Rising Pune Supergiants
The Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) are a cricket team based in Pune, Maharashtra, India that plays in the Indian Premier League starting 2016. The team along with Gujarat Lions will feature as two-season replacements for Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, who are suspended for two seasons due to the involvement in illegal betting by their respective owners. The franchise is owned by RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group controlled by Sanjiv Goenka. The team name was announced on 18 January 2016 by Goenka in Kolkata and Raghu Iyer was appointed CEO
Home ground
The Rising Pune Supergiant' home ground is the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune. However, controversies arose over holding 2016 IPL games in Maharashtra due to water usage of the cricket stadiums during severe drought and the Bombay High Court ordered all matches in May to be shifted out of the state. On 15 April 2016, it was reported that the Rising Pune Supergiants were considering the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Vishakhapatnam as an alternate home ground.
Kit and sponsors
The official merchandise is provided by SEVEN and the principal shirt sponsor is Kent RO Systems. Spykar, Gulf Oil, Gemini Oil, Finolex Pipes, LYF Smartphones, DBS Bank and Marriott International are the associated sponsors for 2016 season. They also signed tournament partners such as OLA, Kingfishers, Deakin University, New India Assurance, Gourmet Renaissance and Fan Garage.
Current squad
Players with international caps are listed in bold.
See All The TEAM Members
Results summary
By season - 2016, The Rising Pune Supergiants made an excellent start to the season, convincingly winning their first game against the defending champions, Mumbai Indians, by 9 wickets. However, they went on to lose their next four games - against the Gujarat Lions, Kings XI Punjab, Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Kolkata Knight RIders. The inclusion of Ashoke Dinda, in their 6th game of the season, provided a brief inspiration as the Supergiants beat the Sunrisers Hyderabad by 34 runs. They lost the next two games - against the Gujarat Lions and the Mumbai Indians - at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune. The Supergiants were also briefly bolstered by the arrival of Australian batsmen Usman Khawaja and George Bailey against the Delhi Daredevils at the Feroz Shah Kotla and went on to win the game by 7 wickets. In the last match held in Visakhapatnam against the Kings XI Punjab the team was struggling to win despite a good start by the openers and losing wickets in intervals, they needed 23 from 6 balls in last over and the Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni standing in the crease; the Captain has hit 3*6 and 1*4 to win the match in a thrilling way and scoring 63 runs from 23 balls. After the end of the 2016 IPL, the Supergiants won only 5 games out of 14, and won only 2 of their 7 home games - 4 at the MCA Stadium in Pune and 3 at their new home ground, the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Vishakhapatnam. They finished placed at seventh place in the points table.