Still on the “cricket is boring” theme, I’m starting to get quite excited by the up-coming Indian Premier League. For those of you not familiar with it, Twenty20 is a new form of cricket that takes about the same time to play as a baseball game, but has an average of around 350 runs scored (compared to an average of 9 in baseball). It is an all-action game, and it has been drawing in crowds all around the world.
India’s cricket board (BCCI) took a while to catch on, but when a private league set up and tried to poach players away (a modern day Packer league, for those of you who remember) the Indian authorities reacted in the best way possible – they set up their own Twenty20 competition.
The Indian Premier League begins in April (on my birthday) and will feature 8 city-based clubs (thus more in the manner of soccer or baseball) and attract players from all around the world. The inaugural draft (itself an innovation for cricket) is currently under way and is taking the form of an auction of the available players. The biggest fee ($1.5m) has been paid for Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain of India’s World Twenty20 Cup winning side, but more might have been paid for some of the older Indian stars had not the BCCI sensibly kept the likes of Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly out of the process to make sure they played for their home cities.
Large sums of money have also been paid for overseas stars such as Andrew Symonds, Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya, Chris Gayle, and Jacques Kallis. No English players are involved because the tournament clashes with the English domestic season, but almost every other star player from around the world will be on show. The current state of the teams can be found in this BBC article.
The first big question has to be, which team do I back? I guess I have most connection with Delhi. I’ve been there, and I know two people from there. But Vettori aside I don’t think much of their team so far. Mumbai is another possibility, as Tendulkar is leading their team. Talking of cricketing gods, Shane Warne is playing for Jaipur. Hyderabad is entertainment personified, with a team including Symonds, Gilchist and “Boom Boom” Afridi. But if I were trying to pick a winner I might go for Chennai because they have Matty Hayden and Muralitharan. Maybe I’ll wait to see if they announce mascots.
The other big question is TV coverage. I’ll get to see the finals as I’ll be back in the UK in June, but for US viewing I’m not sure. I’m assuming it will be on Zee Sports, in which case you should be able to get it on Dish Network or Willow.tv, but I haven’t found anything to confirm that.
I wish Comcast would sign up Zee. Our only exterior wall is facing away from the darn satellite, so we can’t get Dish at all.
a modern day Packer league, for those of you who remember
Yes, indeed. It’s positively spooky going through all the same Killing The Game woe and doom again more than twenty years later.
I’m looking forward to this. In that part of the world, Cricket is like a religion, so the excitement this will bring to the game will seldom have been seen before. A big difference between that and the first day of a Test Match at Lords… Just wish I could watch it too!
And I wonder if they paid that much money for Dhoni because of his looks and appeal?
Carolyn:
I have no great objection to listening to journalists and ex-players making fools of themselves because, after all, Packer didn’t kill the game, did he.
Mark:
Dhoni is like Beckham + Flintoff in India. I’m not surprised he got a huge price. I’m really looking forward to the fact that this will be a major sporting league, televised all around the world, that is happening in India. I hope a lot of the money coming in trickles downwards.