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...