Published: May 25, 2011, 10:52 AM (IST)
Edited: Mar 24, 2014, 06:19 PM (IST)
By CricketCountry Staff
Much like Shane Warne, IPL IV has been bloated. We have now endured 71 matches, and there are still three to come.
However, even marathons start to pale in comparison with this edition of the IPL, which has been more akin to Chinese water torture than cricket.
I used to think that too much cricket was never enough, but as it turns out, even a handful of IPL morsels have proved too much to stomach.
Advertising is understandably an integral part of the IPL circus, and as fans, we have to be prepared for ‘innovations’ such as ‘DLF Maximums’ and ‘C*** Moments of Success’. However, what we universally detest is when this becomes a bombardment, as opposed to a subtle addition which effectively dissolves in to the rest of the show.
Danny Morrison and Brad Hogg have been the worst culprits of this, each going out of their way to say: “He’s DLF’d it! Or has he DLF’d it? It’s hanging up in the air – mind out, it could hit the DLF blimp!”
Danny Morrison, the type to say: “My future’s so bright, I need sunglasses!”
By the same token, it is tragic to hear Sunil Gavaskar struggling to string a sentence together: “Uh, erm, that could have been a K****** Kamaal catch if he’d edged it behind and the ‘keeper hadn’t dropped it!”
Pommie Mbangwa – nice guy though he is – has made me physically ill. Hearing Pommie’s voice is like being on an intravenous drip of leftover McDonald’s beef fallow. Truly nauseating, especially when struggling to fathom why Pune have screwed up a simple chase, and the game is truly dead and buried with a full ten overs left.
At least Simon Doull has been refreshing in his honesty, regularly criticising incompetent umpiring, and at one point, getting riled up by Hogg’s pure ineptitude. Mike Haysman has also done well to not have descended into the contrived farces of Sivaramakrishnan and the over-rated Harsha Bhogle.
It’s worth noting that even Ravi Shastri seems to be lacking enthusiasm -understandable, considering he has been covering matches non-stop for the best part of three months.
We feel for you, big man.
The quality of matches has been poor. Given the calibre of players on show and that Pune/Kochi were bought for $300m+, you’d expect these guys to have some sort of strategy department, and not this utterly woeful laissez-faire attitude that most franchises have had.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that your best batsmen should be batting together as often as possible, but as it turned out, the likes of Sangakkara/Duminy, and Yuvraj/Uthappa batted together on just a handful of occasions throughout the IPL.
The captaincy and strategizing has been inept – no matter how much money you have, it seems that common sense is priceless.
(This article is reproduced with permission from AlternativeCricket.com. AlternativeCricket is currently developing a scholarship for young Afghan cricketers. You can follow them on Facebook (facebook.com/alternativecricket) and Twitter (twitter.com/altcricket)
