Today's Guardian features a brilliantly hilarious - and astute - column by Barney Ronay, comparing the contrasting allures of the IPL and the County Championship.
"There is of course a natural polarity between these two extreme interpretations of the word "cricket". The IPL is brash, expansionist and draped in a cladding of new imperial glamour. It wants to conquer the world. The ECC is old, quiet and draped in a cladding of house dust and summer‑tog cagoule. It wants a nice cup of tea...
"On a commercial level there was only ever going to be one winner here. Mumbai Indians are currently sponsored by Pepsi, Mastercard, Kingfisher, Wrigley's gum and Royal Stag whisky, which taken together really does sound like a particularly taxing night in. This season Yorkshire's sponsors include Bryan's Fish & Seafood Restaurant and Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings. At the time of writing there is no word of any plans inside Headingley to introduce the Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings Moment Of Success, or to designate any outbreaks of six-hitting as a Bryan's Fish & Seafood Restaurant Maximum."
It's that time of year again. Less than a week to catch one's breath after the World Cup and the IPL is already kicking off. This time around I find myself with a dilemma over whom to support. Over the past three seasons, I've become a pretty serious Chennai Super Kings fan. Despite the major reshuffles elsewhere, CSK have kept the vast majority of their squad together, so it's likely I'll be rooting for them. However, one of the few players they did lose was Murali, who is now going to be playing in a team captained by fellow Sri Lankan Mahela Jayawardene. I'll have to wait and see which way my heartstrings tug me when the two sides face off, but in today's opener, there's no question whom I'll be cheering on. Come on the Super Kings.
The IPL is back and – for the first time since 2005 – so is live cricket on UK free-to-air TV.
After all the hype about the IPL-YouTube deal, I’ve actually found myself watching ITV4’s live stream more of the time. The one thing I've been struck by so far has been the contrast between the IPL match commentators and the ITV studio pundits. It’s as if the former are on ecstasy – hallucinating “unbelievable” shots, DLF Maximums, Karbon Kamaal Catches and Citi Moments of Success at ten second intervals – while the latter have been sedated: just what do presenters Mandira Bedi and Matt Smith need to do to get Graeme Hick, John Emburey and co. to sound even vaguely enthusiastic about what they're watching?
I just did a Google News search for the word "cricket" and it yielded 30,652 hits dated January 2010. Unless someone's been doing a lot of chirping about insects of the Gryllidae family, that means roughly a thousand articles about my favourite sport have been posted online each day this month. Between the broadsheets and the BBC, the blogosphere and the behemoth that is Cricinfo, there is an awful lot written about cricket on the web. Much of it is banal, plenty is highly biased, and rather a lot is both.
But some of it is brilliant. Here are four pieces I really enjoyed reading this month. The first two are fairly serious; the next two are more light-hearted but no less insightful.
Six weeks to go until season three gets underway and the Indian Premier League's mighty promotional machine is up and running. Last year, I wrote a piece about the story of IPL, likening it to a biblical epic. Well, that's pretty much how it's presented in the following trailer. Switch to full-screen, turn up your speakers and watch "An invite to IPL 2010."
The big news about IPL 3 is of course that Lalit Modi & co have signed a groundbreaking deal with Google to ensure that every match is streamed live on YouTube, with highlights clips available on demand to users around the globe. The official IPL YouTube Channel already has plenty of videos uploaded to it. Scroll past the news conferences, interviews and memorable moments from IPL 1 and 2 and you find some amusing short adverts currently being aired on Indian TV.
(A version of this article appeared in Varsity in April 2009)
Is Lalit Modi really cricket’s Moses? It was Ravi Shastri who first described the IPL supremo as a “Moses of the game, who has shown the path to blazing success.” There is, of course, a fair chance that Shastri only made this pronouncement because his contract as an IPL commentator explicitly required him to do so. Nonetheless, it’s worth contemplating this comparison for a minute, especially given what Modi himself has said about his agenda: “We have taken some bold steps. We're going forward and trying to change the world order.”
