The Royal Challengers Bangalore have dropped ticket prices to their games. This is the first sign that the IPL is no more the easy sell it used to be. Maybe, it is just ennui as it is now Season-9 and not even a couple of new teams in the West have done enough to offset the absence of a couple of old favourites in Rajasthan Royals, the winners of IPL-1, and Chennai Super Kings, one of the most consistent performers of the league. We await the season TRPs to know how much the league has come down in popular estimation.
To take the league out of India and play it somewhere else in the world — UAE, South Africa, England, USA — would not be logistically impossible for a cash-rich league with a couple of billion dollars in the rights kitty. But, it would not quite be the Indian Premier League then, would it This is the great IPL dilemma. The BCCI secretary may be guilty of emotional blackmail in his saying IPL-10 could shift out of the country if drought or Assembly elections come in its way. No one might take him too seriously.
Cricket and rain don’t normally go together. This may be the first time cricketers will pray for a very good monsoon so that the next IPL may not face the problems of the current one. It is a matter of perception and the view that cricket is not some holy festival that must go on regardless cannot be ignored altogether even if it it’s not the duty of cricket to arrange for water.
It’s a hard time for all and IPL must share the pain too, if not quite in having to go away somewhere else. To rework the logistics after being pushed out of Maharashtra is going to be headache enough. There is also the chain reaction of the top court decision to consider as there are murmurs already in Rajasthan about the water situation being even worse than in Maha. There s going to be bit of a juggle to finish IPL-9 on time and without further damage to the image hits already suffered by the suspension of two teams for two years for indulging in betting, preposterously enough from the dugout itself, by players and enthusiastic owners.
The one positive point to emerge from the field so far is the pitches seem to be much fairer than normal with teams opting out of the spinners’ fantasy tale of the white ball turning square and challenging the batsman to find a way to hit it for the maximum. The better quality of the pitches has led to a huge proportion of matches ending in favour of the chasing team. Also, with years of experience behind them now, teams are not panicking one bit in the face of a target and are going about it quite methodically. Their nerves seem far better controlled, so much so even tailender Umesh Yadav comes up with a very creditable straight driven six to wrap up a game.
The quality of the cricket is not necessarily any higher except in fielding acrobatics, of which there has been a lot to see and appreciate in catches on the line, with fielders showing fantastic application of mind in lobbing the ball with perfect timing while having to step out of the field even as colleagues are flexing their bodies to complete the catch. The run outs bring out as much mirth as applause when stumps and bails light up on being broken or dislodged and the batsmen are picking themselves up to dust their clothes and possibly shake off the foul effects of the kind of water being used these days to prepare pitches. Should we hold our noses while batsmen dive
