Sportscope

IPL and its glamour

Srian OBEYESEKERE

The Indian Premier League (IPL), in its second appearance, this time away from home in the South African shows of the enthralling glitter and splendour of Cape Town, nevertheless epitomised the height of a cricketing rage that has captivated and overidden the sport for its oozing commercialism equally matched by Twenty20 fan fare, the gammut of which spruced up by the trumpeting carnival dress down the organisers have given the game.

If for one, cricket since the times of business Tycoon Kerry Packer's revolutionising of cricket in a colourful and currency full facelift, the advent of today's IPL backed by the showbiz society of Indian filmdon and business tycoons headed by Lalit Modi has certainly marked a new order for cricket by all standards.

Financially, you name it and a cricketer has it to his liking in much more than a fistful of dollars with the new moghuls of this new cricketing empire pumping in hard currency by the billions - the highest paid cricketer nets in something like nearly US $ 2 million dollars covering some 150 players to the circus.

So do the organisers have their cash straps full up bathing the entire show in this unmatchable billion dollar brilliance that has sucked up cricket lock, stock and barrel. For, Modi and company can pick any top player from whichever country across the cricketing hemisphere. And, the players love it perhaps in an unsurpassable manner in the game's long, long history since it first came to be played by Englishmen in flannelled clothing before evolving into the conventional form of Test cricket; importantly, from a strictly cricketing sense having bonded world cricket into one family component where the IPL carnival has become the cherished meeting ground for players present and past; something that players marvel over like former Australian Test great Shane Warne publicly praising the IPL as a `great thing for the simple reason that it brought cricketers together.'

And there is nothing more true than what Warne has jubilated over. The IPL truely unifies the might of cricket. Not only in a planet of competing and matching their wits at the highest level, but also serves at fostering greater friendship among players as our own Kumar Sangakkara has hailed it.

The bottom line of it - packed action, an instant hamburger for the spectator who has begun to hug it and of course end of the day - money to melt.

Isn't Twenty20 minting cricket into a new planet? Surely, the IPL signifies the signalling of a shift in the power structure of cricket from the white monopoly to the Asian fold.