Thursday 15 April 2010

IPL - A Game Changer

IPL is the buzzword of India, oh sorry, the world today. The whole of the cricketing fever is inundated by IPL today. Even the lobby of feminists who formerly glued to the soap operas unflinchingly have modified their tastes of Entertainment (courtesy, TOI).
Even in our colleges, die-hard fans talk about IPL all day. Some solicit their support for a team while the other is always interested in undermining his/her support to favor his/her own cause. Everyone has a favorite (Mumbai Indians rock….), and the favorite is not only because of the presence of cricketing aficionados present in the team, its due to various other reasons too.

One of my friend likes RCB because he loves the flamboyant Vijay Mallaya, and loves Katrina Kaif too. One of my other friends hates CSK because he thinks it has too many good players. And this list could go on and on, the crux of the cited examples is that there are many factors that lead to the liking and disliking of an IPL team besides the liking of the players are celebrity endorsements, money that goes into the team, dress color, geographical support, etc….

Statistics say IPL has transgressed all basic norms of a sports league viewership. It has even greater hype than the age old and famous EPL. And we all know the money that went into the auctioning of Pune and Kochi, it was the world’s costliest bid for a team in a league, greater even than that of Legendary Chelsea.

Speaking about the organizing of IPL, I personally suspect much politics goes behind creating such an enormous event. Lalit Modi, the God of IPL (literally) is a very specious personality who has attracted attention these days. Consider the latest spat between Modi and Tharoor, sources say that Tharoor has received an SMS warning him of resting his case against Modi as IPL has linkages to D-Company. Although the details are being investigated into, one can’t stop thinking of the fact that this can’t be entirely fallacious based on the type of money that goes into the business and the presence of Modi, who has a criminal background and has served a sentence in the US.

More to come up in the later days, its too early of me to be a connoisseur to the politics and such polemical issues that come up in the newspapers, but I do not flinch in asserting the fact that IPL is much more than what it seems to be. Some even say that from the first ball to the last, IPL is fixed and it is only as an entertainment to people, and to raise money as the betting process is on acceleration during the IPL. (we have our own betting leagues in our college, we form groups and the loser team will give a treat to the winner team). One of my friend suggested that IPL has players playing every match without any injury only because of the money involved in playing the match.

Lets just hang on to our seats and be a witness to what IPL has to unfold in the days, months and years to come. Personally, in IPL-3, I would want MI to win because I love Sachin Tendulkar.