The Short Message Service was sent hours before the IPL qualifier in which Chennai beat Delhi to enter the final. "Vodafone did detect this error in the IPL promotional verbiage late on Friday... The error from our end was in assuming that KKR and CSK will be playing the finals," the official spokesperson of the company said in a statement.
Vodafone said that the error was subsequently corrected. It also said the incident happened in southeast Indian Hyderabad city and has nothing to do with any other city. It said the mistake was due to a wrong understanding about the IPL format of qualifiers. Typically in regular tournaments, Vodafone spokesperson said, winner of two semifinals meet each other in the final.
However, in IPL the winner of qualifier match between teams which stood first and second in the league games goes to the final, which is KKR in this case. The second qualifier was between the teams which stood third and fourth at the end of the league stage. This was between CSK and Mumbai Indians. CSK won this match and qualified for finals. "This was purely an inadvertent promotional campagin error that was corrected immediately upon detection," it added.