Yeah and they are forced to take them aswel
Nevermind the UK I post on cricketweb a forum with a lot of Indian posters.Is there much?
I’m talking merely from a fans perspective here, not about how many UK produced players are involved, but I wanted to have the discussion really - I noted on the County Cricket thread that there’s barely been any mention of the upcoming county season on the various podcast outlets that cover ‘frontline’ cricket. Not yet anyway. There were however IPL preview episodes on all of them. Now I’ve got very little interest in it so I didn’t bother listening, my interest would’ve risen ever so slightly if Durham had any players involved, but I don’t really care very much about it, being brutally honest. I imagine though, that there were fewer listeners for them than there would be for a standard days reporting of Test Cricket.
I don’t intend this as an anti-IPL thread, nor even an anti-BCCI thread, most people will know what my feelings are already about that, but is there that much interest across our nation for the IPL?? Outside of the normal cricketing public, or aside from even the British Indian community? I get that there’s interest in India.
It’s on Sky, but so was the PSL (as are various other cricketing mediums) and I did watch quite a bit of that. I enjoyed it, I always do enjoy watching cricket from Pakistan, I love the vibrancy of the crowds and I suppose I’ve got a heightened sense of appreciation when watching it which stems from the sentiment of being able to watch cricket from there again, following their previous ban. It did seem to be far more organic however, than the IPL, which I’ll probably always have a lot of hostility towards for well documented reasons.
I know we’re just a small microcosm of the cricketing public on here, but there doesn’t seem so much interest in franchise cricket as a whole, maybe we aren’t the target audience after all
T20 has its place in world cricket, I can’t and won’t dispute that, but when an innings is taking close to two hours to complete as it does in this current version and they’re taking tactical and strategic timeouts AND even having a f*cking drinks break after ten overs - it’s sort of losing the entire point of what it was meant to be in the first place. It’s becoming ever so closer to being baseball. I’m sure most of us have played midweek club games where we’ve completed the entire thing in less time than it takes the Bangalore Bullshitters to bowl their 20 overs.
So is it really the all conquering answer to the future of world cricket? I’m sure the players appreciate the huge paychecks, it’s created a band of mercenary cricketers (and who can blame them?) who simply travel the world for twelve months every year earning enough money so that they never have to work a proper job for the rest of their (or their families lives) once the gravy eventually runs out or they’re too old to board the train. The IPL in itself won’t cure the ills of world cricket, it may not even cure the ills of Indian cricket, but of course that’s why every country now has its own version and whether you or I agree or not with how best to pursue that option, every nation tries to do it as best as they can in order to maximise as best they can the amount of gravy they can extract from it.
I concede I’ve drifted a little from the original question, I concede too that I’ve perhaps touched upon how shite I think it all is (which I said I wouldn’t do), but I think those are pertinent enough points and important questions in the bigger picture and when it pertains to considering how best it is to answer the first question anyway.
If you’re still awake after all of that, what are your thoughts?
Bengaluru Bullshitters now, of course, seemingly
So just to clarify mate, do you enjoy it?
I can explain further why I do mate if you want.So just to clarify mate, do you enjoy it?
It’s always difficult to get the balance right with these things when they popular and the IPL has undoubtedly become too long.
I guess that's what happens when you play on a billiard table
