IPL: Delhi to Durban

Last week, I woke up in the morning hurriedly because of my libertarian friend’s non-stop crying. He was very happy and sharing his thoughts loudly with everyone around and also by catching his dearer on the phone. It took a few minutes to understand what the matter is; breaking news of Sunday morning was BCCI has decided after so many days’ tiring debate and discussions with Home Ministry and state governments to shift IPL matches from India this year. My friend was happy because at last, BCCI has announced that they would conduct the matches whenever they wish and not when the govt. would permit them to do, which is a courageous step of disobedience to the present system of government monopoly. My first reaction to my friend’s joy was “Oh....” and lit up my cigarette.

Week has passed with all the speculation of new venues for IPL, confirmation of dates, filmy dialogues of leaders with master piece performances of sadness in the media with all blah, blah, blah... A few colleagues of my office who sit in front of my desk (unfortunately) had no work during the whole week as always (I guess!) and raped my brain for last five days with the chatpata discussions of future of Indian cricket, coming Lok-Sabha Election and their own prescribed best solution for all these chaos.

I have tried to think many a times during the week that what is my opinion about all these but hardly got any answer. A few things which are very aam and often comes to aam-admis like me kept moving in my mind, these are-

a) How is it possible that India which has third largest armed force in the world and also claims itself to be the next superpower, can’t provide security for a cricket league during election days? Do we really lack security personnel for two major events at a time? When maximum state govts. deny to assure security for the players and audience or tactfully ask for a large number of forces from centre and also our Home Ministry forces for rescheduling the match dates again and again and ask for postponing the tournament after general election, then where is the space to believe that we are not a week nation? If P. Chidambaram’s statements have been considered as shocking news, then can we blame ourselves?

b) Shifting the IPL matches to a foreign soil by BCCI has made a setback for the govt. and specially, when the election is at the doorstep. Congress and the other parties of present govt. understand this well and that’s why they are giving their clarifications. On the other hand, BJP and other opposition parties are not ready to spoil the chance of utilising this incident as their newest weapon to attack govt. All of a sudden it seems that all our beloved leaders’ attention have been vested on cricket as if there is nothing else to think of, fuck off basic needs and essentials of aam-admi, CRICKET ZINDABAD! Our netas will always be kursimaniac selfish creatures, so, we hardly expect anything productive from them. But the funniest (!?) moment of this whole episode is, our Narendra Modi saab describing it as a national shame. He must have gone crazy, otherwise how can he forget Godhra-Kandh so soon?

c) If other countries call us cricket crazy nation then we can’t complain. Cricket is no more a game of 22 players here, it has become a national festival and also a sure shot business for many people. Lalit Modi, Chairman of IPL has suddenly emerged (don’t know from where) as the newest rescuer of cricket in India and after facing a few technical difficulties decided to shift match venues from Delhi to Durban and Jaipur to Johannesburg. Now, what was the hurry of BCCI that it couldn’t postpone the series only a month. There were some problems; first, from June onwards Team India is booked for a number of number of tournaments abroad and wouldn’t be free until September; second, there were pressure from the franchisees who have bought players for thousands of crores for IPL and don’t want to pay higher amounts to the players for this delay; third, and most important, BCCI’s own interest of making money as soon as possible. An estimation says that BCCI is going to earn 300 crore less from this IPL Season 2 because no country can beat India in number of audience, no matter it’s happening in South Africa or any other country. But that hardly matters BCCI because of it’s shock proof healthy balance sheet. And if they need some more money in future, then there will always be the possibility of conducting IPL Season 2.5.

Moral of the story- when anyone, be it politicians or BCCI official is expressing their sadness because of Indian people’s bad luck that they are not going to see all the best players from around the world in their home ground this year and blaming each other, they are doing nothing but business, business of power and business of money. Fuck off all those speeches they are delivering because everyone of them is responsible for playing with the emotions of cricket loving aam-Indians......

Last night I was watching a nice programme in Discovery channel when my GF rushed in my room and changed the channel. I asked her what’s the matter! She replied with anger that I don’t let her see anything and now, she would watch news channels, she wants to know what’s the latest updates of IPL matches. My reaction was “Oh...” and I lit up my cigarette.