The great cricket tamasha (Indian Premier League season 3) is at best a sleazy bollywood masala. There is action, tragedy, romance, drama....everything.
The sport is dead; long live the green buck irrigating the lush playing fields. Players are up for sale, and the IPL market is bustling with high-brow body shoppers. Hammer, not the willow, is the match-winner here.
This year, the IPL casino parlour got murkier with the franchisees boycotting Pakistan players. The Indian government and P. Chidambaram cried foul over reports that the decision was fuelled by the possible visa restrictions that might be imposed on the players. Pakistan was humiliated, and so were the players who took home the twenty-20 world cup trophy last year. A hurt Shahid Afridi said, “"The way I see it, the IPL and India have made fun of us and our country by treating us this way.”
The issue was dangerously edging towards a diplomatic row between the already volatile neighbours. An embittered Pakistan declared its players would not feature in the IPL next year.
A newspaper report said the franchisees were apprehensive to include Pakistani players as their presence might not go down well with the fading Mumbai tiger, Bal Thackeray, and the fresh Mumbai terror, Raj Thackeray, as many matches were to be played in the city!
The IPL boss, Lalit Modi, first messed up the show, then messed it up more by saying the doors were still open for Pakistan players, if players dropped out.
The act continued…In a sudden turn, the Deccan Chargers, one of the franchisees, invited Pakistan all-rounder Abdul Razzaq to represent them.
The Indian government, the IPL management and the franchisees, have all handled the issue with a high degree of immaturity. It is said money speaks, but does it speak this kind of nonsense?
The noted columnist, Peter Roebuck, has lauded the Australian cricketers for having given the IPL a miss, saying they have shown “great wisdom in not putting their hat for the IPL auction”. He said they have the Ashes in mind, and that is a promising sign.
The game lives on outside India.
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I am going to copy paste a comment I posted on the same topic elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteBut I wondered if this could have been dealt more diplomatically by Lalit Modi and gang? Like making it clear to them,”Boss, we already had to stage our second edition outside India due to security reasons. Now the issue will rise again if Pakistan is involved. This is just like how no country would tour Pak under the present circumstances.” (I am sure a PR person can word it better but you get the drift, right?) Why make all the brouhaha about clearing visa status, put those players in the top auction pools and then lead everyone to a situation where the word “snub” had to be used? I don’t know but probably diplomacy doesn’t work that way.
But of course, that(visa thingy) was probably the government's prerogative and they had no other choice.