Nadal and Sampras to play for Mumbai in IPTL; Djokovic for Dubai

Rafael Nadal and Pete Sampras, who will team up for the Mumbai franchise in the IPTL

The Mumbai-based franchise of the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) has pulled off a major coup by landing current World No. 1 Rafael Nadal and former World No. 1 Pete Sampras in the inaugural player draft held today in Dubai.

World No. 2 Novak Djokovic was drafted in the Dubai team, while the women’s top-ranked player Serena Williams will play for Singapore. Reigning Wimbledon champion Andy Murray and women’s No. 3 Victoria Azarenka were both drafted in the Bangkok team.

The Mumbai team seems the strongest on paper, and it also scores highly on the Indian quotient, with both Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna having been drafted into the team. Glamour girl and former French Open champion Ana Ivanovic will also find herself in the Indian financial capital come November.

Sampras’s long-time rival Andre Agassi, meanwhile, will team up with Serena in Singapore, and former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic will play for Dubai.

There were initially supposed to be five franchises in the event, but the name of Kuala Lumpur was conspicuously absent in the list of team rosters made public by the organizers today after the completion of the draft. The organizers also revealed that approximately $24 million had been spent by the teams on the 28 players.

Here are the squads:

Mumbai: Rafael Nadal, Pete Sampras, Ana Ivanovic, Gael Monfils, Rohan Bopanna, Sania Mirza, Fabrice Santoro

Dubai: Novak Djokovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Goran Ivanisevic, Janko Tipsarevic, Nenad Zimonjic, Martina Hingis, Malek Jaziri

Bangkok: Andy Murray, Victoria Azarenka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Carlos Moya, Daniel Nestor, Kirsten Flipkens

Singapore: Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, Tomas Berdych, Lleyton Hewitt, Patrick Rafter, Daniela Hantuchova, Bruno Soares, Nick Kyrgios

The teams can still add players to their squad even after the completion of this draft, up to a maximum of 10 players in total. The most notable names to be ignored in the draft are those of Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka and women’s No. 3 Agnieszka Radwanska.

The tournament, a brainchild of Mahesh Bhupathi and German legend Boris Becker, will take place between 28 November and 13 December this year. All four teams will play in each city over a three-day period before moving on to the next. There will be a total of 24 matches played in the league, with the first on November 28 and the last on December 13.

Here are the fixture dates:

Singapore: November 28 to 30

Bangkok: December 2 to 4

Mumbai: December 7 to 9

Dubai: December 11 to 13

The drafted players were seemingly very pleased at being selected, with many of them expressing their joy on Twitter. Here are some of the notable tweets:

Happy to hear I just got drafted to Bangkok @iptl

— Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (@tsonga7) March 2, 2014

Great news and happy to be part of the 1st year of the @iptl . Team Mumbai it is for me. It’s gonna be great being part of this. :)

— Rohan Bopanna (@rohanbopanna) March 2, 2014

“@iptl: #BREAKING: @tomasberdych to play for Singapore . #IPTLDraft”happy

— Tomáš Berdych (@tomasberdych) March 2, 2014