Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The IPL craze...

Even on the dullest of days, you've got something in the evening to relax and enjoy for 3 hours or probably 6. It's the lucrative INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE, that has been the talk of the town for the past 35 days. With 8 very good teams (so-called) vying for the first 4 places on the points table, every single game is intriguing till the last ball is bowled.

One good thing about this IPL, apart from the whopping sum of money BCCI generates and the lump sum amount of money being offered to the players, is that the hidden skills of quiet a lot of players are being exposed in this League. Abhishek Nayar, Dhawal Kulkarni, Manpreet Goni, Yousuf Pathan, Satish Dhawan etc have become the FINDs of the SEASON. With lots of burgeoning players performing really well, the competition is getting really intense.

One sad thing about this year's IPL is/was the dismal performance of Royal Challengers Bangalore and Hyderabad's Deccan Chargers, though both being very good teams on paper. But, as we say, it's all in the game.

But there is one fear growing along with this growing intensity of this Indian Premier League. With the Indian Premier League going great guns this season, almost matching the vividness of an EPL, people, i presume, would find ODIs and Test mathces too long for them to have complete entertainment. Let's hope that the Indian crowd doesn't dwindle for those versions of the game, leave alone games/sports other than cricket.