IPL needs quality cricket
If the first week is any indication, Priyanka Chopra could be the most consistent performer of IPL 5. She was one of the lead acts in the opening ceremony of the league at Chennai, and once again when the Sahara Stadium, the home venue of Pune Warriors was inaugurated on Sunday. With six more weeks to go, it is anybody’s guess what the future holds.
I am being facetious, of course. And a sense of déja vu at the persistent intrusion of Bollywood in the IPL may be only mine. Of course glamour is integral to the league. Yet in the long haul, I insist, it is only the quality of cricket which can sustain the tournament; all else is embellishment.
But as the economist John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. For the moment, the pastiche of cricket, cinema and big business seems to be heady stuff for fans.
It is a formula that’s worked wonderfully yet, and one can see this only getting enhanced further.
These are early days, of course. Figures of TV audiences and advertiser support are yet to come in. But on the evidence of the matches played yet, speculation about spectator support this season could be illfounded even if the mania of the first couple of years is absent.
Last year, it might be recalled, attendances at stadia and television viewership had taken a dip raising worries about cricket fatigue, largely because of the World Cup which was played immediately before. Since then, India’s fortunes have also declined sharply raising fears that the public would be disenchanted and uninterested. But that does not appear to be the case.