The two-year deal breaks on the channel from the first match of the Indian Oil Cup today with India taking on Sri Lanka in a day-night encounter at Dambulla.

Taj Television VP programming Peter Hutton said, "The concept behind the Maruti Suzuki Cricket Ratings is to come up with a cricket ranking system of the highest caliber. We wanted to create something that will allow viewers to identify with the methodology and at the same time create interesting television.

"We use an in house system which is capable of calculating and updating the players and teams rankings taking into consideration a number of aspects such as quality of competition, venue etc. We have also consciously made it visually exciting and have intentionally stayed away from excessive technicalities."

Maruti Suzuki GM marketing Mayank Pareek says, "We are thrilled to be associated with the cricket rating property on Ten Sports. With their exciting line-up of India cricket over the next couple of years including the India tour of Pakistan and India tour of West Indies in 2006, I am confident that we will derive tremendous mileage from this property."

Maruti Suzuki media manager Shaswati Saradar said "We believe that a property with such great saliency and frequency will keep us on top of the mind with our consumers. The top quality analysis of the performance of various teams and individual players will help us build a connect with the viewer as cricket is a passion in this country. We are sure that in months to come the words Cricket ratings" will be synonymous to Maruti Suzuki Cricket Ratings".

Taj Television India ad sales VP Rukin Kizilbash said, " We are delighted to have a partner like Maruti Suzuki for our premier property. We believe that the partnership will only get bigger and better in years to come. With our superlative live cricket content coming up I believe they will get tremendous value in associating with us on this property."