Powerplay in Cricket!

I said Powerplay and I do not mean the first few overs in the Cricket match when there are no field restrictions...

Very similarly, we are now witness to powerful politicians and industrialists and film stars and their kin dabbling with Cricket and breaking ( someone said" Bending is OK") rules of ethics and propriety besides bring up the indecent display of slush money itself that goes in to bidding and auction of players...

Lalit Modi , the so called wizard of this new exciting phenomenon called Cricketainment, started it all two years ago and no one was sure how the money came and went. But we were just ‘bowled over’ by this new recipe which mesmerized the country like a new drug.

Now with the ugly face-off between this money spinner Lalit Modi and the present Junior Minister of External ‘affairs’ (LOL!) Shashi Tharoor, the skeletons are tumbling out of the IPL cupboard and it’s not a pretty sight.
Sure, Cricket has come far from its humble beginning of being a gentleman’s’ game to something resembling a gladiator like action sport…But that still should not have robbed it of its basic tenets of legal discipline and sport ethics..
It now transpires that this Kochi team which has made more news even before it started playing, has a kin of Tharoor tucked away who is getting this sweet deal or sweat equity or what have you..

We do not know how many such clandestine or ghost deals have been struck in earlier bids or money has been pooled/ siphoned off from/to undisclosed sources.
Coming to the matches themselves, it is cricketainment alright, because it is more thrilling than any cricketing wizard can hope to predict and prophesize..
Most matches have had unpredictable twists and shock results much like a bollywood masala film…,which makes one think if this is all kind of ‘controlled’ entertainment for the sake of filling the stadiums and keep TV TRP ratings alive? You know how advts and publicity is big money these days…

Is this some kind of IPL management’s own way of ‘fixing matches’ to keep the thrill factor alive till the last minute? We may never know..

In any case they have managed to grab the entire nation by the scruff of its neck and keep us addicted to this stuff and glued to TV screens..

Though the big ‘phoren’ guns have not fired this time, on the plus-side, it has thrown up fresh young talent and that should make for a good reservoir of cricket possibilities for the next few seasons...

There are no ‘no-balls’ in this cricket business now; everything is a ‘free-hit’!