Indian Premier League 2018 will kick off with a grand opening ceremony at Mumbai's Wankhede stadium on April 7. The opening ceremony will feature Bollywood stars like Ranveer Singh, Parineeti Chopra, Varun Dhawan and Jacqueline Fernandez.

Witchcraft has won the bid to stage the opening ceremony, which will see former cricketers and two IPL captains; MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma. Other six captains won't be present as they will be at their scheduled match venues for preparation.

“We’ve done away with holding the opening ceremony a day in advance. Four teams play their matches on April 8 (Kings XI Punjab play the Delhi Daredevils in Mohali at 4p, while the Kolkata Knight Riders take on Royal Challengers Bangalore at 8 pm). The game in Mohali was supposed to have taken place in Delhi earlier before the schedule was changed. It’s a 4 pm game, and we can’t expect the captains of those teams to fly in the evening to Delhi and undertake a road trip in the night, or on the morning of the match,” a source in the Board told Times Of India on Wednesday.

Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings are set to play the opening game of the IPL 2018.

The budget for this year's IPL was also cut short by the Committee of Administrators (CoA) from Rs 30 crore to Rs 20 crore. They strongly objected to the unnecessary use of money during the event. The CoA had also raised issues as to why BCCI should spend so much on “entertainment” when cricket is the main attraction of the event. 

Last year, every team had hosted an opening ceremony at their home ground which had raised the expenses.