanlal and Priyadarshan) initially had backed out from the race and now will be studying the new terms and will let the board decide if they will take part in the auction. So Kochi’s IPL dream is not over and there is hope.

(Wonder what made Lalit change his mind.. )

A lot of our hopes for a Kochi IPL team rested on Mohanlal’s and Priyadarshan’s shoulders. And that dont look too good. Well, its looking bad as the duo have backed out of the auction. They backed out after IPL changed the conditions and asked for Rs. 5000 crores as security deposit instead of the initial Rs. 300 crores. This did not go down well not only the filmy duo but also with the investors who was backing them. The status of the billionaire sheik from Abu Dhabi is not confirmed.

Experts predict that Ahmedabad will be picked up by the Adani group and either Nagpur or Pune by Videocon. Screw them all.  If Kochivibe makes billions and trillions of dollars we promise to get Kochi a ‘Kochivibe’ team!

The buzz of Kochi having its own Indian Premier League team has been around for quite sometime. Here is more information on the bidding process. The cities that have been offered as the home location for the franchises are Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Vizag, Rajkot, Cuttack, Baroda, Cochin, Indore and Gwalior. The auction is scheduled to happen on March 9th 2010.

• This time the process of bidding for teams is extremely difficult unlike in 2008. Among the most contentious clauses is the requirement for the bidder to privide a bank guarantee equivalent to 100 per cent of the money that the winning bidder offers for the 10-year contract within seven days of winning the bid. Where as in 2008, the initial franchisees of the eight IPL teams had to provide only 10 per cent of their bids as bank guarantee.
• Bidders also need to have a net worth of $1 billion as a pre-requisite and offer a pre-bid bank guarantee of $100 million. In the 2008 auctions, prospective bidders paid a pre-bid deposit of Rs 20 crore.
• The minimum bid price has been fixed at a staggering $225 million (Rs 1,042 crore), compared to the base price of $50 million (over Rs 230 crore) when the first auctions were held in 2008.

Here is an interesting fact. A list of India’s 10 most affluent cities was recently published. Following is the list

1. New Delhi – Has IPL Team (Delhi Daredevils)
2. Bangalore – Has IPL Team (Royal Challengers)
3. Mumbai – Has IPL Team (Mumbai Indians)
4. Chennai – Has IPL Team (Chennai Super Kings)
5. Hyderabad – Has IPL Team (Deccan Chargers)
6. Kolkata – Has IPL Team (Kolkata Knight Riders)
7. Kochi – One of the home locations thats on offer in 2010
8. Pune – One of the home locations thats on offer in 2010
9. Jaipur – Has IPL Team (Rajasthan Royals)
10. Ahmedabad – One of the home locations thats on offer in 2010

7 out of the 10 most affluent cities in the list, have an IPL team. All 6 cities above Kochi has an IPL team. All 3 cities that dont have an IPL team are on offer as a home location for the auction on March 9th.

Mohanlal and Priyadarshan has shown interest in bidding. Also Muthoot Pappachan Group is said to have making efforts for a Kochi team by partnering with Mohanlal and Priyadarshan. Also there are reports that Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan is interested in picking up a team. Sheiks and Malayalees has been sharing a very good bond from the past couple of decades . Keeping that in mind, we hope he bids for Kochi too . There are reports that YusufAli MA, M.D of EMKE group and person behind LULU group (who is also building India’s biggest mall in Kochi) is keen on a Kochi team. As per some reports Salman Khan is keen on bidding for an IPL team and is interested either in Kochi or Nagpur.

Making this entry on Kochivibe has made us dizzy. Especially the Rupees and Dollars part . We hope that Kochi is one of the 2 lucky cities to get an IPL team. We are amused to see “Dharmsalsa” as one of the cities up for grabs. That just DONT sound like one of the cities that would have an IPL team (sorry Dharmsalians). Kochi would make a better team anyday! .  Fingers crossed for March 9th.!

All India Lotus trophy tennis tournament starts today , Feb 1. The tournament is conducted by Ernakulam Lotus club and the venues will be Kadavanthra regional sports centre and Lotus club. finals will be on 5th February.

Here is some good news for the cricket crazy in Kochi. After somewhat of a  long break Kochi will play host to an India-Australia match in October 2010. This development follow after GCDA’s (Greater Cochin Development Authority) move to grant permission to the Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) to host matches.

Thats not all. if things go according to plan, Kochi will also soon be host to IPL matches as well. As we get ready for these cricket developments to take off almost 9 franchisees have taken interest in having a Kerala IPL team.! As Kochivibe has reported earlier it is confirmed that Priyadarshan and Mohanlal have made serious bids to get a Kerala IPL team happening.

A former sweeper from our own city of Kochi will be in Mumbai to run the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon on January 17. The 53 year old Rajam Gopi will attempt the full marathon of a distance of 42 km. Rajam used to work earlier as sweeper at a travel agency in Kochi called AIMS International for eight years, but now works as a fitness instructor at a Talwalkar’s gym branch in Kochi. She also works as a laboratory cleaner (cleaning and sterilising apparatus) at the Mariam Medical Centre in Kochi.

Rajam Gopi

After completing her work at the lab every night, she stays there as she has to be at the Maharaja College ground at 6.30 am, everyday,  to train.The grinding poverty and adversity has made Rajam all the more determined to succeed. The athlete who has represented India in a number of meets in the veteran’s category, including the Airtel Delhi half marathon (21 km) where she finished second clocking in 02:01:06 in the women’s senior veteran’s category (Bib no: 2131) and won Rs 24,500 for her effort says  ”When I run, all my troubles fall away”.  Talk about determination .. !

At 53, Rajam is a champion distance runner on the Masters (veterans) circuit. The events she usually competes in are the 10,000 m run, 5,000 m run, 10,000 m walk, 400 m hurdles and 3,000 m steeplechase. In 2007, she was selected to take part in the World Masters Athletics championships at Riccone, Italy, but could not go because of visa problems. The Kerala Veterans’ Sports Association chose Rajam as  the Best Athlete of Kerala  2008. In 2008, she won four gold medals at the 15th Asia Masters Athletics championship held at Chiang Mai, Thailand from December 1 to 5, 2008 .

Sponsored trip : Standard Chartered will be sponsoring her trip to Mumbai , Her round  trip and stay at a Bandra hotel and registration fee (Rs 500) is paid by Standard Chartered.  She will be in the city of Mumbai by January 14.
Till her last breath: The Mumbai full  marathon is missing from Rajam’s trophy case, a  lacuna she hopes to fill this year. She aims to win the veteran’s category whose passion for  running is summed up in these words, “I run because I love it. The determined athlete does  not think of anything else when she runs, not even her family. Her dream is to win a gold for  India at a World Athletics Veterans meet.

Here’s wishing her all the very best from team KochiVibe . Do us proud .. ! We know you will ..

CIAL , the Cochin International Airport Limited , will be gifting us Kochiites with a world class Golf Course by the end of this year.  The first phase of the  Rs.480 million golf course is scheduled to be completed and open  by mid December.

The first phase  will have nine holes of the 18 planned for the entire course . Building this costed Rs.20 crore (Rs.200 million). According to officials, the golf course would match any international golf course. Well , that is quite obvious dont you think ? Afterall , CIAL..!!

The golf course, is situated on 130 acres, adjacent to  to the fourth largest airport in the country .!! 800 applications for memberships  have been sold for Rs.10,000 each by now. An application form worth Rs.10,000 ?? Well , being part of a rich city does have its disadvantages.. This being one.! But hey , who would have thought Kochi would develop at this pace ?

By next month , the CIAL expects to do the screening of the applications and allotment of membership would begin. And yeah , the early bird catches the worm…!!!  ;) The membership fee for a few early birds has been fixed at Rs.200,000. !

Earlier this year,  CIAL announced a dividend of 10 percent, up from eight percent announced last year. The paid up capital of CIAL is Rs.300 crore.

Hoping to see legends like Tiger Woods , Nick Faldo ..( no offence to the ones I havent listed here , Ime running short of time .. can I expect  a “None Taken” comment ?? ..  ) …

Priyadarshan and Mohanlal plan to start a cricket team from Kerala for the next IPL season, to be titled as ‘City Cricketers’. They also have roped in Shashi Tharoor,  the new Union Minister of State for External Affairs, as the chairman of their team and have the full support of the KCA. The Director of the City Cricketers will be Robin Singh.

They will approach the BCCI with the proposal and if they get the approval, their team will debut in the next IPL in 2010.
This would give an opportunity for the Kerala Cricketers with a global opportunity to make their way into the national side. More details are awaited.

While the news is still ripe across the cricketing world with the Dhoni – Sehwag spat, I have decided to add some high combustion fuel to that already rousing fire. But the focus of this story is going to involve just one person from the above list and another from our land, Kochi.

I’m talking about Sreesanth and Dhoni, If we Jog our memory, It all started becoming alarmingly open after the slapgate incident, Dhoni gave a statement to the media saying that some people deserve to get slapped and Sree would have definitely provoked Harbhajan (Yeah, That saint from Punjab)

From then on it has been a crazy PR campaign by these 2 cricketers against Sree, who incidentally has not played for India since. Let’s look at this year’s IPL, The first match Sree plays after a long layoff, he gets a hiding from Hayden, and then Hayden makes it a point to come to the media and talk about how he thinks the bowler is over rated and all that. Guess who isthe captain of the Chennai super Kings?,  Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The second time the teams met Dhoni got a snorter, an fast in-swinging yorker and the off stump goes for a walk, and Sree goes for a run on the field to celebrate. Cut to the next days TOI, and the headline of column by Dhoni says ‘ I Don’t know why Sreesanth went for a run’. Hello Mr. Captain, did you notice one Pragyan Ohja running around the field celebrating every time he got a wicket and sometimes bad mouthing the opposition. Ever seen your dear friend Harbhajan sending off batsmen he dismissed?, heard of a rookie bowler called Sandeep Tyagi who did a lap of honor when he dismissed one of the Bangalore Royal challengers batsmen??. Sree definitely deserved to celebrate a unbelievable delivery which had Dhoni seeing stars

I guess it is different yardsticks for different people, maybe it is all because we are ‘Madrasi’s’, or maybe it has something to do with a certain Lakshmi Rai. Speculation just speculation.