And there is, I would proffer, no sporting event better suited to kind of watching than the IPL, a tournament that moulds itself beautifully around your life: something to kind of watch while you make breakfast, something to kind of have in the background while you reply to emails, a white noise of various men with airport-lounge accents squealing things like "fetch that!" and "carnage!"
You go to the shops, come back, and it's still there. You go on holiday for a fortnight, and it's still there. Ruturaj Gaikwad is still batting. Axar Patel is still standing at mid-wicket, hands on hips, looking deeply unimpressed. You've missed about 8,000 runs and several hundred sixes. But in an important sense, you've missed nothing at all.
More specifically, I've been sort-of watching this year's IPL, and trying to think what it reminds me of. Finally, while watching Jonny Bairstow blazing a 45-ball hundred for Punjab (I think) against Kolkata (I think), it hit me. This is the sporting equivalent of those viral phone videos of massive fights in beer gardens during major summer tournaments. It's the shaky camerawork, the grunting and screaming, the sense of disorder and sweaty misrule, the unseen commentators chuckling in the foreground. Oh my god, here comes Travis Head with an entire four-pint pitcher of Aspall! Fetch that! Carnage!
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