REALITY CHECK

With players' workload management back in focus for WTC final & World Cup later this year, Swaroop Swaminathan dwells on the complexity of the issue in franchise-based leagues like IPL

- Swaroop Swaminathan

On an increasingly incendiary second Test between India and Australia at Bangalore in March 2017, the near-capacity crowd were going through their full repertoire of chants. As one of the finest Tests in recent times hurtled towards a finish on the early Tuesday afternoon, vast swathes of the M Chinnaswamy Stadium removed the roof of the Stadium with a seldom-heard chant outside Indian Premier League games. “Are Cee Beeee,” they screamed. Whenever Australia lost a wicket, the chants grew louder. Afraid to break the spell, more people joined in. “Are Cee Bee.”

As a neutral in the stands, it wasn’t hard to wonder if that Tuesday (there have been chants about their team before but not with such vigour, fervour or ferocity) was a sign of things. Fans basing their international cricket-watching experience through the eyes of a franchise. Or, in any other words, the sort of tribalism you normally associate with football fans, most of whom are ambivalent about international football.

Some six years and a month later, that has not proved to be the case. The IPL maybe 16 years and nearly 1000 matches old (the game between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings on May 6 will mark that occasion) but the vast majority of the country’s cricketing ecosystem still bleed blue with an occasion splash of (insert the colour of the franchise you support here).

Nowhere was this more evident than in the post-series Rohit Sharma press conference following the India - Australia Test series in March. Sharma, who was speaking as India captain, had, essentially, given the Mumbai Indians version of himself a question to answer.