So it begins, at Bangalore when Ganguly’s Knights take on Dravid’s Challengers- the IPL, the biggest carnival of Twenty-Twenty cricket with all the glamour that one can ask for begins in a day’s time.

For the first time since the days of Kerry Packer, cricket will be played seriously without national colors. Sachin will face Ishanth Sharma, we have not seen that, Sehwag will swing at Balaji, we have not thought about that and Ganguly will bat with Ponting, we never thought that was possible. And all this will happen when Shah Rukh, Hrithik, Vijay, Juhi and Nayanthara cheer from the stands, while billboards, television, Mallya and Ambani carefully monitor the numbers as each ball is bowled. The IPL is not just about cricket, it’s an industry. Maybe that’s why each team was called a franchise and (how ever much it is denied) players were treated like valuable commodities during auctions. This is has not been seen even in the long-standing football leagues of the world. Of course, there’s a lot of money that goes around during the transfer periods and records are broken every year but what mattered most was always the player’s preference. In the IPL however it is the bosses who decided whom they wanted, only the ‘Icons’ got their way. The IPL is not selling cricket, it is selling well packed entertainment capsule in which cricket is the main ingredient.

Getting back to cricket. That’s a tough thing to do, especially with all the distractions there have been a lot of talks about which team is the most balanced and who has the edge and so on. But to put things in perspective, nothing can be predicted here because most of the big stars going head to head have never done so before, they have always been on the same side and have not tested their powers against each other. So, we do not know whether Gilchrist will be the same demolition machine when he has to ace Glenn Mc Grath or Shane Warne. All these guys have played together and one can be sure that they know things about each others’ games and about the chinks in the armor that others might not know about. Many things are going to be thrown open. Ganguly or Sachin might know a thing or two about setting fields against a rampant Sehwag or how to deal with Kumble’s wrong uns. A lot of beans is going to be spilled and the results one might dare say will be evident when the first series after the IPL is played. Players suddenly will realize that the opposition knows far too many things about them than they ought to, than is safe, they will have to find new ways to survive in the ‘Open Era’. In short, cricket will be thrown open- Indian quickies might learn to perfect the elusive art of reverse swing from the Aussies, the South Africans will learn doosras from Murali and the art of sledging may evolve to a higher level of verbal unruliness or dissolve into gentlemanly conduct, both being distinct possibilities. Some countries have decided to keep away from this integration of international cricketers. They might have their own reasons for doing so but they are missing the bus on cricket’s next big global evolution. Its not about the money, its about the things that will be shared, revealed or even discovered. For all the money, injuries and the supposed ‘greed’ that the IPL is said to bring into cricket, there will also be something good.

From cricket to the other face of IPL- the entertainment. Well, you are not short of it and to repeat an oft-used statement ‘it happens only in India’. SRK sings and dances his way into the hearts of millions of fans for his Kolkata Knight Riders, Preity Zinta ropes in Daler Mahendi and does a Punjabi number for the Kings 11, Vijay and Nayanthara join hands even before ‘Singam’ for the Superkings of Chennai and Hrithik Roshan cheers with all his heart for the Mumbai Indians. That’s a deadly combination of stars doing the cheering, the most expensive cheer leaders on planet earth or are they as crazy about cricket as you or me, not impossible as they are also Indians. Maybe no one really had plans of promoting their teams with music videos, dance numbers etc…but once King Khan started doing things in his own way it was a headlong rush by the others trying to play catch up. SRK seemed to have things neatly panned out months in advance: he called Vishal Dadlani to do the music score, designed some ‘cool’ and ‘knightly’ helmets for every Knight Rider and grabbed ever bit of news space that was being given to the IPL. It had become more of the Knight Riders’ space with even controversy featuring when the unfortunate ban on Shoaib Akthar robbed the team of one of its most deadly weapons. That changed only a day back when Mumbai Indians dealt a powerful blow as they uncovered the Hrithik promotional number, enough headline material in the nick of time. Down south, the Chennai Superkings have been doing fine with their target audience; Vijay is as big a draw as you can get, especially when he is with Nayanthara. IPL- the business. Now, if this goes wrong then we have no IPL next year, forget that the contracts have been given out for 5 and 10 years. We never knew that big business houses had interests in cricket that were deep enough for them to put crores and crores of money into it, making millionaires out of teenagers overnight. Pepsi paid no less than 50 crores to the official IPL drink. Let’s say that more than 500 crores have been put into the IPL from various sources and all that has to be recovered between 18th April and June 1st. That’s the budget of 10 Sivaji movies in a month! Now we don’t know the complex methods in which revenues are worked out through media rights, royalties, television TRPs and whatnots but we can say for sure that the ticket sales at stadium counters is not going to be nearly enough to account for that amount. We can trust the high officials of the BCCI and Lalit Modi to have the mathematics worked out for a profit, else experienced businessmen like Ambani and Ness Wadia would not have ventured into it; but no one can deny the element of risk at work here. This is aptly summed up by what Shahrukh Khan had to say the other day. He was a bit shocked on the first day of ticket sales for the matches at the Eden Garden. Having barred no holds in promoting the event, announcing great plans and saying that he will personally hand out every 1000th ticket purchased, the turn out was least inspiring, even discouraging. Expecting full houses at the Eden Gardens is one thing and getting that done is another, you have to attract 1 lakh people to the stadium. SRK has confessed that things are not as he expected them to be, not the rosy picture that was painted out. But cricket gets exciting as the days go on and things for sure will pickup.