PremiumCelebrity Cricket League 2025: Bengaluru back as venue; home team gets two matches
Celebrity Cricket League 2025: The 2024 season of Celebrity Cricket League did not have a home ground match for Kiccha Sudeep’s Karnataka Bulldozers. That’s been rectified for the upcoming tournament
Kiccha Sudeep leading the revelry in the Karnataka Bulldozers' dug out
Last Updated: 09.16 PM, Dec 20, 2024
In a little over a month, a new season of the popular Celebrity Cricket League will begin. The schedule for the tournament has been announced and while some venues are still in a flux, what is confirmed is that the matches will all be played in India and that Bengaluru is back on the list.
Last year, Kiccha Sudeep and his Karnataka Bulldozers were to have a home ground match, but that did not materialize, as the Chinnaswamy Stadium was hosting the Women’s Premiere League. For the first time since the tournament began, there were no Bengaluru matches.
Bulldozers’ team owner entrepreneur Ashok Kheny had cited a lack of alternate grounds in the city as reason back then, and hoped to be able to set up an international standard ground that could be used for such tournaments on the outskirts of the city, close to his Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Expressway (NICE).
According to the 2025 CCL schedule that’s been released, the Valentine’s Day weekend will see star-studded cricketing action in the city. 5 of the 8 teams – Karnataka Bulldozers, Kerala Strikers, Telugu Warriors, Bengal Tigers and Bhojpuri Dabanggs – will play in Bengaluru on February 14 and February 15. In fact, the Bulldozers get 2 matches in front of their home crowd, one against defending champions Bengal Tigers, in what will be a repeat of last year’s final, but with, hopefully, a different result, and the other against the Bhojpuri Dabanggs.
These two are the Bulldozers’ last group stage matches and will decide if the team makes it to the semi-finals or not. The Bulldozers are 2-time champions and have played 7 finals in 10 seasons, which goes to show how strong a team Sudeep leads. The entire tournament is expected to be live streamed on JioCinema, with Sony Sports and vernacular Star channels chipping in as broadcast partners for specific matches.