The Indian Premier League has been at the receiving end even as the glamorous version of 20:20 cricket in India, which has brought in Indian city-based but multinational cricketing teams play a much marketed series of matches, just turned three. Let us first look at the arguments that have been going around against it.
Online critics have come out with a veritable list of arguments against IPL. First, cricket and Bollywood do not go well together. Shahrukh’s Knight Riders, Preity’s Punjab Kings XI, Shilpa Shetty’s later entry to Rajasthan Royals have all been doing very badly. Second, the purists of the game note that the IPL3 came along with commercial breaks, strategic timeouts, advertisements in the middle of the overs, loud music, insipid commentators, irritating studio guests, et al, and killed the fun ofwatching the actual game. Your home is where Lalit Modi’s heart is. Hence, Deccan Chargers had to play ‘home’ games in Nagpur and Navi Mumbai, and Rajasthan Royals in the dry state of Gujarat!
The biggest criticism is that IPL is an ‘invite only’ club. IPL Commissioner’s friends and family have been winning media and technology service contracts. A franchisee owner’s stepchild working for the Commissioner. His school chum owning a franchisee. The Mauritian route to own franchisees, at least partly, is all too obvious in case of manyteam ownerships.
An online critic noted megalomania of Lalit Modi and narcissism of Shashi Tharoor clashed to ensure that both lost and the muck in the whole exercise unravelled! Several more ask whether India has anything better than towatch cricket, and some 90 matches in a row! Samajwadi Party leader MulayamSingh Yadav has turned his ire on cricket itself, describing it as a ‘videshi’ or foreign game distorting the sporting scene of India. CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury has accused industrial magnates of exploiting the popular passion for the game to make money. Bal Thackeray of Shiv Sena has also entered the fray to call for saving the “gentleman’s game”!
Since the IPL was interpreted as a manifestation of the spirit of free enterprise with its intermingling of sporting talent, business acumen and uninhibited entertainment, exemplified by the introduction of attractive women as cheer-leaders for the first time in India, its fall from grace has been grist to the mill of its detractors. While the CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta described the frenetic 20-20 format as a ‘caricature’ of cricket and preferred returning to the five-day test matches (!), social commentators are moaning over the huge expenses for the gala events even as the poor suffer in silence.
Another is the condemnation of anything foreign and flashy like the IPL. The subtext of this outlook is the conviction that any event which is so glitzy violates the country’s traditions of sobriety and restraint. Since such a display of conservative preferences is expected to touch a chord in the Indian heart, it is not surprising that the lineup of critics ranges from the rural hinterland of North India’s cow-belt to city-based trade union leaders.
There surely are merits in these and many arguments against IPL. But let us look at the other side of the coin as well.
IPL has turned out to be one of the most successful sporting ventures in the world and a favourite of the 500 million plus middle class of India. According to Newsweek, it has been valued at $4.13 billion, which is comparable to America’s National Football League’s value of $4.5 billion. The resultant beneficiaries are not only some foreign players but a large number of talented local young men who were unknown to the people just a couple of years ago.
Many foreign players avoided coming to India earlier because of the heat and unhygienic conditions. But now the lure for money and improved living conditions have made them flock to India even ignoring terrorism and security threats! Their arrival has also made India stand out as an attractive sporting venue while Pakistan and Afghanistan are in a bad state and neither is the Middle East a preferred region. IPL surely marks a step forward in India’s regional emergence as a major regional power, and a sporting nation of repute in times when India has already emerged as the youngest nation of the world.
In continuity with the mallmultiplex culture of urban India, the IPL has come to reflect the lifestyle of the young, middle class Indians, many of whom earn more in a month than their fathers did in a year. The major parties, Congress and BJP, have not spoken against the IPL as such, like many others, for not wanting to alienate the vocal social sector.
The IPL has also shown that a mix of commercial interests, branding and media visibility with awell-packaged game can give rise to things unforeseen, like the theatre screening of IPL matches. This success can show a way forward for the beleaguered national sports of hockey or show bigger possibilities for the passionate game of football, or tennis, or athletics. A new dawn of sports communications, events and marketing is already brightening up possibilities for other games in India today. IPL is already a marketing-branding-media content casestudy for theworld.
The right focus is on bringing greater transparency into the affairs of the various teams and their sponsors so that the baby is not thrown out of the bath water. Concentration of too much of power in one hand, now gone with the suspension of Lalit Modi, and avoiding to run by consensus and systems and more by intuition and relations need to go. And rightly so! But not something which is path-breaking. IPL, in essence, is something that India can be proud of.
Just a post-script! Let us not forget amidst all this euphoria, Indianization of sports premier leagues was first being done by Subhas Chandra of Zee group through his Indian Cricket League, which was brutally murdered by BCCI and IPL Commission by banning the ICL players and various other monopolistic measures. Letting ICL to flourish would have made IPL also more accountable, allowed more choice to the average viewer, and ensured greater transparency in the whole process by prohibiting monopoly either of IPLor of Lalit Modi.