Indian Premier League – A Sport Or Just Business?

Indian Premier League – A Sport Or Just Business?

The recently concluded IPL has seen a lot of ups and downs in the past three years of its existence. It has always had some controversy or the other associated to it, be the bidding of players, exclusion of Pakistani players by the owners, slapping of a fielder by another on the field, owners walking out on their team, rumors of love affairs starting off the field, match fixing, people twitting about IPL secrets, so on and so forth… The list is quite big.

Lalit Modi, the brain behind the ever so popular IPL, has been in limelight ever since IPL came into existence until his latest stunts and expulsion as the IPL supremo. As soon as he was shown the door, the new IPL chief Chirayu Amin started changing the very face of IPL and making declarations about what will happen and what will not happen from IPL season 4 onwards.

Whatever said and done IPL has no doubt brought the Twenty-twenty format of this game to the foreground and though an Indian initiative it has managed to get global success and fan-fare. Reasons for IPL being so popular could be any of these, the humongous amount of involvement of money, bidding of cricket players, support from local celebrities and business tycoons, media coverage, non-stop off the field controversies, cheer-leaders, or maybe the game itself.

IPL managed to bring in the sort of fame and name to Lalit Modi that nothing else could have possibly done, he says he has seen many ups and downs in his life and the recent showdown is nothing but a passing phase. But credit must be given to him for all the effort he has put in the past three years to bring IPL to a stage where it currently is. Only this man had the guts to get IPL moved out to South Africa and get all the arrangements done in such a short notice, when players from abroad showed apprehensions about security in India after 26/11. Only this man had the guts to bring business tycoons like Mukesh Ambani & Vijay Mallaya opposite each other fighting to win the bids for cricket players and still support him wholeheartedly when the entire BCCI crowd turned their back on him.

Many hard core cricket fans call IPL a mockery of cricket, a circus, just a mere business where some people are minting money cuz one nation is so crazy about this one game. But you may say whatever; IPL has provided some good cricketing action, mindblowing entertainment to all hardcore fans of cricket in India, where cricket is nothing less than a religion and Sachin Tendulkar a God.