Tuesday, March 23, 2010

IPL - India's Popular League

Here it is again. The third time and successful. Lalit Modi and company seem to have cracked the marketing code like no other. Or perhaps not. One may say that cricket was always going to set the stage on fire in India. With somebody with the right contacts and sufficient hold over the BCCI machinery, it was always going to be a cake walk to crack the T20 cricket code. But what about the temporary problems which were created and subsequently resolved like in 2009 when IPL had to be moved out of India. Wasn't he swift in deciding and executing the plan. I think he was indeed.
But IPL has sold out like the proverbial hot-cake and apparently all the tickets for the matches in Bangalore have been sold. Same may be true for other venues. And has the gala lived up to the hype. You bet. I guess a super-over, a hat-trick, scores over 200 and overhauling of a 200+ score, a 37 ball hundred in the first two weeks - do qualify the event as being equal to its hype. So much so that the occasional murmur for the match-fixing scandal has started to be raised in different quarters.
The novel story this year however has been the coming good of the so called veterans of the Test arena. Jacques Kallis has amused and awed his spectators and Sachin Tendulkar has reminded again as to why they confer the "god" title on him. He has cracked the T20 code while conserving the grace in his batsmanship. KUmble, Ganguly, Dravid haven't lagged far. Does it not then allow Mr Modi to tag the future franchises at the whopping $250 million mark. I think it does. Which is why the two new teams have been grabbed by business houses despite the lavish price tag.
So my thing is - IPL is there to stay. Cliche, aint it. Yes, few prophesies are that way anyway.