IPL and cricket's soul on sale
Nothing typified the reality show character of juvenile excess of the IPL T20 marketing machine better than Yusuf Pathan's cave-man gesture after he thumped the winning runs against the Kolkota Knight Riders at Eden Gardens this week. He jumped up like a WWF wrestler, a big burly muscle man, holding his bat aloft ( which resembled a hammered victim lying limp after relentless chess pounding) between his arms, awaiting a royal crowning, like a jubilant gladiator amidst blood-thirsty spectators. It manifested brute force. A wrestling spectacle, where the victor was....
Posted by Sanjay Jha at | 32 comments
IPL: The beginning of the end?
There is growing consensus emerging within India that IPL has with adroit finesse redefined the future of world cricket. Allaying the apprehensions of pessimists, the TRP ratings of even doomed teams have remained unexpectedly high, and the crowd attendance fairly steady even on week-days, despite declining fortunes of some of the home squads. While Lalit Modi, the BCCI big wig, may feel he has scored a deadly hat-trick (in IPL the batsman's suicide mission usually makes that a high probability event, and thus you have seen a spate of them....
Posted by Sanjay Jha at | 24 comments
Slap and sack
The cricket commercial lottery called IPL roulette has ended up creating two camps; fence sitters can keep sitting uncomfortably perched on those long logs with thick sharp nails penetrating the soft skin of their ample posteriors. Strictly not recommended. The first lot is called the Modi-Moolah-Mania group which currently hogs the limelight, seemingly running on the high adrenalin of having survived the crucial first half of the sweltering calendar, with reasonable reasons to believe that they have pulled off a terrific coup. The dubious TRP ratings, to be....
Posted by Sanjay Jha at | 22 comments
Grow up, Mr. Warne!
The IPL farce assumes global proportions by the day. At JFK, New York en route to India earlier this week, I read about the supposedly explosive confrontation between the retired celebrated sex machine, Aussie Shane Warne (I am a huge fan of his classic bowling) and our own local favorite whipping-boy Sourav Ganguly. And the fact that IPL was busy rewriting cricketing history by the comical decision to suspend the poor umpire himself. Frankly, I don't know about you but how can you keep a straight-face in the middle of....
Posted by Sanjay Jha at | 49 comments
