Monday, March 23, 2009

IPL's false invocation to the fans

Kunal Pradhan's incisive take on the IPL controversy

Pradhan goes behind the hypocricy of the Board and Modi in invoking the injury done to the Indian fan bythe shift of venue.

Pradhan points how the board never bothered to better the condition of the Indian fan earlier (I agree to many of his points describing the conditions.) who lines up to watch a game.

He then digs into the real reasons (why do they always turn out to be strictly commercial in the end?) which are mainly two:

  1. IPL’s own position: IPL lost money in the first season. It needs to stick in the mind of people to ultimately make money (like Sharjah) and for that it’s regularization (election year or not) needs to be done. In his words: “one top franchise official had told me this week, would force them to start “not from scratch but from minus five” in 2010.”
  2. Lalit Modi’s clout with BCCI, after his loss in Rajasthan Elections, is due to IPL. Take that away and you only have a Little Modi left.

    Very nice essay.

2 comments:

Kholu said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kholu said...

he is spot on.... to add to that there is a deeper political play happening here

Lalit Modi is in the Pawar camp in BCCI, so this is like a right sizing of Pawar also who has been getting ambitious, Congress wanted to hit him and they found a very sweet way to do that through IPL