Sunday, May 18, 2008

IPL Broken Images of Cricket

IPL Broken Images of Cricket

The much talked, most awaited and creating records of beyond imagination payments for the cricketers, T-20 championship organized by BCCI, Indian Premier League is reaching to point of completing inaugural session with tremendous media responses.

IPL is unique in many ways this was not only the tournament in which sponsored paid in Lakhs of rupees for every run scored or every ball bowled by the star cricketers. This tournament also provided space for the breaking some of established norms and images of the game and players on and off the field. This was of thought of centuries that cricket is the game of gentleman but can we say the same after the opening biding of cricketers resembling with the slave market of old days?

Cricketing skills were the matter which was meaning most for the game but IPL has changed the vision, now in the cricket it is money that matters most. Look at some of Australian players, for whom India was the country with most discomforts and Indian players were not having value higher than the forest grass, all of them are not only staying for almost two months on this land of most discomforts but also playing in IPL under the leadership of Indian players, who were never looked by them even as human beings, surely the only reason is the monetary benefits. This is the financial influence of IPL which forced PCB to suspend the ban of Rawalpindi express Shoaib Akhtar.

IPL also broke the image of several established cricketing names, Look at the performance of Ricky Pointing, Shahid Afridi, V V S Laxman, Anil Kumbale and even Rahul Dravid.

Before the IPL the whole world was sounding with the voices of favoring younger generation for this shorter version of the game. Experience and cricketing skills started to be being under shadowed by the physical fitness; surely IPL has succeeded in broking this age myth. Look the best performers of tournament, majority of them are over thirty, till date highest wicket taker Shane Warne is no more representing his country, second fastest century scorer Santh Jayasuriya is of 39 years of age even the fastest century is scored by recently retired Adam Gilchrist. Though Delhi boys are calling “Uncle” to speedster Glem Mac Grath but surely the players who faced him in IPL have a kind of fear in their mind along with respect for this ace bowler. Diving catches of Sourav Ganguli, running back catches by Romesh Pawar and even the reflex ion return catch taken by Shane Warne surely are the practical lessons for youngsters about the fielding excellence.

IPL has also broken the myth of cricketing stars, over the years the game was revolving around the star performers. It was even beyond imagination the current status of Decan Recharges and Rajasthan Royals. At the start of tournament Hyderabad was among the favorites of winners of the tournament and Jaipur was among the weakest teams of tournament. Surely the presence of not so many star cricketers was the reason for considering Jaipur for this status. This surely the planned game of Halla Bol squad which proved once again that cricket is a team game and mutual efforts are more valuable than the star performers. Frankly speaking I am not discarding the star performers, they have their own values, they can win some matches for the team but for a constant good performance by the team they have to perform in tandem. Performance of Knight Riders is lowered after the home return of Maculum but even after the successive failure of middle order Delhi is performing satisfactory with support of their star materials Gautam Gambhir, Shewag and Shikhar Dhawan.

When the concept of T-20 was introduced it was thought that this format of game will prove helpful for increasing the dominance of batsmen and bowlers will be at the suffering end. IPL also proved this though a myth with the performance of Sohail Tanvir, Laxmipati Balaji, Amit Mishra and even the old wine Shane Warne. Till date most of teams have played 9 – 10 matches out of maximum 14 league matches and highest aggregated individual runs scored are just over 300 runs which mean just over 30 runs per match, where as the highest wicket tally is 14 which means 1.4 wickets per match. Here we have to keep this in mind that in every match batsman have chance to bat for all the twenty overs but bowler is restricted to bowl just four overs in a match.

I am concluding this in a very pleasant mood as my favorite IPL team Rajasthan Royals yesterday made almost certain a semi final birth for them by forcing Royal Challengers to bow down before the Hall Bol attitude. Team of the famous wall never looked in position of sustaining or overcoming the Hall Bol cricket played by this desert cricket team leading the point table. I feel sorry for the Delhi team as rain has taken a certain looking win from their hands with yet another defeat at the hands Kings XI.

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