IPL struck the cricketing world like a lightning. Months have gone by and even now, when we think about it, we remember the razzmatazz of the opening ceremony, followed by all the zillions of fours and sixes which flowed during the spectacular cricket extravaganza. Not to forget the cheer girls and some very good overall cricket.
It was all about fast paced, heart stopping non-stop action. Those two months of IPL just flew past and we often forgot which match was being played on a given day. No doubt, it even changed the way the marketing forces looked at the cricketing world. It opened up lot of avenues for business, with top businessmen/women coming to the fore.
The T20 World Cup before the IPL had laid the foundation for this virtually unknown venture. Many argued that it was just an answer to the already running ICL. But what followed was for the whole world to behold, sit back and enjoy. For football fans like me, it was Barclays Premier League stuff for Cricket. Getting all the stars from world cricket down to India and making them play under different franchises, adding local fervor to go with it was something unknown to the world of cricket.
The local club or city concept has been driving the football world for quite some time now. Football can afford to have intermittent International matches because of the abundance of footballing talent all around the world, something which Cricket, played by only a handful of nations, cannot even dream of.
IPL emerged as a huge money spinner and now there are already talks of such parallel leagues. I don’t think cricket can survive with parallel leagues like Football or Basketball. Moreover, I have my own doubts if it can be such a big hit outside India. In India we worship our cricketers and follow every form of the game (even ICL was a hit with the audiences in India).
Many say T20 will change the face of cricket totally. It has some pros and cons as we look at it.
Being a shorter version of the game, it will be embraced by different, many new countries, who till now felt that it was too boring to get involved in a sport which took a whole day to play as well as to watch.
Also looking at the crowds at the World Cup as well as IPL, it can be safely assumed that more and more youngsters will get exposed to this game.
The purists though, feel that T20 is going to lower the overall level of the cricket being played. I feel there is a certain level of skill involved in playing Cricket. If a cricketer can do well in the so called slam bang version of the game, he can always be guided or coached to perform at the highest level of Cricket which is Test Cricket. Who knows it can unearth some really good talent for the whole cricketing world to savor!
T20, ODI and Tests, all have a place in this cricketing world. Cricket is probably one of a very few sports which can boast of different formats to a single skill. Test as they say is truly the Test of a cricketer’s character and will unquestionably remain so. ODI’s have become a tad boring but they still are, I feel, a culmination of two strikingly contrasting characters of T20 and Tests. The initial 20 overs and last 10 overs are a-la T20 whereas the middle 20 overs can actually test the skill of any cricketer the same way as in Test. We have seen in many ODI’s, after the IPL, which have been interesting and gone down to the wire. The dose of T20 cricket be it at the Domestic level or at the International level should be used in a clever manner. It should act as a pickle (achar) to the main course of ODIs and Test cricket, and only then can the whole cricketing world reap benefits out of this new form of the great Game.
