I am sure that my wife remembers the count of gaalis(abuses) which I used to hurl at the DLF IPL ad. The one which went – tu laga daaav….tu laga daanv....tu dikha josh.

My reasoning was simple – First, the BCCI is only interested in making money. The cricket calendar is already jampacked or upar se yeh saala IPL. Won’t the players burnout?

Secondly the way the BCCI went about treating players who joined the ICL – the Zee backed rebel leage. The players were banned, some of them starring in a movie lost their roles and believe it or not, the banned players were even banned from entering the stadium ie Reetinder Singh Sodhi was banned from entering PCA stadium at Mohali.

Even Harsha Bhogle’s and Amit Varma’s sensible words did not budge me.

And when SRK said in a press conference that he is not getting good response from Calcutta crowd, I thought wow, this seems like a recipe for disaster.

But the facts are different.

The IPL has proved to be a BLOCKBUSTER – giving competition to not only SRK’s Paanchvi Paas but also saas bahu serials – which is great. And watching the local lads like Shikhar Dhawan, Manpreet Gony, Badrinath, Dinda etc do well also proves Amit Varma ‘s point.

The IPL puts a price on performance and since the teams are owned by private parties, performance shall and will be the key for selection as well as bidding. So no bribing the selector anymore.

Local lads, mind you these are Indian local lads, shall be playing with likes of Mcgrath, Warne, Smith, Pollock. So the experience they stand to gain is tremendous.

The only players that made money previously were the fab four(Sachin, Sourav, Dravid, Laxman) and some youngsters(Yuvraj, Dhoni, Bhajji etc). When the IPL goes into its second season and when there shall be no Rs 20 Crore cap on the team, you might see a Dinda being sold for 6 crores while Sreesanth being sold for 1.5 crores. In Economics we call it the equitable distribution of wealth. Isn’t that what Karl Marx set out to achieve?..hehehehe

Some people will still say that its not cricket??? Well did yu ever imagine that a day will come when yu will wear T-shirts over formal shirts like they wear today. The point which Harsha also makes is that sport to spread has to evolve or change or adapt etc etc etc. Also, I feel that in these days of fast life, fast food and fast cars, no one has the time or energy to watch a 5 day or a one day match. For that, you can check the highlights. 

What do you think? Let me know.