Twenty20 cricket has undoubtedly changed the face of the sport. Unlike Test matches that take five days to finish if played to their completion, a T20 game can be over in a matter of hours meaning sports fans can easily catch a game or two in one day.

The format of the game has caught the world's attention for two major events. One, Stanford's Twenty20 for $20m, offered the winners of a one-off exhibition match a huge cash prize while the other, the Indian Premier League, is approaching its third year and is a playground for rich businessmen and the world's top players.

Because of the rising prices of players, a cap was put on the money that could be spent on an individual. The increasing payments started in 2008 when Australian Andrew Symonds cost $1.35m while Indian hero Mahendra Singh Dhoni cost $1.5m. The following year the English pair of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff topped this as both cost their clubs - Bangalore Royal Challengers and Chennai Super Kings - $1.55m a piece.

This year a cap of $1m was placed on bidding and five players were sold in the $900,000 - $1m price range: Sanath Jayasuriya, Jacqes Kallis, Brett Lee, Irfan Pathan and Ishant Sharma.

Another change for the 2010 season was the removal of the icon status. The previous two seasons saw five of India's elite players awarded this honour which meant that they would automatically receive at least 15% more than the next best paid player in their team. As well as Sachin Tendulkar, the four players to be labelled as icons were Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh.

Although the restricted bidding process won't attract the same number of headlines, many of the game's stars are set to be involved in this year's IPL. Included in the highest earners are Harbajan Singh, Shane Bond and Chris Gayle, who famously said he'd rather play Twenty20 than Test cricket, much to the displeasure of many of cricket's traditionalists.

Because of the level of quality on display, many crickets fans the world over will make the trip to India in March or April to see some of the tournament. Because of the high demand, tickets and hotels will be in short supply and many travellers will be looking to book as much as they can beforehand either using the internet or by calling ahead.

But, while phoning India trying to find a hotel can be an expensive task but by checking out all the different offers, it is possible to find cheap calls to India to help cut down costs.

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