Is the future of the IPL in danger?

The only thing certain is uncertainty. Following the success of the IPL where everything seemed to be going well, (there was even a close final between the Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings), everyone expected the IPL to grow even further. Now, news has been confirmed that the IPL won't even take place in India. This could potentially be very bad for the game in India itself. I can see the spectators feeling most hard done by this.


Building a city fan base was never going to be easy. Even though there were good attendances for every game, fan support was not as partizan as it is for international games. This is a far cry for instance from the English Premiership in Football where the game history has developed to such an extent that teams have local rivals as well as title rivals or relegation rivals if you must. Towards the end of the IPL we began to see at least the start of some sort of partizan support growing. Now these teams are going to places where the locals there will struggle to identify with these teams. Just how do you say you are going to support the Kolkata Knight Riders rather than Mumbai Indians. Perhaps it might be a case of well he is a South African so I'll support that team or I'd pay to watch Sachin just because he is a big player. In both cases fans would be disappointed if they didn't get to see the player they wanted to see. The other thing is that if the IPL was even half as successful as it was in the first year, the players could easily turn around and say we don't want to go to India to play this competition there. And would we blame them for doing this?

Perhaps the IPL deserve this. After all the IPL only came about probably because of the success the ICL had. What goes around comes around.?

Half the job done in NZ...

3-1 to Team India in the 5 match one day series. That success was their first in the ODI format in New Zealand. Following on from the series win against Sri-Lanka, it was yet another demonstration of a team that is serious about claiming the first spot in ODI's at least.

All the talk before the series was about the wickets being bowler friendly and the like. However, in the end although there was rain, plenty to influence almost every match, the wickets itself were unaffected. Instead we saw a plethora of runs as a result of flat wickets and small grounds, a nightmare for any bowler. In a blog on the cricinfo website, Richardson hinted towards the possibility of conditions being different to that found on the last Indian tour to NZ. However he suggested that this would be because of improving relations with the BCCI. He might well have a point. This was India's third tour to play tests or ODI's in 11 years with the last tour in 2002-03. When you compare that to the fact that India have played Australia in 2000, 2003 and 2006-7, it really is surprising and shows the lack of respect the BCCI had towards NZ. However, no point complaining now since the boys are finally in NZ. The younger players must be wondering what the fuss is all about as they have continued to see run feasts wherever Team India has gone.

Now, prior to the last one dayer mr KP was commenting on how India are on a different level and he attributed this to playing in the IPL, a competition English players had to play in if they themselves had aspirations for one day success. I feel this is only partially true. Most of the success in that tournament was from the foreign players. However the tournament only served to increase the confidence levels of player particularly Raina and Yusuf Pathan who had more success compared to their more illustrious Indian team mates. Of course India's success in the T20 international tournament also helps, winning any trophy lays strong blocks for future success, something illustrated by the long run of success the Australians have had.

Coming back to the one day series, it was good to see every batsman get a score of some sorts in the series at some point. Even Raina who had relatively little to do manage to hit 5 sixes in a cameo in the third one dayer. Whilst Sehwag's unbeaten 125 was just a morale denting, fear inducing, nightmare creating innings for the Kiwis, Tendulkar's 163 from what I've heard was an innings of the highest quality. When the Kiwis say they had no chance at any stage to get him out, it really speaks volumes. I am just gutted I didn't have the chance to see it. Going back to the bowlers, the fast bowlers struggled to make much of an impression, indeed the talk was about how effective the part time bowlers namely Yuvi and Yusuf, however I am happy for Bhajji also since it isn't often that a spinner is your most effective threat in terms of containing runs and taking wickets. Saying that Vettori did a tremendous job for the Kiwis for whom things could have been far worse on the bowling front had it not been for his heroics.

So that was the one day series, the test series is a different game altogether. It will interesting to see how the likes of Dravid, Laxman will fare. And it will also be interesting to see if the pitches are altered to make it less batsman friendly. A nice contest between bat and ball would make for pretty interesting viewing!