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It gives the kiss of life: Why the IPL model has been embraced by football, hockey, badminton, table tennis, kabaddi
The IPL arrived in 2008 to the sounds of an auctioneer’s hammer and tut-tut of the cognoscenti. Traditionalists felt the unholy marriage connecting ‘the gentleman’s game’ with Bollywood, big money and unapologetic flash might transform cricket beyond recognition and repair. Ten years later, the upstart event is the centrepiece of BCCI’s calendar. Last month, the winning bid for IPL’s TV and digital rights globally (till 2022) went for a record Rs 16,347.50 crore, roughly $2.55 billion. Perhaps it’s time to assess the blockbuster startup’s impact on the sport – its economy and its aftereffects on cricket watching culture.
Over the years, the professional T20 league has made a bunch of super-rich cricketers even richer. But it has also put money in the hands of non A-listers. The most interesting money trivia in its 2017 edition wasn’t Rising Pune Supergiant shelling out an astronomical Rs 14.5 crore for England’s Ben Stokes. It was T Natarajan, a daily wager’s son from Tamil Nadu, getting Rs 3 crore and Mohammed Siraj, son of an auto driver, bought for Rs 2.6 crore. It doesn’t matter whether other unlikely gainers such as Pawan Negi (Rs 8.5 crore, 2016) justified their price on pitch. Every club playing in IPL, EPL or NFL makes such gambles every year.
Traditionalists might argue that this is goal dislocation of sorts. That pampering the allegedly undeserving compromises the pursuit of excellence. No system is perfect. Truth also is that IPL enables domestic players to become part of a world-class platform. Barring exceptions like Tejashwi Yadav, IPL showcased quality young talents like Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal and Hardik Pandya. It tested their temperament in cauldron situations and against the game’s best, steeling them for bigger things. Without IPL, the procedure would have been far longer.
Illustration: Ajit Ninan
The takeaway point is that Indian cricket’s big money isn’t restricted to the game’s upper crust. In that sense, IPL has both democratised sharing of moolah as well as widened the game’s catchment area. The event has also turned India into world cricket’s big bucks destination. No international cricketer worth his slog sweep can afford to miss it.
IPL’s super success has created the template for similar leagues in countries like Bangladesh and West Indies. Talented T20 cricketers can ply their trade globally. In India, bonsai IPLs have sprouted: Tamil Nadu Premier League, Karnataka Premier League and others.
The IPL model has also been embraced by football, hockey, badminton, table tennis and kabaddi. All have roughly followed the same model of blending corporate money, celebrities and live TV coverage. The telecast of kabaddi games has made stars out of Pardeep Narwal, Rahul Chaudhari and others. Nitin Tomar was auctioned for Rs 93 lakh. The auction saw over 400 players go under the hammer and a total of Rs 46.99 crore spent by 12 teams. By kabaddi’s standards, that’s staggering. In times when recruitment of sportspersons in government institutions has reduced significantly, IPL has created a template that allows sports and sportspersons to flourish.
IPL has also changed the way India consumes the game. IPL is cricket lite. It provides an alternate way of enjoying cricket apart from intense international contests. Here win and loss are incidental; two sides of the same coin. IPL is seamless, cricket’s version of stream of consciousness. Beginnings, middles, endings: don’t really matter. Catch it anytime. It’s like TV soap seven days a week. You float from one game to another.
Not long ago, in most of north India, spectator sports were male bastions. With IPL, cricket became a family sport where everyone, including women, has clean, extrovert fun. As West Indian batting great Viv Richards once said, “T20 and IPL have given the game the kiss of life … What it has created, more than anything else, is the family sort of environment around the matches.”
On field too IPL’s impact is immense. Batting and bowling have become more innovative than ever, and fielding has become a standalone form of extreme sport. If India is among the fittest cricket teams today, then IPL must get due credit.
IPL came to life not because BCCI wanted it to but because it had to. Indian cricket’s apex body was deeply suspicious of T20. Who wanted to swap seven hours of TV ad time as in ODIs for half the time? No surprise, India had played only one T20 game before the 2007 World Cup win. With TV ratings going through the roof apropos of India’s nerve-jangling title triumph against Pakistan and Subhash Chandra’s ICL bringing on added pressure, BCCI had a rethink. Enter Lalit Modi, the businessman with a plan. BCCI just outsourced the job to him.
Today, warts and all, IPL is the world’s priciest cricket carnival. Nothing in post-WWII cricket, barring Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, has brought such far-reaching changes to the game. Few sports have had to reinvent and improvise to survive as the willow game. IPL is the platform where T20, cricket’s youngest and brashest face, found the right-fit culture to help the game thrive.
Cricket in IPL may not have the ebb and flow of Tests but it has its own language of thrill. Like it or not, the IPL money earned by BCCI is subsidising Test cricket today. With the IPL model, cricket has a chance of being a truly global sport. IPL deserves a lot more respect than it gets.
India vs Australia 1st T20I: A farce in Ranchi
Yet another batting collapse in Ranchi meant India were firmly in control against Australia when the rain started pouring in. Complete lack of application against spin by Australian batsmen meant a relatively decent start (49 for 1 in 6 overs) had been wasted yet again. In fact, the effort could be perfectly summed up by the Glen Maxwell dismissal. Yuzvendra Chahal too seemed amused and embarrassed. It was as if he was expecting the Big Show to do something as reckless and when proved right, all he could do was offer a wry smile.
Maxwell, time and again, has done the same. He has failed to put a price on his wicket and given it away just when things seemed to settle down for Australia. And post Maxwell’s wicket, there was no stopping the in-form Indians. While India were in control at midway stage, what happened thereafter was farcical. The cut-off for a 5-over match to start, for some strange reason, was kept at 10.18pm. It meant that the match would surely get over by 10.45pm at the latest.
If the idea is to give the crowd their money’s worth by playing a 5-over game at least, then why not push the deadline by another 45 minutes and play a 15-over game instead? And why should the ICC allow international cricket to be reduced to a farce by permitting a 5-over game? It should either be 10 overs or nothing at the very least. Even if Australia had scored 160, all that India would have chased in 6 overs would be 55 or so. And, it can be surmised, India would surely have romped home in the allotted six overs. As an Australian player said on conditions of anonymity, “It is like asking us to step into the boxing ring but being told that all we can do is the duck punches.
We aren’t allowed to throw any at the opposition.” While very few can still understand the intricacies of the Duckworth Lewis method, what is easily understandable is what is good for the game. And a 5-over contest isn’t. It does little to placate the crowd and hardly helps the game in the long run. It’s not to say that Australia could’ve done better had it been a 12-over contest. A pathetic batting display meant they were never in the game. But it would’ve made the match a contest.
In a 6-over game, 99 times out of 100, the batting side would win. They have 10 wickets to play with and that is foolish. How could a side be allowed its full 10 wickets when the match has been reduced to five or six overs? Virat, in the post-match presentation, said chasing 48 could be tricky. Clearly he was being modest. There was always going to be one winner and that was India. The ICC has recently instituted a number of rule changes. One of them suggests a penalty for the fielding team for trying to trick the batsman. A 6-over contest, put bluntly, is cheating the spectators and the game itself. It isn’t a level playing field with the game reduced to 36 balls and the bowling side forced to bowl all its five bowlers for an over each.
Even i f Australia had Wasim Akram, Allan Donald, Curtly Ambrose, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne at their peak, India would have fancied their chances of winning the contest. For the sake of the game, a rule change should be considered with urgency. It should either be that a minimum of 10 overs each side makes for a contest or if the existing rule is persisted with the batting side should be allowed half their batting strength. Also, the match-ending deadline should be around 11.30pm and not earlier. As cricket fans we don’t want to watch a farce unfold for in such a situation it’s near impossible to celebrate the win.
Why Maria Sharapova won’t settle for mediocrity
It was an unflattering 2-6, 2-6 score line, and just like that, Simona Halep had beaten Maria Sharapova for the first time in eight matches. The prequarterfinal exit at the China Open last week was yet another underwhelming result for the five-time Grand Slam champion since her return from a doping ban. Sharapova has now lost 5 of 15 matches on her comeback trail and continues to languish outside the top-100 in the rankings. She in fact needed a wild card to play in China.
It has undoubtedly been a stumbling return for the former world No. 1 after a 15-month hiatus. In her first tournament back, in Stuttgart in April, where the organisers bent over backwards to open the door for her to compete, Sharapova constructed a run of three wins, all in straight sets, before succumbing in a tight three-setter to Kristina Mladenovic of France in the semifinal. The early signs suggested a smooth passage back among the elite would only be a matter of time.
However, subsequent results haven’t been quite as impressive. Muscle and arm injuries have got in the way too, forcing her out in the qualifying stages at Wimbledon and a couple of hard court events. At the US Open, her first major tournament since being restored to the circuit, Sharapova fought her way into the fourth round, including a first round win over Halep, before being waylaid by Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia. A month later in China, she was able to get one win under her belt, before being overwhelmed by Halep.
“I just want to play matches,” Sharapova had said when asked what her goals were for the remainder of the year after she was beaten at the US Open. “There’s no secret recipe to that. You just have to go and figure it out, whether you’re ahead in a match or behind in a match. No one’s going to teach you that. No one’s going to bring you that. It all comes in that moment, in that circumstance.”
Even as Sharapova seeks to rediscover the ferocity and consistency of shotmaking that defined her in her pomp, she continues to be one of the sport’s biggest drawing cards. In China, she was greeted by swooning fans, eager to catch a glimpse of her, placing her alongside Rafael Nadal as the most keenly followed players at the event.
In a gesture that has gained enormous traction, Sharapova also promised all profits till the end of the year from Sugarpova.com, her line of premium gummy candies, will go to a fund set up by fellow pro Monica Puig to help with hurricane relief on the island of Puerto Rico. Over the last few months, Sharapova has faced barbs from other players, even being branded a “cheater” by Canadian Eugenie Bouchard. Some of that hostility will perhaps soften as she shares in the week-in-week-out routine of the modern game with them.
However, beyond noble gestures and the unquestioned adoration of fans, is a hard as nails competitor. It is certain that Sharapova won’t settle for mediocrity and will jostle relentlessly for her share of titles. Having turned 30 this year, Sharapova will know that on a circuit bristling with sparkling, young players, she will run into stern challengers at every step. She is unperturbed at the prospect.
“I can take a lot of examples from champions that are still playing, competing, and doing incredibly well, and that’s inspiring,” she said. “But also, personally, what I’m able to do with my body, when I’m training, when I’m competing. Just never really thought that I’d have that capacity.”
Along with the expected return of Serena Williams after giving birth, Sharapova’s quest to rise again will be a fascinating storyline in the coming months. “As long as I have the desire, I’ll be there,” she insists. One of modern sport’s most compelling athletes isn’t done and dusted. Not just yet.
Boys in blue: Their maiden entry in a FIFA World Cup raises hopes for Indian football
Our under-17 team created history on Friday when it became the first ever Indian football team to participate in any FIFA World Cup. India went down fighting 3-0 against USA in the opening game and the team can hold its head high for putting up a brave performance. Of course 46,000 odd enthusiastic spectators gave their full support to the boys in blue despite USA easily being the better of the two teams. The team led by skipper Amarjit Singh Kiyam has made a good start in the tournament. They should maintain momentum as they face another tough opponent, Colombia, at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium today.
India defended well initially. But inexperience showed towards the end of the first half when Jitendra Singh tripped Josh Sargent resulting in a penalty for USA. Sargent coolly slotted the ball home proving why Bundesliga side Werder Bremen have already signed him from next year when he turns 18. In the end, India did have some positives with goalkeeper Dheeraj Singh Moirangthem’s heroics and the likes of Komal Thatal and Ninthoinganba Meetei grabbing eyeballs with their attacking play.
A reduced catchment area for budding footballers is reflected in the current under-17 team, dominated by players from Manipur. But the launches of Indian Super League in 2014 and Premier Futsal last year have helped in reviving popularity and bringing more professionalism into the sport across the country. A sustained and inspired performance by the boys in blue will act as a catalyst for more grassroots programmes, better infrastructure and investment in the sport. The team has two more games in Group A – against Colombia and twice champions Ghana – to help unlock the true potential of Indian football.
For More - https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/boys-in-blue-their-maiden-entry-in-a-fifa-world-cup-raises-hopes-for-indian-football/
For More - https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/boys-in-blue-their-maiden-entry-in-a-fifa-world-cup-raises-hopes-for-indian-football/
Rafa Dominant Again: Spaniard wins China Open, looks to end 2017 on a high
In a dominant performance, Spanish tennis ace and current World No.1 Rafael Nadal won the China Open in Beijing, making it his sixth title victory this year. This takes him past rival Roger Federer and Alexander Zverev in terms of titles won in 2017 so far. His opponent in the China Open final, Australia’s Nick Kyrgios, simply imploded after a controversial line call in the first set of the match. Rafa took full advantage of Kyrgios’s lack of focus and wrapped up the tie in two straight sets with a comfortable 6-2, 6-1 score line.
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