Of glitz, glamour and game

The 10th edition of the showpiece event, Indian Premiere League (IPL) will be played across nine venues and will be a 47-day sporting extravaganza. The inaugural ceremony and the first match will be held in Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi Stadium on April 5. With just weeks away the excitement for IPL 10 is palpable. Former cricketer from Hyderabad Saad bin Jung zooms in on the glam-sham event

In the pre-helmet, pre-IPL days, the flamboyant Sandeep Patil once played a high-risk shot, as was his want; it didn’t work out and he was dropped from the Indian side for not being committed enough. I am told by reliable sources that in a Ranji game when Bombay was playing Maharashtra, a particular gentleman at leisure was batting with Polly Umrigar.

He played a similar slog in a crunch game and was told there and then that he would never play for Mumbai again. He didn’t. That’s how cricket was played in our times. Now with the series at 1:1, with India battling hard to get out of trouble, in the third Test versus Australia, Rahane tried an upper cut and was caught behind. The world responded in consternation.

Those pure souls of wizened age-old cricket, screamed for his head whilst the younger lot, their cricket stitched together on the fabric of T20, IPL in their blood, smiled. It was an acceptable risk they said. Whether players like me move with the times or not, the game of cricket most certainly has moved on. The single factor that has contributed to this evolution of cricketers is none other than the lure of gold, the lust for IPL, to make quick money, dance with the cheerleaders and live happily ever after.

This need for quick recognition is driving cricket forward at a rate unfathomable by most experts. The coaches that are smart enough to acknowledge that the game is changing do little to fix an oddity in talent, hoping against hope that this strangeness might just give the batsman an extra edge, and even redefine technique later on.

These coaches are seeing such huge numbers of young budding cricketers that it matters little to them whether the chap with the odd grip fizzles out or not. And if the batsman becomes a celebrity then they sit back and take in the accolades. Every time someone congratulates them on creating such genius, moulding a terrifying apparition into a well-chiseled, albeit a strange looking batsman, they shake their head authoritatively, giving that superior know it all nod.

In my days I knew one such cricketer, whose technique was so odd, that when judged by the purists of the 70’s, he was never given a chance to play first-class cricket although he got hundreds at will at the lower level. Batting on the other end with him was difficult for he did everything that we lesser mortals were never supposed to do, yet he cover drove like a king.

His feet flung apart, bottom sticking out, hands held at a crazy inward angle, gripped unbelievably hard forming a double ‘U’ instead of the vital double ‘V’ with the elbow facing mid on - there would be everything wrong with the shot but lo and behold, that damn ball would go like a bullet through covers.

He remained a misnomer to us right through our career and it is only now, 30 years later, that the answer glares us in the face every time that we watch Test cricket. The best players in the game bat like him, stand like him and get runs like he would, contorted and convoluted, yet scoring at will. Arvind Khatare was way ahead of his time, had he been playing today, he would have been king of the IPL. I wish him well.

Yes. IPL has changed the way we look at the game. IPL has everyone gathered around the idiot box. IPL has the punters on the phones, transfixed for a month, business and screeching wife forgotten. IPL has the parents forcing the coaching academies to teach their kids that extra special IPL module that will get them into an IPL side. IPL has kicked Test cricket into orbit.

Where once there were little misdemeanours in this gentleman's sport, IPL has covered cricket in sleaze. IPL took birth and officials were sacked from the BCCI. IPL has got players under the scanner for fixing. IPL has resulted in raids on bookies. IPL has ensured that the founding father of the format does not return to India. Yes, IPL has done all that but then IPL has done some good too.

IPL in its own unique way has led to the complete overhaul of the BCCI. IPL has got the game in focus to such an extent that it might yet break the Board's monopoly over cricket in India for the Board of Control for Cricket no longer controls the game in India like it once did. At the end of this short and joyous journey of the IPL, I for one can say with complete satisfaction that the IPL has been bloody good for cricket and has done to cricket what Trump has done to the Muslim world.

It has forced people to stand up and take notice, to introspect on their every action. It has shown them the mirror. Trump showing Muslims a mirror might just be the thing to get global peace - it might lead to Muslims introspecting, see the writing on the wall and unite as one. Similarly, IPL has shown the cricket loving public, the administrators and the players a mirror, reflections of which have created tremors in the world of cricket leading to the Supreme Court making huge efforts to cleanse the game by bringing in transparency and accountability.

Sleaze, match fixing, spot fixing, corruption is all forgotten when one sees the great crowds and greater cricket being played by some of the greatest of present-day cricketers, uniting to perform at their very best in this most difficult of cricket disciplines. This complete package gives to the IPL month a bold and beautiful feel, revealing every evening a drama never seen before by the world of cricket, unveiling fresh scandals and a new era in the lives of die-hard passionate cricket lovers.

Being stuck in the jungles of Africa and India on safari, I no longer mix with my erstwhile cricketing fraternity and therefore the days of discussing cricket with players who know the game is long gone. My society has well to do people, most stuck to the television betting on the match, buying and selling teams to cover their backsides every second over.

Every evening these people come out of the game echoing the opinion of the commentators and God forbid if one is unlucky enough to get stuck amongst this lot at a party; then it’s all the knowledge that they have absorbed from the experts, plus their own little add-ons and we have an orgy of cricket making absolutely no sense.

Yet the evening is filled with laughter, with the joys and woes of the punters reliving the days play, debating every delivery, screaming at the captain for doing what in their esteemed opinion should not have been done, letting down his team of which they, since the IPL, have become such an integral part.

IPL has not only changed the game of cricket but it has changed most lives that it has touched and with it changed the way people look, love, hate, feel, touch and understand cricket. Although the BCCI has been reformatted I believe that IPL, skullduggery in close tow, will never lose its glitter; it will bash on regardless.

I for one love the IPL because I love a good yarn and I hope you do too for that special month of madness is upon us, again. Enjoy the circus!

By: Saad bin Jung