The summer game

I’ve spent most of the past week in Hubli, a small city in northern Karnataka that has been, in a strange way, an IPL eye-opener for me. Every evening, as the work machine shut down, the Indian Premier League was about the only entertainment available or accessible to the strangers in town. As such, I spent the week watching T20 games almost uninterrupted.

As I soon discovered, the rest of Hubli wasn’t doing very much different. IPL had captured the imagination. As a friend pointed out, nothing else was selling. IPL and Set Max had crowded out advertising from other channels and soap operas. Few big Hindi/Indian films were being released in the IPL period, because no film-maker was certain he or she could match the frenzy of abbreviated cricket. Thanks to IPL, lean season corporate advertising – summer is usually a dull time to roll out heavy-duty promotional campaigns – had been rendered an oxymoron.

Not all of this was predicted. A number of well-meaning cricket fans from England and Australia and even within India were genuinely surprised at projections of IPL’s success, wondering if there was enough money to back the idea. In sum, what IPL may have done is created a new, complementary cricket market for the summer months. It will not necessarily take away from the traditional cricket season that runs from October/November to March.

It is best to see T20 and traditional cricket as two separate sports or, perhaps, separate enterprises. In the United States, basketball, American football, baseball, golf and a few other sports are all sustainable. The Indian economy isn’t as big as the American one but it’s grown large enough to support more than one sport.

Unfortunately, for a complex mix of reasons, India is essentially a single-sport society. There is only game in India that has mass following, engages a critical consumer population and invites corporate support. Thus far the sport was (traditional, Test/ODI) cricket. With IPL, the cricket business has multiplied and created another product to vacuum the money that remains.

Whatever the sceptics may say, the fact is IPL is working. It’s carved a new audience for cricket. True, some of the T20 fans may not be around to watch the Test matches when Australia tours India later this year, but never mind. As along as there is enough for each segment, each type of cricket fan – and as long as there’re no moronic two-match Test series – nobody will complain.

Before the IPL season began, I had my doubts whether it would have any implications on the selection of the Indian Test team. Over the past week or two, I’ve had to re-edit that thought.

Having seen Rohit Sharma bat in the T20 World Cup, the ODI series in Australia and now the IPL has been a pleasure. As soon as there’s place in the Indian middle order – which means, when either Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly or Dravid walks back to the pavilion for the final time – Sharma should be playing Test cricket. He looks more capable for the longer game than, for instance, Yuvraj Singh.

Next, Gautam Gambhir has now batted with enough fluency in all types of cricket to merit selection over Wasim Jaffer. He should be opening for India in Test cricket.

Three cricketers I hadn’t seen much of before the IPL have also left an impression. S. Badrinath (Chennai Super Kings) is ready for India. Ashok Dinda (Kolkata Knight Riders) and Manpreet Singh Gony (Chennai) could add to India’s fast bowling options in Tests/ODIs. David Hussey will be 31 in two months and it’s difficult to believe he’s never been selected for Australia in an ODI.

There’re names I’ve missed, of course, given the many new stars IPL has thrown up. Whichever way you look at it, it hasn’t been a bad deal for what was meant to be an off-seasonal gimmick. Let’s give IPL its due.