Kolkata Knight Riders’ Ricky Ponting and Ishant Sharma during practice in Bangalore on Thursday. (PTI)

Bangalore: There’s much riding on the Indian Premier League (IPL), not least being millions of bucks. Come Friday, of course, and it will be time for it to move beyond the buzz stage.

On test won’t just be the Twenty20 skills of the biggest names in contemporary cricket (including the recently retired ones), barring a few like Brian Lara and Inzamam-ul Haq, Andrew Flintoff and Michael Clarke, but the business model adopted by the Shah Rukh Khans.

“It’s something new… It’s something exciting but a lot of things need to work for it to be successful,” is what former India captain Rahul Dravid, who’ll be leading the formidable Bangalore Royal Challengers, said.

He couldn’t have put it any better.

Dravid added: “I’m sure there’ll be teething problems… I’m sure issues will crop up, but a start has been made and let’s see how it goes… The IPL is going to be a success if people support it and want to see it…”

The Kolkata Knight Riders’ captain, Sourav Ganguly, told The Telegraph: “It’s a new concept, yes, but I have no reason to believe it’s not going to be a success…”

In his view, the presence of the top guns from across the world (except England) guarantees that the IPL will be a hit.

As for the first-day-first-show bit, Sourav and Dravid’s teams (or Shah Rukh and Vijay Mallya’s) will be battling it out at the Chinnaswamy here.

Incidentally, both captains are convinced that no one team is going to begin the competition as the favourite.

“All have strengths and weaknesses, with no one team being the clear favourite… The Knight Riders, in my view, have plenty of firepower upfront but we’ve got a balanced team,” Dravid pointed out.

For Bangalore, Anil Kumble isn’t fit, but Zaheer Khan’s raring to go.

The West Indies captain, Chris Gayle, will arrive early on Friday, but it’s highly unlikely that he’s going to play for the Knight Riders in the opener.

One understands Debabrata Das and Iqbal Abdullah won’t be in the XI either.

While the match begins at 8.00 pm, the opening ceremony has been scheduled for between 6.30-7.15pm.