The much awaited second season of IPL has begun. The twenty-twenty carnival that rocked India last year is back, but this time, the venue is South Africa thanks to the security issues caused due to the parliament elections in India.
The first season of the IPL was an absolute delight to watch. It started with the fireworks of Brendom Mccullum, continued with the quickfire centuries of Symonds, Gilchrist, Hussey, and Jayasuriya, and ended with some lovely innings from the likes of Shaun Marsh, Ganguly, Sehwag, Gambhir, Raina, Yusuf and many other cricketers. IPL Season-I had almost everything a viewer asked for: Sixes, Fours, Stars, Wickets, Local Crowds, and What Not? It is unfortunate that the second season of IPL will not be that exciting compared to its predecessor due to the following reasons:
1) Forced Breaks: Although IPL was created mainly for commercial interests, the BCCI has gone a step overboard by introducing a “Break” of nearly 7 minutes after every 10 overs of an innings. This is totally irritating both for the players and the viewers as the batting teams tend to lose their concentration and sometimes the momentum too, while the viewer is frustrated with endless commercials.
2) The absence of some key Australian Players like Shaun Marsh, Shane Watson, Mike Hussey, and Andrew Symonds has dampened IPL 2009 a bit. These people provided tremendous entertainment to the fans last time around. We will miss the Pakistani cricketers too. After all, Kamran Akmal, Sohail Tanvir, Shahid Afridi, and Umar Gul will be missed badly by their respective teams
3) Pitches in South Africa: In the first two IPL matches, we saw pitches favoring the batting team. The side batting first had a strong advantage as the pitch slowed up considerably during the second innings. Not a good sign for a 20-20 match. Considering the uneven nature of the pitches, the toss may decide the winner in the upcoming matches unless the South African Cricket Board does something about it.
4)The presence of too many distractions: Viewers tend to watch IPL only for one main reason: Cricket. Unfortunately the cameras seem to always focus on things apart from cricket. For example, we may be forced to watch Shilpa Shetty/Preity/Mandira providing her views on cricket just when somebody is hitting a DLF MAXIMUM (That’s the IPL term for a SIXER). We also see some random TV host interviewing a Franchise owner/co-owner when the match is in a crucial stage. Such minor things often stand out to be the greatest irritation.
5)The absence of Local Flavor: You can replace anything in the IPL, but not the local crowds. A Chennai Superkings vs Rajasthan Royals match played at the Chepauk Stadium in Chennai is always more entertaining than one being played at Cape Town in SA. No complaints about SA crowds, they are wonderful people, but somehow I feel that there is nothing more joyful in the world than to see Indian crowds cheering madly for their respective teams.
6)The last but not the least reason-Commercials. As they say, “Too much of anything is bad”. The same applies to commercials. The viewers are forced to watch too many commercials in between the overs. To add to the misery, at every single opportunity, the Channel telecasts a commercial making the viewers wonder whether it is the Indian Premier League or the International Commercial League.
Hopefully, Lalit Modi realizes the importance of providing quality entertainment and mends his ways. If not, be ready to watch more COMMERCIALS than Cricket.
As I speak, Chennai Super Kings have defeated Bangalore Royal Challengers by a huge margin of 92 runs. Such one-sided matches are a big NO-NO especially when it comes to Twenty-Twenty Cricket. Hope that the forthcoming matches turn out to be evenly matched contests.
