IPL IN TROUBLE
M
y amused,
opinionated
friend cannot
resist his take.
“Boss, what
goes up, must
come down! It was too good to
last forever and the bubble had
to burst sometime. Agreed Lalit
Modi’s idea of cricket, glamour
and entertainment doing a sexy
tango was a chhakaass winner –
given India’s craze for spectacle
& dramabaazi – but aukaat kahan
jayegi? Soon rampant corruption
crept in, taking the heart out of
our hurrahs. However, such is the
diwangi for this IPL bimaari that
despite all the crap that coloured
it, the brand hardly ever lost either
fans, sponsors, media coverage,
advertisers or hungry buyers!
However, this body-blow [banning
2 signature teams, CSK & RR for
two years to compete in the IPL]
could mark the beginning of the
end of this great honeymoon,
unleashing tons of very relevant
but uncomfortable questions
… like, will it mean a Dhoni-less
IPL and a 6-team tourney? Which
players will be most affected by the
ban? How much money will be lost?
Will young aspirants desperate to get
into IPL teams, to secure financial
security and bright prospects to go
up the pecking order in Team India,
now suffer a trust deficit? Will big
ticket sponsors pull out? Can/
will CSK & RR players move
to other teams be up-forsale? Expanding this theme,
should this entire IPL idea
[more glamour, drama,
34
big bucks & corruption] be totally
scrapped because clearly its too
hot to handle and too vulnerable to
temptations of the negative kind with
zero accountability & huge popular
approval, its biggest danger?”
My buddy’s volley of questions
really threw me, but on a closer look,
they were indeed based on solid
logic demanding response from the
powers that are. As the plot thickens
with new scenes playing out in the
IPL drama each day, one amazing
curious & scary fact cried out for
attention - the roster of boom-todoom fate of hi-profile IPL team
owners, once passionate paramours
of the IPL dream who lived it lustily,