Tuesday, May 05, 2009

The Difference between IPL and Cricket

Is it not the same? No it isnt. Here are the differences...
  1. DLF Maximum, Citi Moment of Success.... - Ridiculous Artificiality. Why cant they call a six a six, a wicket a wicket? Whats with this artificial brand endorsement? Where will this all end? With players' names tagged with brands as well? Lets imagine where this may lead to - "Thats a fabulous Airtel Four from Pepsi Sachin"; "A HDFC moment of great stop from Sprite Dhoni"; "A splendid moment of ICICI strategy"; "Asian Paints LBW"; "Oh, Its a Titan sprint from the batsmen"..Huh? Where will this all end? There are breaks at the end of each over, till the first ball of the next over is bowled... when a player is injured, when the player has paused the game for a few seconds just to adjust his pads, when there are discussions on the field... there are innumerable no. of breaks already with enough of brand endorsements, eating into one's living room and head... Why the need to corrupt the commentary? Because its artificial and reduces the respect we had for the cricketers that spoke in there till now.. we feel its orchestrated...And it takes a second or more to register whats the DLF Maximum and whats the "Success" one is talking about? 
    And there was this funny case of a commentator getting his script wrong. He blurted out "Citi Moment of Disaster" to relate an incident... Isnt this the outcome of such ridiculous scripting of even such live utterances such as Commentary? 
  2. Butter Fingers - One and All - I just cannot recollect or even imagine another tournament with so many catches dropped, mis-fields, lack of concentration on the field... Just cannot think of any other cricket tournament... Just about every person, even who were decent enough in the field until now have managed to misfield atleast a couple. Catches dropped are innumerable in number, in some cases even more than their individual scores in the entire tournament... Is it because its not considered serious cricket? Or is it too serious? I can bet that the boys in Bangalore playing 20 over cricket have an overall better record in fielding than several of these "big boys".
  3. Running (walking, ambling, jogging??) between the wickets - It was a bane of a select few. Such as Inzamam, Ganguly. Now everybody seems to have succumbed to this disease. Not running the first one hard enough. Not sliding the bat in the crease. Not calling well and clear. But some old boys  do still run good - Dravid, Symonds, Hayden, Sachin. Old habits die hard.
  4. Sudden outbursts of emotions - Players seem to forget that this is a tournament lasting just about 40 days or so and they have to get back to their national sides and play with a lot of those players that are in their opposition. Emotional outbursts, are at best, childish and at worst, can dampen the great experience of cricket that is on show. Ishant Sharma, I am sure has damanged many a ball, just by throwing it hard on the ground when he is frustrated (which he is most of the time, given the state of KKRs). Munaf Patel does not know the difference between an international cricket field, watched by billions and millions of children as well, and his family drawing room, where he is allowed to behave as immaturely as he chooses to. Yuvraj Singh has been at his arrogant best with his co-Indian Players, just forgetting he is the product of the Indian Team. These and so many more, are honestly, irritating to watch. There was one Sreesanth. In IPL 2, there seem to be many more. Does it mean we need more Harbhajans? :)