Blind faith and the finances of the IPL

The decision to move the tournament to South Africa in a fit of panic has convinced me that all is not well on the glamorous marketing rave fits, people throw on the genius of Lalit Modi. In its debut season, the sheer numbers and projections thrown in were so unreal, that you had to ponder how much of it is made up. In terms of the financial aspects, this tournament is nothing more than a huge gambling den for the stinking rich and the best part is like good businessmen they don't use their ...

Jason Gillespie: The outcast, the leper

All right, now this has stretched way too far and way too cheap. Jason Gillespie has been stopped by cricket Australia from taking up a two-week coaching stint for some promising teenage cricketers at the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane. His affiliation for the unrecognized league ICL, was the reason for the same, which apparently is the view of the ICC. For many who are not aware of my views of the IPL-ICL 'clown fest', I am for the ICC and its members to protect its interests from unregu...

IPL: Rajasthan Royals wins the inaugural IPL

Seriously they have! Because how meaningless in context are these so-called knockout rounds in the name of Semi-finals and finals are in the IPL! Let's face it... In the case of a tournament having a large number of teams, say the world cup, where it is impossible for all the teams to play significant number of matches against each other considering a tournament that has to be spectator friendly, cannot go on for months. Hence it makes sense for the officials to divide them into groups and the l...

Performers of the IPL

A truck load of matches in the IPL have gone by and due to the length of the format, it is still tough to establish a clear cut team that would probably win the tournament. Such as been the swinging fortunes of this format. As far as players of the tournament goes, two guys stand out well with their consistent performances. Gautam Gambhir, the orange cap and highest run maker of the tournament has been slowly but surely staking his claim for virtually all formats of the game for the Indian...

So far so good… Not so for the fringe!

The next set of IPL matches went on with some mixed results on the quality of the cricket played. Riders wrapped their second win while Laxman felt he was robbed. The Bangalore sloshers actually won a game but then it still required the brilliance of a T20 natural in Mark Boucher to wrap things up. So there is still food for thought on this team that chooses to have Jaffer and the unforgivable Sunil Joshi in it. The logic behind having a 37 plus year old who retired some time back, playing in...