Cricketly Yours...The IPL

I live in a country where cricket is treated as a religion and players as god. India may not be an economic or any other superpower, but most certainly the only country that governs the world cricket is India. When BCCI, the richest and the most powerful cricket board, launched the Indian Premier League, all eyes were set on how successful and crowd pulling it will be.

IPL teams were bought by the most flamboyant industrialist and Bollywood stars and it became evident that lot of money will pour into the game. It is not only the money; even the glamour has become associated with cricket so much that IPL has not only remained a sport but an entertainment material. No matter MTV very humourously has coined IPL as Indian Paisa League... :-D The shorter version of the game will definitely attract audience, who usually don't have time to watch the entire ODI.

With the grand inauguration of IPL in Bangalore and the response people showed, I feel that the charm of cricket in India won't let anyone down. But the team composition and too much of money and glamour involved have created many unanswered question.

Will the IPL teams generate enough fan-following that people become hardcore supporters of a particular team, like the European football clubs...??

Will the players be driven by the passion of performing for their team or money or will just be employees of a team owner...??

Will the audience watch a regular IPL match with the same level of interest and anxiety as a match played between two countries in which patriotic feelings also get attached...??

And the most important one.... Will it improve cricket as a gentleman's game??

Well I don't intend to comment on the last one, as I am one of those few who support aggression, and I am a Sreesanth fan only because he treats the Aussies with the dose of the medicine they developed....

Well personally I don't see any fanatic kind of fan following happening in near future. It is most likely that people neither would identify themselves with their city teams nor Chennai would cheer if Murali gets Sachin out. And if it happens, then certainly we are promoting regionalism to an extent.

The media needs to play a role here, which I am afraid it won't. The kind of news content we see today, "Aussie ki Taisi" when India plays Down Under, makes our media so irresponsible and so not mature that it can hardly be assumed that it won't add spice to Inter-City teams rivalry...

Well as far as players are concerned, IPL has a lot to offer to upcoming talent and the retired players as well. Money does matter, but I feel the importance of the game should be the foremost. And if money drives players to perform better, it doesn't even matter.

The real business model of IPL will only be a success if the cricket fanatic Indian public gives an effective response to it. All the TV rights, ad rates, ticket sales etc depend how much the people appreciate it. If they do, IPL is all set to be a great money spinner.

IPL does provide with cricket lovers an opportunity to see the Sachin-Warne duel, which probably would have never taken place, Indian and Pakistani players fighting together for achieving the same target, Ricky Ponting and Ishant Sharma do a high-five (the latter had troubled the former big time in the series Down Under), more 6-sixes overs and probably big knocks in 20 overs match (nobody expected McCullum to score 150+).

IPL is the latest buzz around and surely something that cannot be ignored...

The people I will Never Forget

The people I will never forget...

Sanket

The simplest person (read kid) of our wing...Thanks for managing my accounts, and Ram Babu ke Parathe, and being so good, allowing me to use your bed and PJs that leave you scratching your head and and...endless "ands"

Harsha
Innocence still exists in this world...Although can't learn it from him...better appreciate his....And more innocently he claims that he actually is evil... I bet he can get away with anything with his innocence.....

Garry
Had we not organized Rampage together, we would have only known that we have same names. In one simple phrase "A great friend for life"...Always stay in touch.

Joshi
He is the person you would find everywhere batooing gyaan :-P . Two of us hatched so many conspiracy theories, discussed and debated on everything from sports to politics to girls and everything you can imagine, the weirdest being what if RAW assassinated Musharraf?

Nattu
Stealing a Sidhu quote, "His patience is like a tube of toothpaste, it is never over" and I mean it.

Gajju
Carefree, don't give a damn attitude...Can't ever forget him asking about GEO, LEO MEO satellites from a call centre employee and asking him why ISD to Bangladesh is costlier than US.

Muskan
Entertainer, loud speaker, an eccentric personality a laughter pill... You can love him, or hate him...clichéd but CANNOT ignore him for sure. A self proclaimed scientist...I wish you really make your dream come true with a Nobel.

Pachar
Another friend as a fortunate by- product from organizing Rampage. His rugged charm and innate interpersonal and managerial skills will take him a long way.

Akansh
Thanks dude...you did all the lab work we were supposed to do together :-P...

Himanshu
Anything you need, he has it, from a screw-driver to open a PC to a pump to inflate a football, a needle and thread to a frisbee. A person with a great sense of humour, and his slapstick comments come out as Jonty's reflexes....Thanks for showing the T20 World cup in OAT and all the movies... :-)

Alter
I can only write that he is a coding champ and don't know what else to write about him, but 1 thing for sure can never forget him.

Aniket
Latest Hindi songs sunane ke liye shukriya :-) ... Well most of the time I spend outside my room is in his room... Have had lotsa bakar sessions there...strategizing Aimcats and the most unforgettable Muskan-Lalla duel..

Lalla
If there is a synonym for "Changes are Inevitable", it is him.

Pradeep
A simple straight forward person, a movie and music buff and one of the few intellectual species of our wing. I like him for his candidness and he is a person who would say No then giving a round about answer.

Ashwin
My roomie. We are probably the only roommates who haven't fought on any issue and if there is an award for the same, it goes to us. Calm and DND person.

A new begining...

Why to start blogging. It is probably the first question that any blogger tries to answer. Having a blog gives one an opportunity to share his views and thoughts, and get others opinions on the same. Honestly I don't know what the future of this blog is. These days I have lot of free time, so trying something new is up on the list and this gives birth to another blog in the web.

I think blogging isn't just another way to utilize time, it is about thinking of the world around, developing a perspective, letting the thoughts flow and above all taking others views on them. Loads of experiences I want to share, my views and opinions on them, probably are the driving me to create a blog. Today, if I look back, I am not able to recollect the most happening moments of our first year in the college.

Blogging provides a good way of keeping in touch with your memories and prevent them from fading away. I believe that creating a blog is a good idea to cherish such moments all through the life. And also, this blog will be like the movie Momento, the past experiences will come later. So I guess blogger’s archiving won’t be useful, at least initially.

Well I will try to maintain and update the blog...and I am sure I will TRY. But it is an assurance from a champ in lazing.. :P