It's over at last, and I was waiting to say the four words for days now. The Indian Premier League, or IPL as it is better known in the fashionable world, was never my cup of tea; and I don’t care how specially you make it or serve it. Thank you.
Now don’t read me wrong: I am not one of those who says IPL isn’t cricket, that it’s only about the money. We live in a world of hardened realists, and let’s face it -- money matters. And more the merrier. They wouldn’t play cricket if it didn’t pay, and you wouldn’t pay to watch cricketers if they didn’t play.
My answer to people who say IPL is only about show-me-the-money mantra is simple: do you guys flock to hockey or table tennis tournaments? I mean, those sports do not exactly float in money, though god knows how those players crave for the kind of money and attention the cricketers float in.
Sports is not altruism, neither is it about developing Gandhian values. I mean, we do not send our children to sports arena to learn to be great examples of chastity and simplicity: do not get into razzmatazz, do not create a racket, and do not ever, ever ogle at those cheerleaders; wear your chastity belt first before you go to the stadium or sit in front of the telly, Sonu, Monu, Jaggi and Pipli. Do we?
My problem isn’t even with that whole jing-bang of coloured clothing and the other inventions. I mean we -- at least most of us -- do not go to work white-shirted and puffed and cuffed every day. Do we? So why choke the poor cricketers and the raucous and fun-loving public in whites just because some of us believe Test cricket is real cricket? Who is to give that reality test, anyway?
If you want to see your cricketers in white, belting or running after a red ball all day long, hey, go to Test cricket. In fact, you will get five days of men in starched white belting or running after a red leather ball. Buy one, get four free!
My problem is with the whole format. It’s a structural problem, you see. Not a functional one. I don’t like my cricket in 20 overs, and I don’t like made-to-order pitches where even I can go and belt a few boundaries. Give me a break, for I have no illusions. I was always a bad cricketer, and I am a worse and more unfit ‘athlete’ than I was even three weeks ago.
But I like my cricket to be a sport, a contest. An even one between bat and ball, and somehow Twenty20 cricket has never given me that. It’s always about hitting. The Balajis of IPL world has no backup against Gayles and that Mumbai Indian batter who battered him in that last over in that last league match at the Eden Gardens. I am not saying lay a pitch for the likes of L Balaji, but how can you have perfectly decent deliveries just outside the off-stump hit past the cover boundary? Or one pitched on the leg to go past the third man boundary?
It’s just not right, not fair. You never gave the guy a fair chance in the first place. So how can you cheer for those boundaries?
I haven’t seen many matches in IPL, I didn’t want to. But that one I watched -- at least the last few overs. I felt for the man, just as I felt for Brett Lee in the over before the over that left Balaji battered. Not that I have ever liked either Bajali or Lee, but for me cricket is a game where the bowlers bowl and batsmen bat. Not a game where batsmen hit balls that bowlers dish out.
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