LUCKNOW, Feb. 21 -- The maiden edition of the Lucknow Premier League (LPL), a franchise based tournament on the pattern of the Indian Premier League, is all set to change the cricketing ecosystem of the state capital as six entrepreneurs have bought teams and are determined to give a bigger stage to the local cricketers. The LPL begins in the first week of March. LPL not only promises a bigger platform for the young cricketers of the state capital, but will allow technical experts of the game, including umpires, scorers, groundsmen and other vendors to avail the opportunity to earn name, fame and money. The franchises are: Lucknow Challengers, Lucknow Strikers, Lucknow Nawabs, Lucknow Lions, Lucknow Aces and Lucknow Panthers. LPL was supposed to be held last year itself even before the first edition of the Kanpur Premier League, first-ever District Cricket League across any unit of the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association. The LPL, which has allowed all its franchises to have two cricketers from other districts, is all set to see the participation of many top cricketers of UP white-ball teams, including one of IPL's big buys of the season Prashant Veer, young leg spinner Zeeshan Ansari, Karn Sharma and Vipraj Nigam. "We have been champions both in A and C divisions of the local leagues for a number of times, and LPL will allow our young cricketers to draw the attention of scouters for the forthcoming UPT20 League as well as IPL too, if somebody performs extra ordinary," said Pradeep Mishra, who owns Lucknow Challengers in the league. "We have been doing our best to raise the standard of local cricket for the last 10 years through our cricketing set up. We have our own stadium and other facilities for the cricketers of Lucknow, and now we want our cricketers to learn playing in professional leagues, which promises a lot of excitement," said Mishra. It is learnt that only this year, Mishra's company decided to upgrade the facilities of famous Rajajipuram Mini Stadium by establishing the modern facilities for cricket, football, taekwondo, pickleball and even for box cricket. "The idea behind this interest is to develop Lucknow as a sporting hub and I want to see all the youngsters both boys and girls fulfilling their desire of playing sport in Rajajipuram area, which is located in other part of the city," said Mishra, adding, "My interest in sport is to see young athletes of Lucknow graduating to upper level in future." "As a kid I too wanted to play cricket and other sports at this level when I was young, but there were no such events or facilities for us in our playing days. And now I want to see the younger generation not to miss the opportunity and that's the reason for my commitment for the development of sports culture in this Nawabi city," he added. Mishra, however, said that Uttar Pradesh has a lot of potential in sports mainly in cities like Meerut, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Lucknow and even Kanpur and such cricket leagues will surely produce future stars for the state as well as country. Akash Upadhyay, chief operating officer of the Quad Sports, which is managing the LPL, on Friday said that there was a tremendous response to the event as more than 1000 cricketers from Lucknow itself appeared in the two-day trials. "Every franchise will have 22 players and they have already bought 17 players each and we have requested the UPCA to allow teams to have five outsiders so that in a match they could field at least three at a time," said Upadhyay, himself a cricketer of Lucknow. The LPL owner, Cricket Association Lucknow, too is looking forward to a good outcome of the event for the next domestic season. "Lucknow has been a feeding hub of cricketers for different board trophy teams of Uttar Pradesh and I am sure that the LPL will help us identify more talents for the future," CAL's secretary KM Khan said on Friday....