IPL is excit...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

IPL3 is bad. There hasn’t been a single interesting match so far. Yup, there was a tie between CSK and KIXP, but at the end of the match I had the same expression as King Theoden did in LOTR – “Tell me! How did it come to this?” Sheer mediocrity! One can easily argue that IPL2 was much better because of the good pitches that South Africa offered. There are several things that I’m quite unhappy about IPL3 apart from the fact that the quality of cricket is sticking to the laws of gravity.

Please fire the commentators (or asking them to bowl would be a better punishment). I can’t stand them. In constant search of superlative terms, a normal catch gets a ‘great’ tag, a decent fielding gets a ‘brilliant’, and a slog gets a ‘super shot’. In IPL2 I was so frustrated with the ‘DLF maximums’ and ‘City moment of successes’. Seriously there were some moments of success last time. But in IPL3, a quick single gets ‘A real citi moment of success for getting that single’ – just because the commentator has to complete the quota of number of times he has to say that!. Even seasoned campaigners like Sunny & Ravi Shastri have succumbed to this ordinary commentary. If it is for entertainment, please bring stand up comedians.

Where are the Indian Cheerleaders? Are Indian gals totally incapable of making great moves in front of thousands? I don’t think so. Each and every team should be allowed to hire their cheerleaders. Imagine, CSK doing a ‘thappangoothu’ and KIXP doing a ‘bangra’. It would be absolute fun!

Pity the bowlers. I feel so sorry for them. Shortened boundaries, free hits, no error on bowling on the leg side, fielding restrictions, only one bouncer per over, can’t run on the pitch – so many things stacked against them. Modi might introduce – can’t bowl faster than 140, can’t take more than one wicket in a over, only one maiden per match, free hits after wides, should wear only uncomfortable pants and much more to come..

Just because it is ‘Indian’ premier league, does every team have to wear blue uniform? Only CSK and RCB add to the color quotient. Suggestions - green, orange, dull red, maroon as some other colors. Hope the new teams don’t follow the same pattern.

It would have been great to have the Pakistani cricketers. They are the best T20 side in the world right now and having them would have surely improved the game. Afridi, Gul, Razzaq and many more fit the format to the ‘T’.

Why Sony MAX of all of them? I’ve hated SMAX’s broadcasting ever since they got the rights for 2003 world cup. All excitements are so made up and they have a one hour prelude to each and every match. Very pretentious hosts who have no clue about cricket and they sit with a bunch of loser-cricketers-who-made-no-impact-to-the-game to discuss the game! ESPN STAR was so professional in this. Harsha! Where art thou? The advertisements have gone too far too. Apart from the inter-over ads, now we have intra-over ads too. We are not far away from ads between every ball!

In the end, cricket suffers the most. I’m not a cricket purist. I’ve loved the first T20 world cups. I believe that T20 can take cricket to new countries. But the efforts from BCCI and ICC are not in that direction. They just wanna make money. Nothing wrong in that either, but don’t do it at the cost of the game. Next year, there are going to be 10 teams. Unless the cap on the no-of-foreign-players in a team is increased, you will see the quality taking a scuba dive.