The two-tier league, to be played over a month, has been devised in American baseball league style, tailor-made for television and featuring teams with macho names.
The matches will be played in a double-leg round-robin format, with five teams, featuring star players, in the Premier Division vying for the winner's purse of Rs. 30 lakh and as many teams in the First Division, the winner of which will bag Rs 400,000. The total prize will add up to Rs. 71 lakhs.
The matches feature four quarters of 17-1/2 minutes each. But more radical would be the reduction of players on each side as a match heads for the tie-breaker.
While 11 players will be on the field during the 70-minute regulation time, a side would be reduced to nine in the first extended time of 15 minutes. The number would go down to seven in the next 10 minutes.
The PHL Trophy, made from Swarovski Crystals has been designed by Vibhor Sogani, who also designed the Samsung Trophy for the 2004 Indo-Pakistan series.
