LEAGUE INTERRUPTED
Outlook|May 18, 2020
Whoever once said emphatically that “It’s just not cricket”, a big shout-out for speaking too soon.
Soumitra Bose
LEAGUE INTERRUPTED

She had not even seen the Indian Premier League (IPL), that crazy crossover between Mad Max and Terminator, with the glamour and lucre of a Las Vegas casino thrown in. The gentleman’s game invented by the stiff-upper-lipped British to be played between lunch and afternoon tea is…well, no longer the pastime of lazy afternoons in the English countrywide. Cricket is now a board game, played as much by corporate honchos in pinstripe suits in five-star hotels as much by tattooed gladiators with rippling muscles and hairdos in front of delirious spectators in modern-day Roman amphitheaters. Even Kerry Packer’s revolutionary day-night cricket league that introduced coloured clothing looks like kid’s play now. Yes, IPL is no cricket. But fans say it’s even better. Those who run the league say everyone’s a winner. And no one seem to have enough of this money-minting, glamour-fuelled event that defies cricket’s very grammar and language.

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