Take a bunch of hyped players, mix them up a handful of international players, drive in a group of cash rich businessmen, some bollywood stars and get a hoard of media groups to cover the marketplace. The result is a over-hyped cocktail of IPL - oops ( DLF has paid 200 crores just for this and if I am saying IPL….) …sorry DLF -Indian Premier League. BCCI seems to have blown away other boards and is becoming the MCC - Master in Cricket Commoditisation. It has the ability to sell anything associated with cricket. A thing which others can’t replicate because nobody else can get more than a billion people to watch a sport.
It is said that the “Game is bigger than the individual “, yesterday, Individual was bigger than the game and , “Money was bigger than the individual “. With all the media hype about the cost of the each player and people behind the buying spree, the effects of this money bashing remains to be seen. The complete details of the team and the players bought are here .
The team owners have said that they are doing this for the passion of cricket and helping its development. Agreed we Indians are more passionate than many others, however if they are really interested in developing the game, they could have spoken with state cricket associations and funded this money for the development of the state level game. It is ironic that media has forgot to highlight this to these passionate followers who seem to have sprung up from nowhere.
As highlighted by Rajasekar, if If young players - Ishant, RP singh and the likes are going to be paid such a huge money, it remains to be seen if they will concentrate and improve their game seriously. Money corrupts and IPL should not be a reason for losing talented people. The club cricket has the potential to disrupt the entire game and the cricketing talents by leading to club oriented alignments and selections.
I think the future of Indian cricket or for that matter the world cricket depends a lot on how the IPL tournament and the clubs are going to be managed. Whatever be said, 20 February 2008 is a date that has to be etched in history. It is a day when the game of cricket changed forever - good or bad - time will say !!!
2 responses so far ↓
IPL Blogger // February 26, 2008 at 10:46 am
IPL is going to be a big success in a country like india. It wuld gradually be interesting for other countries as their top batsmen can play in IPL. important is the money flowing over IPL. View all the teams http://www.iplblogger.com/index.php?q=node/30
thirdstreet // February 26, 2008 at 10:55 am
IPL will be a success. There is no doubt about that. But if it is not managed properly, it can defeat cricket. Though it is highly entertaining, Cricket is not baseball. If money precedes cricket, we may lose talented players who end up playing more of T20 than say test cricket. That is the only concern.
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