LEAGUE INTERRUPTED

Whoever once said emphatically that “It’s just not cricket”, a big shout-out for speaking too soon.

- Soumitra Bose

She had not even seen the Indian Premier League (IPL), that crazy crossover between Mad Max and Terminator, with the glamour and lucre of a Las Vegas casino thrown in. The gentleman’s game invented by the stiff-upper-lipped British to be played between lunch and afternoon tea is…well, no longer the pastime of lazy afternoons in the English countrywide. Cricket is now a board game, played as much by corporate honchos in pinstripe suits in five-star hotels as much by tattooed gladiators with rippling muscles and hairdos in front of delirious spectators in modern-day Roman amphitheaters. Even Kerry Packer’s revolutionary day-night cricket league that introduced coloured clothing looks like kid’s play now. Yes, IPL is no cricket. But fans say it’s even better. Those who run the league say everyone’s a winner. And no one seem to have enough of this money-minting, glamour-fuelled event that defies cricket’s very grammar and language.