IPL 5 : Five things I am NOT going to miss

The guys tolerated Ganguly and Agarkar for three years, and SRK for 5 years. Truly deserved the title. Congrats, KKR !!

To begin with, I am not one of those who complain that IPL is ruining cricket and all that tripe. How do you know that cricket is being ruined? Is there a quality check that tells you how cricket is being ruined? If lots of money entering the sport is what ruins it, West Indies cricket should be the purest, right? How come brother Gayle is hanging out in India and butchering hapless Indian domestic bowlers for two years now?

So, let’s get this straight. There’s no ruining cricket. It’s like lamenting that Mario the video game was going extinct. Yeah, it was an awesome game and all that. But how long can you watch a man with a cap jumping on tortoises and collecting stars? People move on, and want different things. 

I find it funny how people like Harsha Bhogle write seemingly well-researched articles like ‘5 cricketers to watch out for in the future’ on cricinfo. Let’s face it, in the five years that Lalit Modi stormed into our lives, only Ashwin and Jadeja are the players who have made any impact in the national cricket side. For most others, it is a two month extravaganza that you can’t avoid. For me, it gives me something to watch everyday on TV. And frankly, if I have to choose between soap operas and asinine films on Zee Cinema, I am happy with the IPL, thank you very much. 

This year’s IPL took things one step further. While we had fakeIPLplayer giving us fake insights into the happenings of the KKR dressing room a few years ago, this year proved that the guy was a Nostradomus of sorts. This year’s IPL saw sting operations about match fixing, rave parties with cricketers claiming they thought they were birthday parties, and molestation cases where Siddharth Mallya finally broke to the world the etiquette that a future wife needs to follow. What more can you want?

However, not everything was rosy. There were still a few niggling worries that bugged me throughout the season. 

 

1. Shastri and Gavaskar’s cliches: What will it take for the BCCI to realise that noone really listens to these guys anymore? Coming up with the choicest of cliches time and again, Shastri and Gavaskar have rubbed off some of their awesome predictability on their juniors – the extremely original Arun Lal, and the guy who makes marathon chess matches seem like 3D porn – Laxman Sivaramakrishnan. 

In all fairness, Gavaskar has seemed to mellow down quite a bit this season. But Shastri, how do you stop an idea whose time had come and gone 20 year ago? The man crusades on, with his ‘travelled like a bullet’ and ‘pin-drop silence in the crowd as Sachin departs’ references like there is no tomorrow.

 

2. Danny Morrison’s drug-induced howling: When Danny Morrison was brought into the commentary box a few years back, it was a breath of fresh air. He did not adhere to the Shastri dictum of two cliches an over, and seemed to bring in some sort of a humour in his commentary. Now, after three years, the shouting gets on my nerves. I understand if you are excited about a match. But if you’re howling with joy when Kings XI Punjab beat Deccan Chargers chasing 123 in 20 overs, I am sorry my friend, we know it’s fake.

We in India know what is fake. For years, we have used China mobiles. We have seen Tushar Kapoor beat up bad guys thrice his size, and we even watched a film where Fardeen Khan invents the world’s fastest car. We also have Rakhi Sawant. So when something is fake, we just know it.

3. Product Placement: Even though the IPL did not accept my suggestions a few years back of having fielding positions called Kohinoor Extra Cover and Anne French Fine Leg, the IPL has not stopped short of going the whole 22 yards when it comes to product placements. Citi moments of success still jolt us out of our sleep, Karbonn Kamaal catches win matches, and DLF maximums exist in every match.

Thankfully, the MRF Blimp, some marketing guru’s idea of a funny joke, has been done away with. But the product placements just go on. This year, we had Akshay Kumar with his moustache cheering for Ganguly’s team. He spoke passionately about Pune being his favourite team, which is funny, because two years back, he had said his heart beats for Delhi Daredevils. Change of heart? You bet!

 

4. Idea Ads: Times will change, people will be born and eventually die, Shakti Kapoor will proposition a young woman and then apologise, kingdoms will rise and then decline, but Idea will continue to make the crappiest ads on television. I badly want to meet the people who come up with those ideas. What exactly are their motives? Who do they research about? Who is their target audience? The All India Chacha Chaudhry Fans Association?

I mean, we understand that you want to promote the concept of ‘heavenly apps’? Does that mean you torture us with an ad a day, with Abhishek Bachan dressed in white, and a bunch of morons around him, on a set that looks stolen from the film ‘Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic?’ Are we really that dumb? The IPL is undoubtedly the time of the year where most companies come up with their best ads, as they are ensured a steady viewership over a month and a half. We have seen some of the finest sets of ads in the IPL. And then there’s this company, stubbornly sticking to Abhishek Bachhan, and testing out patience and mocking at our intelligence, year after year. How much longer?

 

5. Navjyot Singh Sidhu: But of course you guessed it. What do I say of the man? He has officially gone nuts.

The last time he was in the news, he picked a fight with a guard and blocked the road in Andhra Pradesh when he had come to attend a wedding. Before that, he told a co-commentator ”Don’t fuck with me” and was banned from the live commentary panel and restricted to the pre and post match discussions (the part of the match where you go out for a smoke, take a crap, come back, switch on the channel and say, “Abey, yeh kab tak bakega?”). This time, Sidhu was again in the pre and post match discussions, which shows that the IPL has some sort of viewer sensitivity. Every match that he sees, is the best innings he has seen in a long time. Every discussion includes one of his shayaris and allegories. This year, to spice things up for us, he started saying small one-liners just before the camera panned away at the end of the session. That little ‘chak de phatte‘, or ‘ghumade balla’ to make our day.