Gujarat Cricket

The IPL is a fun tournament and will make excellent wallpaper in sports bars around the world in years to come. But South Africans are already beginning to see it for what it is, rather than what it portrays itself to be. It is an entertainment circus, rather than a sporting one, designed primarily to enable a very small number of fabulously wealthy people to become even wealthier.

A full page newspaper advertisement appeared nationwide last week depicting Sachin Tendulkar against Saurav Ganguly above the caption: “Whose side are you on?” The problem was, Tendulkar was alongside the Rajasthan Royals logo with Ganguly smiling next to the Delhi Daredevils motif.

The IPL. It’s an Indian thing. And will forever remain so until the owners and administrators who so desperately want to become a “global brand” actually stop and think about what that means and how it can be achieved rather just splashing cash and blowing kisses to themselves in the mirror.

The one caveat for IPL’s dissenters is this: yes, it’s not cricket as we know and love, but the very fact this sport has managed to spawn such a beautifully bonkers tributary almost from nowhere deserves some acclaim. I have always been drawn to the game for its eccentricities – the rigidity of the laws, the absurdity of the fielding-positions’ names, the length, the breaks for lunch and tea – so before I write the IPL off in its entirety, for now I’ll accept that it’s a wacky branch off a particularly wacky tree, growing in a meadow of ridiculousness.

In time, someone will probably lop it off…else it’ll grow into something else entirely. Enough gardening-related analogies (I’ve just cut down a tree, as it happens).