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It is about this time that the Indian Premier League starts to fudge into a nothingness for me. And we’re only a week into the tournament.
I look up to the screen. Another pair of teams in pyjamas. Another bit of Ravi Shastri hype. Another wicket. Another six (and another cliché to describe it). Another cheerleader. Another catch, drop, run-out.
Posted in IPL, Twenty20 | 4 Comments »
ITV4 Press Release reveals plan for world domination
Not content with saving cricket from certain extinction, bringing peace to the Middle East and discovering a cure for that really annoying thing where you get water in your ear after you go swimming, Lalit Modi has pulled off another incredible coup. The incomparable Mr Modi has unearthed a television double act to stand alongside Morecambe and Wise, Phil and Fearne and the Brit Awards’ Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox.
2010 will be looked back upon as the year of Graeme Hick and Mandira Bedi.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Alan Tyers, IPL | No Comments »
Which IPL team do you support? If you’re happily following a side, you’re doing a whole lot better than me.
As an Englishman who likes all forms of cricket (apart from ODIs obviously, but does anyone like those?) I feel I need to support a team from the IPL or it’ll just pass me by for the third consecutive year. It’s not as easy as it sounds though. In football I support Norwich City because that’s where I was born, where I grew up, where I had spots and where I grew a ridiculous curtain haircut.
Posted in IPL | 8 Comments »
I am loving this season’s IPL. I want to loathe it, I want to sneer at its over-commercialisation, its arrogance, how it’s the battering-ball that will topple Test cricket’s remaining ramparts – but I just can’t.
England are playing Bangladesh in a missionary Test series. West Indies are playing Zimbabwe in a battle of the dampest squibs. The world’s best players are appearing daily on terrestrial television, free on the internet, with full, crazy stands and explosive cricket. Which one is working best?
Posted in IPL | 7 Comments »
Maybe I don’t fit into a particular demographic neatly enough, but I’ve struggled to find an IPL team to call my own. I’ve been to a few of the towns, which should be a good place to start, but it doesn’t seem to help. Maybe if they weren’t ‘franchises’ I might have a fighting chance. Franchises aren’t for supporting. No-one’s ever felt moved to buy a Domino’s Pizza uniform to show their allegiance.
Despite this, I’ve found a way to care about IPL matches. I don’t support a team, but I do support a group of players who all have something in common. I support Test cricketers.
Posted in IPL | 6 Comments »
With the start of the IPL just over a week away, it seemed to me a good time to start banging the drum about how it is a distant irrelevance, poorly reported (in this part of the world), broadcast only on pay-TV, contested by teams with no history and players furiously milking cricket’s new cash cow for all its worth.
But wait … In the wake of today’s announcement that ITV has picked up the rights to show the 2010 tournament, at least some of those criticisms have been rendered void. Is this finally the year to embrace Lalit Modi’s garish monster?
Posted in IPL, The media, Twenty20 | 8 Comments »
Lalit Modi will save county cricket.
Modi, the brains behind the IPL and the Champions League T20, the most important man in cricket, doesn’t mean to save it. In fact, he couldn’t really care less about it. But his decision to overlap the start of the Champions League with the end of the English county season has made something startlingly clear: that our county game is horribly archaic and run by people who consider a Jacuzzi at a match as modernising. This fixture clash serves them right.
Posted in IPL, Twenty20 | 26 Comments »
The ECB today said that there has been no formal invitation from the BCCI for counties to participate in the scheduled Champions League Twenty20.
The news comes after Lalit Modi’s revelation on Twitter that the tournament will run from September 10 to 26, clashing with the final two rounds of the County Championship, the ECB’s domestic one-day semi-finals and final and three ODIs between England and Pakistan.
Posted in IPL, Twenty20 | No Comments »
Lalit Modi – the head man of the IPL and the Champions League T20 – has, in one move, pitted Twenty20 against the first-class game; English domestic cricket as governed by the ECB, versus his new baby, the Champions League as not governed by the ECB (who spectacularly failed to become a significant voice when the tournament was first announced).
The Champions League will take place through the climax of the English season – from September 10 to September 26. This encompasses the final two rounds of the County Championship, the ECB’s domestic one-day semi-finals and final and three England v Pakistan ODIs. (The venue for the CLT20 has not been decided yet.)
This has laid waste to the 2010 fixture list.
Posted in Champions League, County cricket, IPL, Twenty20 | 9 Comments »
Anyone who has ever watched Indian Premier League businessmen pedal their wares will know that details usually come a distant second to the big picture. And so it was on Monday at Lord’s, where the Royals 2020 franchise was unveiled and The Future Of The World As We Know It changed forever. But more than one starry-eyed hack came away wondering whether the implications extend beyond having to listen to Shane Warne’s gags about John Buchanan for another few years. Here, then, are some of the questions which need answering…
Posted in IPL, Twenty20 | 3 Comments »
