It will be cricket, old chap, but not as you know it.

Next Friday night in India, the Bangalore Royal Challengers, a side owned by Vijay Mallya, the liquor baron behind Kingfisher beer, will take on the Kolkata Knight Raiders, a team backed by Shahrukh Khan, the Bollywood megastar.

The interest will be immense, and not only because of Mr Khan's astounding popularity (imagine George Clooney and Leonardo Di Caprio combined, but with better dance moves).

The match will be the first in the Indian Premier League (IPL), a six-week tournament that has the cricket establishment agog and has taken the commercialisation of sport to a new level.

In January the television rights were sold by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the organising body, for $1 billion (£507 million), which confirmed the sub-continent as the financial superpower of cricket. The auction of eight new city sides raised another $720 million. The bidding then began for a pool of the world's leading players.

The venerable game has never seen anything like it. For the next several weeks Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain of India's one-day team who was bought by the Chennai Super Kings for $1.5 million, will earn as much as Cristiano Ronaldo, the Manchester United footballer.

Andrew Wildblood, of IMG, the sports agency that is the commercial brain behind the IPL, could market ice cubes to Inuits. Flogging cricket to India ought to be a doddle for him, but nothing has been left to chance. More than 200 variations were tested before the “optimum commercial and investment model” was formulated, he said.

The generation of profits is crucial. Team owners include Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, who is not the type to stand for an under-performing asset. Mr Khan is rich, but not to the extent that he can afford to forgo returns.

“The owners must make money,” Jitendra Singh, dean of the Nanyang Business School in Singapore, said. “They will turn the screws on the [IPL] if the right results do not come about.”

The IPL is based on the Barclays Premier League, but a price cap insulates the owners from the main commercial impediment to the top flight of English football - the exorbitant cost of players. No stone has been left unturned in the quest for cash. In an unusual move, Mr Mallya is sponsoring the IPL umpires with £14 million over five years.

Still, reaping gate receipts and advertising revenues presents a challenge. After years of match-fixing, when aam aadmi - India's man in the street - sees a match go to the wire, he is likely to assume that it is rigged. Many do not watch the national side unless they are certain that it is about to win something big. English football receives far more coverage than existing domestic cricket competitions.

To rekindle interest, each star-studded IPL team has a 50-50 chance of making it to the semi-finals. Purists dismiss the tournament's Twenty20 format, in which a match can be wrapped up in a couple of hours, as a parody of the proper thing, but Mr Wildblood praises it for not being “any more demanding on anybody's calendar than going to the movies”.

Corruption was attributable to players' paltry fees, he said, adding that “the disparity between cricket and other sports is less [now] and, arguably, the temptation [to take a bung] is reduced”.

However, the IPL is still on a sticky wicket. When Preity Zinta, the Bollywood actress, collided with a security guard's elbow at the launch of the Mohali team that she co-owns, her black eye threatened to become an omen. It soon emerged that Australian cricketers may play only the first IPL games because of international duties. Indian newspapers have bridled at the IPL's terms and have threatened a boycott.

The Indian national side's dismal loss to South Africa last week was blamed on the players' IPL commitments, risking a public backlash. Footage of Ms Zinta dancing on stage with her Indian stars while their adversaries were in the practice nets did not help.

Mr Wildblood, who must deliver thrills and spills, dismisses all of the above, perhaps correctly. When asked what the IPL must deliver, he said: “It better be bloody exciting.” It has been already - even before a single ball has been bowled.

New league bowls a maiden over

— The first recorded cricket match in India took place in 1721, when a group of British sailors gathered to play in western India

— Indian cricket players are officially treated as amateurs for tax purposes, even though the national team has one of the highest levels of sponsorship in the world

— The team is in the middle of a five-year deal with Nike worth $40 million (£20 million). The rival adidas sued Nike over the deal

— Seventy-eight of the world’s leading players were sold in February to the highest IPL bidders for about $42 million

— The most expensive player was Mahendra Singh Dhoni, captain of India’s Twenty20 world champion team, who was bought for $1.5 million over three seasons by the Chennai Super Kings franchise, which is owned by India Cements

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