IPL: The ‘real’ battle for Indian cricket fans?

When the Fifa World Cup was nearing its end in 2010, a somewhat over-the-top advertising line for telecasts of English Premier League (EPL) matches caught my eyes: “The real battle begins now.”

Well, the average Indian cricket fan may be saying the same thing before flopping into the drawing room couch for the seven-week extravaganza of the Indian Premier League (IPL) from Wednesday.

The cricket World Cup has just got over after an equally prolonged run, but already seems to have become a footnote in the memory space of fans back home. The Australian members of the World Cup-winning team will now be more identified with the team shirts they wear — Steve Smith is more of a Rajasthan Royal now, while Glenn Maxwell will be the game-changer for Kings XI Punjab.

What’s more, the consistent and solid performances of the Men in Blue in the World Cup must have also silenced the critics, who would have otherwise carped about how the Indian players are more enamoured about playing for their clubs rather than country. The stage is hence much more well set than last year, when the match-fixing scandal along with the uncertainty over the venue of the first leg because of Indian elections had cast a shadow over the build-up to — to use an ad parlance — India’s cricket festival.

The brand value of IPL, besmirched by its quota of scandals, is expected to scale new heights this year, with the total advertising spend set to reach a high of Rs10 billion (Dh589 million), according to Impact, an advertising and marketing publication. One is free to question the veracity of such figures, but there is no doubt that the IPL phenomenon has continued to beat factors like recession and negative publicity time and again.

Yes, the uncomfortable questions do lurk in the background, but it’s in vain to even raise them at this hour. Whatsoever happened about the action against Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, the two teams whose head honchos were indicted of betting and disclosure of team information to the bookies? The two teams had come close to being scrapped from the IPL in 2014, but not a whimper is heard about it anymore.

The compromise formula of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has reached such an art form that even a position like that of IPL chairman became a bargaining chip this week — forcing the board to opt for former incumbent Rajiv Shukla, who did not exactly cover himself with glory in his previous tenure.

It would have made much more horse sense to hand that role to either Ravi Shastri or Sourav Ganguly — the two cricketers inducted into the IPL governing council to give it a more a credible face. The presence of a respected former cricketer, like Sunil Gavaskar’s role as the interim BCCI president showed last year, would certainly have helped in the short term, but then the choice had to suit the bigger battle of oneupmanship inside the richest cricket body in the world.

Till then, it’s time to embrace the IPL once again!