I love IPL. Of course, just like most self-appointed cricket pundits, I blame it for everything—from Sehwag’s creaky shoulders to the declining moral standards of today’s kids (so much so that women are now being provided official “male escorts” in an IIT ). But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it, at least as much as I enjoy national treasure and my choice for the next President of India T Rajendar showing how…well…you decide [Video]
Correction. I used to love the IPL. A long time ago. This was when Lalit Modi, the second most controversial Modi in the country, a visionary like the Ringling brothers and Heff, used to be the impresario. He realized that people don’t as much love the game as they do the excitement. And so he manufactured it. Four-play. Fore-play. Fashion shows. Passion shows. Hyperventilating anchors. Hitting the sweet spot while being DLF-ed. Quick strategic time outs with just enough time for an out-and-out strategic quickie. Citi moments of success on the ground. Many more off it.
Sure it was not cricket. But why should it have to be? As a matter of fact, when I close my eyes, the most pleasant recollections of IPL are almost never truly cricketing. All the games have simply become in my mind, a continuum of vaguely formed images, set to Ravi Shastri saying “Nomoksar Kolkota are you ready?” , Arun Lal exclaiming “The excitement at the ground is just so exciting”, and Sunny’s contented “Mmm…mishti doi”. All a mess in my mind, a flicker of randomly moving bats and bouncing balls, jumbled up like the sequence of events or the faces of the actors in a porn video, sought to be recalled, years later.
India has been blessed with great talents in the 90s, pace bowlers breathing hell, fire and brimstone. There was Srinath, of the whippy action, who would throw his hands up in the air whenever the ball was creamed past point with a “I would have caught that you slow-moving fielder” and seemed to be still grumbling about it, as he round-armed his throws from the deep. There was Prasad with his slow and slower ball about whom it has been said that many of his deliveries, like light from distant stars, have not yet reached the batsman many years after he released them from his fingers. There was Debashish Mohanty, all gangly arms and legs, Harvinder Singh, Abey Kuruvilla, Doda Ganesh, David Johnson, Thiru Kumaran—a line of carving stations at a sumptuous Vegas buffet, that would get batsmen from across the world melting in their own saliva.
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