Criminals form the virtual IPL cricket team

IPL’s over-the-top dollars
Copyright © 2010 Economic Times
Mammon, it seems, is now the official lord and God of cricket. Or at least this franchisee, premier league form of it, where obscene sums of money fuel the giddy exercises of building team brands, peddling merchandise and inventing rivalries where one couldn’t see any.

And take the frenetic slam-bang sixes and fours of Twenty20, and phrases like a shot being worth a million dollars acquire a whole new meaning. And it’s Lalit Modi’s IPL brouhaha which seems to be leaving us all agape with its unabashed celebration of lucre and pelf. Here is an arena where two new teams are supposed to be set up, the criteria being having a bank balance of a billion dollars, clauses that speak of team bidders having to pay up a trifling $100 million as a ‘performance deposit’, with teams having a ‘base price’ of $225 million.

Now, we do all know cricket is big money. In India, more so. But it’s not quite cricket to prise such sums out of a country where others sports house themselves in cowsheds and crumbling infrastructure. Or is some enterprising soul going to now try and convince us that some sort of trickle-down effect from the rich coffers of the IPL/BCCI is going to better things all around? Or are these vast sums more a reflection of what the bosses of the IPL think their scheme deserves? Of a pure, unadulterated drive to squeeze out the last gold coin from the fervour surrounding the game in India?

But then again, overvaulting ambition does tend to leap right over the horse. It isn’t just the fact that the tender process for the two new teams fell through after the bidders blanched at the hefty conditions. But rather, sooner or later, the Indian follower of the game might just turn away from this contrived soap-saga of commercial brand building. Or maybe not. Quite a few might be bedazzled by this ‘India shining’ story, quite unable to believe we are indulging in sums of money that rival anything on earth, for a sport we play in our local nukkad. But just which version is the real stuff? Again, the two Indias clash, it seems!
IPL's over the top Dollars

At the root of the problem lies the fact that it (IPL) is laundering black money, it is a caricature of cricket, let us go back to five-day Tests,” Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI) said raising the issue during zero hour.
IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, a failed businessman, now owned a private jet, luxury yacht and a fleet of Mercedes and BMW cars.
MPs: Ban IPL and go back to Tests

Will the IPL and BCCI money spinners fathom the Indian Divide?
Depressing view
Returning back from a seminar on Digital Divide I see a a depressing sight from the window of the train of Humans defecating and Pigs wallowing all in public view. What DIVIDE one would name the spectacle? The divide between those in the cool comfort of the train and those outside and quickly falling behind from view or between the pigs and the Human beings, still facing each other outside.
Brig Lakshman Singh (Retd)