Indian cricket has taken the first big step towards the wholesale privatisation of the game in the model of English football or American baseball with the sale of eight new team franchises to several of the nation's biggest tycoons.

India's cricket authority sold eight teams for its new Twenty20 competition to leading figures such as billionaire Mukesh Ambani and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, for a total of about $724m - an enormous sum for a new league that is as yet untried.