Cricket in IPL - Finally attaining the right position
The Indian Premier League, which is into its sixth year, has truly come of age. To quote its chairman Mr. Rajiv Shukla, each year’s IPL has been better than the previous editions but what has stood out in this edition is the main focus on cricket. In my opinion, he is bang on with this statement. Be it the hype over the players’ auction or the controversy of IPL night parties or the issue with organising the event in India due to its overlap with the general elections, something or the other has taken centre stage in previous editions of IPL (while it is also true that the tournament has been a success over the years despite all this). But this year has seen a refreshing change; cricket has been the epicentre of the excitement surrounding the tournament and that’s how it should be for a sporting event.
The game should always be the centre of attraction in any sporting extravaganza. It is true that traditions and controversies sometimes add up to the excitement, but all these can never take the place of a quality match. Imagine a Wimbledon with the strawberry creams and whites but without quality tennis. Traditions and norms at Wimbledon just add up to the excitement, they can never flourish in the absence of high class matches between top players.
The quality of cricket has truly been outstanding in this edition and we are only halfway into the tournament. Take the match between Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils played at the Feroz Shah Kotla few days back and you had a display of quality cricket from both the teams. It started with a glimpse of vintage Tendulkar and a promising Rohit Sharma which helped the Mumbai Indians pose a challenging total. Just when all seemed lost for the team from the capital city of India, who at half time were staring at their seventh consecutive defeat, Delhi’s local boy Sehwag blew apart the opposition. It was the good old Sehwag who knows only one way to bat – attack. The men from the business capital of India had no answer to Sehwag’s heroics. The match was nothing short of a blockbuster for an average Indian cricket fan, be it a Mumbai supporter or a Delhi supporter. Then you have instances of sheer individual brilliance and Chris Gayle’s 175 off 63 balls (the highest individual T20 score till date) was such an act. Statistics tells us that there have been only fourteen instances of batsmen scoring more than this even in one day internationals but this was a knock which was beyond stats. It was a knock which was truly out of this world.
While it is true that fielding is an area which has benefited the most from T20s, the catch by the soon-to-be-forty Mumbai Indians skipper Ricky Ponting against Delhi Daredevils took the fielding bar to an altogether different level. He once again proved that age is just a number, and anyone with talent and the right attitude can succeed in this format. But it has not just been fielding that has shown improvement. Bowlers are not lagging behind. Gone are the days when T20 was just a slam bang hitting show. The close low-scoring matches this year are a testimony to this fact.
Another heartening aspect of IPL (not only this edition but IPL as a whole) has been the way in which it has brought the cricketing world together. Take the example of the team from India’s cricket capital – Mumbai, which has an Australian captain, a Kiwi coach and a South African fielding coach. Or an out of form Virender Sehwag taking batting lessons from the West Indian legend Sir Vivian Richards. In Thomas Friedman’s words, the cricket world is indeed becoming flat and IPL is its flattener. There is no denying that it is the moolah which has brought them together. But at the end of the day, the game of cricket has been the beneficiary.
The inventors of IPL had taken inspiration from the English Premier League and used the same model for cricket. If they want the IPL to have the same success and fan following like that of the EPL, then editions like this year’s would go a long way in fulfilling their dreams. To sum it all, the game of cricket needs tournaments like these, where cricket is the focus.