Monday, March 16, 2009

IPL – the Fighters

IPL guys must be really appreciated for their spirit of fighting. For they never miss the opportunity, rather sometimes create an opportunity for a tussle. This time it is fighting hard with home ministry to schedule its matches in the month with National elections. I even came across debates where a side argues that elections should be postponed as IPL dates were announced earlier. Is IPL above national elections today? Rather it was quite expected that elections would be held sometime in April, May of June because of which UPA was asked to present an interim budget. Now, even after aware of the expected election dates IPL schedule was launched with matches an April and May. This might be surprising but actually it is not. If not now ICC won’t provide window to IPL before Nov-Dec ’09. So our multi-million dollar business IPL is finding hard to reschedule. After all there’s so much money involved. It’s bigger than Cricket itself!

As BCCI is striving hard for its new schedule they haven’t forgotten their enemy ICL. First they dint allowed Indian players to play with domestic NZ team as NZ domestic cricket have players like Hamish Marshall who play in ICL. Now, they are opposing presence of Craig McMillan at commentary box. NZ has already lost their ace bowler Shane Bond because of this IPL-ICL rift. To be true, T20 tournament is brainchild of Zee with Kapil Dev. BCCI copied the idea and executed it big, with the fat cash its sitting on. Still the reason for banning ICL is unclear to me. Does BCCI have sole right to mint money from cricket in India? Very soon we"ll see BCCI taking over local tennis ball cricket tournaments as well :-) 

As I complete writing this, now I am seeing the news of another fight of IPL. This time with broadcaster Sony!! 

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