IPL 2008

Courtesy www.24timepass.com/sports
India Today, a leading news magazine, describes the event as Cricket’s Greatest Show. Shashi Tharoor in his article in ‘Times of India’ daily defines the Twenty20 game, aptly – an American Sport accidentally invented by India. The teams' names takes us back to monarchy; Rajasthan Royals, Chennai Super Kings, Kings XI Punjab etc. With all the hue and cry about its success, what is the common man’s take on this mega event? I set about asking ordinary people – the middle class and lower middle class working lot – taxi drivers, housewives, average white-collared office-going person, teenagers, grandfathers (who have enjoyed Viv Richards’ powerful team annihilating the rest of the world) and tried to assimilate this event, perhaps India’s best sitcom of the year.

Before even this event began, many cricket fans had been hooked to ICL, a parallel initiative to BCCI, led by Zee Telefilms. The Twenty20 idea germinated in England and became hugely popular here during the World Cup Series, when India won the match in a thrilling finish. I became aware of the ICL trend, when going in a taxi across the city. The driver changed the radio channel from a popular hindi movie song to a standard cricket commentary. Piqued, I asked him whether a Ranji game going on. He smiled and enlightened me - “Hyderabad heroes and World XI are playing today madam. Very interesting match”. Back home, I enlightened my family on this and suggested we watch the game. We watched for sometime, until the elders decided to switch over to their daily staple of sitcoms. The game had a lot of energy, colourful costumes but very low-key. Orphaned by major cricketers who had been duly warned by their respective cricketing boards, the team consisted for retired and rebel players. Still, it had a huge TV audience, as assured by the taxi driver that day.

As IPL arrived in January 2008, it announced itself with a lot of hoopla. The players auctioned like commodities, the auction itself shown live on TV an entire day drew a lot of flak and admiration from everyone. Most importantly, it drew publicity. An uncle was glued to more than his daily share of news trying to digest the pay checks for the cricketers. Still everyone had their own doubts as it had to share the primetime with many sitcoms that drew a faithful audience. Also, six weeks of cricket is a little too much.
The first match between Bangalore and Kolkata saw a full house at the Chinnaswamy stadium. During the McCullum blast, when my father called to say that ‘our team’ are clueless and failing, I knew IPL had touched a chord.
In the following weeks, when politicians turned their moral policing on the cheer leaders, the girls had something to cheer. Housewives now found an interesting diversion. I’ve always noticed sitcom loyalists observe the actresses’ clothes and accessories more than the pace less script. An aunt, a sitcom loyalist, now turned her attention to the cheerleaders’ dress, after the controversy. The fact that these girls weren’t shown on the screen often made it more alluring. Of course, youngsters loved it. With good cricket, fast paced, colourful personalities, it grabbed their attention. The camera could sometimes be accused of showing more footage of Preity Zinta than the cheer leaders.

Being a purist and having watched Test matches sitting beside my father, I still could not come to terms with this form of cricket. It resembled, I argued with anyone who cared for a debate, a form of cricket we played during school, Book cricket. On the last day, I sat to watch the finals, more interested in the closing ceremony acrobatics than the game. As the match started, I was slowly drawn towards the underdog, Team Chennai. I loved Dhoni’s batting, dumbstruck to see Suresh Raina drop Yusuf when he was yet to make a mark, cursing at Balaji’s wide during the last over, even though technically it was very difficult for him.
As Rajasthan team won and rightly so since they were the better team on that day, I realised that IPL had won.