IPL: Decoding The Winning Formula

From a distance, the IPL comes across as a never-ending party where everyone gets high and nobody passes out. You don’t see effigies burning or police lathi-charging fans after a tense finish. Derek Abraham digs deeper to realise that a lot of planning, strategising and back-end work goes into masterminding a win. Incredibly, the challenges vary from game to game…

- Derek Abraham

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing — Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), legendary NFL coach.

In the midst of television’s razzmatazz coverage of the Indian Premier League (IPL), we often tend to lose track of the real deal. A Shah Rukh Khanjig in the stands is bound to grab more eyeballs than a stoic, match-winning performance from Gautam Gambhir. Perhaps, that’s why connoisseurs view the country’s ‘summer obsession’ with more dread than hope.

The underlying fact, however, is that the tournament is an amalgamation of cricket and entertainment. There is no escaping this, but the relief is that cricket comes first. Naturally, then, the big prize goes to the team that wins the contest between bat and ball.

The fireworks, cheerleaders, commentators, presenters, spectators and spider-cams add to the jazz factor alright, but the players continue to be the real heroes.

In an era where extravagance is synonymous with the game, most of those working in the background are liable to remain anonymous. The idea of this piece is to unravel that puzzle. Simply put, what goes into churning out a winning formula match after match? You can’t avoid the meetings, flights, bus rides, hotels, sponsor commitments, press conferences, so you have to find a way around all this. Who does this? And how do they do this?