BCCI may not like it, but there are significant numbers of cricket lovers out there who are either indifferent to the IPL or actively hate the gala spectacle that tries to pass off as a sporting event. Most of the time I am indifferent to the Indian Premier League, but there are things about it that I do actually, dislike:
IPL is convoluted
I like my cricket simple. India has to win. If India loses to a team then that team has to win. I was very happy that we kept up our tradition of never letting the Pakistani team win against us in a World Cup match, ecstatic that we defeated the Aussies. I was then sad when we lost the semis and reasonably happy that it was the West Indians, our vanquishers that won the title. In my world, order was restored.
I never know whom to root for
So there is Virat Kohli in this team. Oh, oh, but there is M S Dhoni in that other one! I was born in Gujarat but lived in Maharashtra for years, spent many years in UP and in Punjab as well. Given our various regional loyalties and personal obsessions, how can anyone of sound, non-schizophrenic mind decide on a team to support?
The IPL is an Americanized spectacle
Firstly there is all the glitz and glamour that is not just associated with the event, but as actually come to replace the actual sport. IPL is more about the glamorous team owners; the smart set that turns up to watch the matches and the overall slick packaging. For me this is very much a case of style over substance.
The random names
What precisely is a ‘knight rider’ (outside of Arthurian legend)? And how exactly does one become a ‘sunriser’ come to that? And supergiants… let’s just make up new words shall we? And Gujarat Lions… really? Could you be more hackneyed?
The Cheerleaders
The feminist in me rebels and the sports lover in me revolts… cheerleaders are superfluous to cricket. In our country these women are just a display put on for the repressed, fair-skin-obsessed Indian male gaze.
Player as commodity
It may be the done thing for clubs to buy players at auctions but for me, this is just unseemly. As for the slavering interest that centres about how much who paid for which player… ugh!
Too much politics
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Let’s buy those Pakistani players. Let’s not; flip flop. Let’s allow the Sri Lankan players… Amma said no, let’s not. And then there is the entire unseemly row about the match-fixing and the betting cartels and corruption… it’s a murky mire of power and politics here.
Author – Reena Daruwalla
