Indian Premier League to start without England quartet

Morgan, Shah and Lumb will be England's three IPL representatives

The fourth Indian Premier League season begins on Friday - but without four of the seven England players who were signed at the auction.

Injury has ruled out Kevin Pietersen, Stuart Broad, Dimitri Mascarenhas and most recently Paul Collingwood.

It leaves batsmen Eoin Morgan, Owais Shah and Michael Lumb as England's only representatives in the competition.

The Twenty20 event has grown from 60 to 74 games with the addition of two new franchises - Kochi and Pune.

The lucrative 10-team tournament, which mixes floodlit cricket with Bollywood glitz and high-profile corporate sponsorship of incidents during the games, begins on Friday at 1530 BST.

In the opening game, defending champions Chennai Super Kings host Kolkata Knight Riders at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, which will also host the final on 28 May.

With the eight original teams able to retain a maximum of only four players from last year's squad, and the rest made available to buy with a salary cap set at £5.5m, teams spent around £40m on 127 players at the 2011 auction, with India batsman Gautam Gambhir the most expensive signing at $2.4m (£1.47m) for Kolkata.

But only seven England players were bought, despite more than 20 entering the auction.

Middlesex's Morgan, who played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2010, was snapped up by Kolkata this time, while new Essex signing Shah, out of favour with England since the 2009 Champions Trophy, will line up for his third IPL team - new franchise Kochi Tuskers Kerala - after spells with Delhi and Kolkata.

Hampshire opener Lumb, who played in England's World Twenty20-winning side last year after a stint with Rajasthan Royals in the 2010 IPL, was signed by Deccan Chargers, the 2009 winners.

But he will not be linking up with Pietersen, the most expensive English player after he was signed by Deccan for $650,000 (£398,000) before a hernia operation curtailed his participation in the World Cup and ruled him out of the IPL.

All-rounders Broad and Mascarenhas were both recruited by Kings XI Punjab at the auction, but Broad has been ruled out by the side strain which ended his World Cup, while Mascarenhas has not yet recovered from surgery on an Achilles tendon injury.

Collingwood recently learned he needed to have knee surgery and was replaced by New Zealand's Jacob Oram in the Rajasthan squad on Tuesday.

The Durham all-rounder's retirement from Test cricket means Morgan is likely to be named in the England squad to face Sri Lanka in the first Test at the end of May, which would rule him out of the final stages of the IPL.

Chennai were the 2010 IPL champions

Ravi Bopara, another contender to fill Collingwood's Test spot, turned down the chance to replace him at Rajasthan in order to fight for his England place by staying in the domestic arena.

Chennai beat Mumbai Indians in last year's final, which was overshadowed the following day when IPL commissioner Lalit Modi was suspended by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) over corruption allegations.

Modi, who is seen as the architect of the IPL, was subsequently removed from all involvement in Indian cricket. He also faces accusations of tax evasion and money-laundering but denies allegations of wrongdoing. He said in November he would not return to India to answer the corruption charges.

BCCI vice-president Chirayu Amin has replaced Modi as IPL chief.

The IPL then expelled Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab in October for breaching ownership rules, although both were subsequently reinstated after a court battle.