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Monday, June 02, 2008

Notes from the IPL 

It’s all over with the ballyhoo and as the stardust clears, it may be time to take a sense-check of what hath the IPL wrought. In all the six weeks, I saw a massive total of three Mumbai Indians shirts, ostensibly the local team, even as I counted twenty-four Messi and even six, Gasp, Huntelaar jerseys, which can only mean that the gaudy blue excrescence did not exactly take the metropolis by storm.

The old scambag Lalit Modi ( Ed-Who reminds of that confidence trickster Oily Carlisle of Wodehousian fame, was it ?) who will indubitably take credit for this concept and vision when it was already prepared and delivered as the Indian Cricket League some months ago. It may be early days but getting a nation such as India to back eight fairly cosmopolitan city-teams was always frought with danger. As it happens, the winning team ( that sad nod to imperialist designs which should have ended 61 years ago, leading to many teams alluding to themselves as ‘Royals) had precisely one local who ironically did not even get to the second eleven as the final game dawned.

And for all the talent unearthed in this farce, I cannot fathom the likes of Swapnil Asnodkar lasting even an over against quality bowling let alone Ravinder Jadeja who would not last an over even if there was no bowler at the other end. I would love to hear what folks like Amol Muzumdar , the winning captain of Mumbai in an inconsequential contest called the Ranji Trophy, have to say about this talent rigmarole. How many can actually remember more than four players of any team ? Where is the passion ?

The team who won had a consistent set of players who performed in most matches though I do feel Watson would not be fit to fetch Cairns’ hits from the roof of the stadium, if one were to match the two muscular all-rounders. Shane Warne has always been inspirational as a person, and so judging him on the basis of his ability to lead players with two decades less experience than him would be futile. Can he get, for example, the best of Stuart MacGill ? One wonders. Further, one just would like to hear from Munaf Patel on what he thought of the “roles” he was to play, and in which language was he communicated to !!

So I guess the learnings are —Money matters, People need an outlet and out-of-work cine stars can find viewers,Pugs have large livers and they cannot be kept out in the sun too long and that many companies need to sell fans !!


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