Big Bucks, Stars, Action And A Pledge - Cricket Just Got Bigger

Well, isn’t Indian Cricket on a roll these days. First India’s amazing performance down under where they put up a great show during the test matches and then silenced critics all over the world by winning the Commonwealth Bank Series. Then Virender Sehwag’s 2^nd triple century against South Africa (check here) and you soon realize that the Indian team is actually playing very well.

Well, in another few weeks India would once again be the focus of the entire Cricketing world as the much hyped and talked about Indian Premier League kicks off. The past few months have seen big names pay huge sums of money for stakes in the IPL teams, swelling the BCCI coffers in the process(it has already earned well over $1 Billion dollars through bidding, telecast rights etc ). The implementation of the whole idea, conceptualized and executed by BCCI Vice President and IPL Chairman Lalit Modi has been flawless till now and it is good to see a European football club style process being brought into cricket.

For the un-initiated the IPL, officially called the “DLF Indian Premier League“, is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and sanctioned by the International Cricket Council. The season is scheduled to start on 18 April 2008 and the final match will be held on 1 June 2008. The league will consist of 8 teams which are Mumbai Indians(owned by Mukesh Ambani and Reliance Industries Limited), Bangalore Royal Challengers(owned by Vijay Mallya and the UB group), Deccan Chargers(owned by Deccan Chronicle), Chennai Super Kings(owned by India Cements and N Srinivasan), Delhi DareDevils(owned by GMR Holdings), Punjab Kings(owned by Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia and others), Kolkata Knight Riders(owned by Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla Mehta and Jai Mehta) and Rajasthan Royals.

With so many big names involved and each team having some of the best players in the world (check here for more information) the IPL is set to attract tremendous viewer interest initially. Another unique feature of this tournament is that all the IPL captains have taken a pledge to maintain the ‘spirit of cricket‘ (Source). The BCCI is taking steps to ensure that the tournament would not be marred by any unpleasant incidents and the game is played in the right spirit.

Well, only time will tell whether the IPL proves to be a big hit or not as no amount of money or star power can compensate for a feeling of patriotism which this tournament would lack. After all it always feels good whenever you see something like this,

even if it happened many years ago.

Tags: india, cricket, IPL, money, srk, ambani, patriotism, hype, pledge, spirit

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posted by krisdhingra in Cricket |