Things We Will Miss About the IPL

Now that the IPL is done and dusted with, we will be left with nothing much to talk/argue about with our colleagues, friends, family, neighbor and the passenger in the local train who sits next to you. Love it or hate it, but the fact is that we just could not ignore it. IPL was more like "Rakhi ka Swayamvar", no matter how shallow it all seemed to the cricket purists they still wanted to keep a tab on what was happening in the biggest Cricket Tamasha there ever was. Here are a list of things which we will miss and some which we will feel glad to miss.

1. Extraa Innings - Pretty boys Samir Kochar and Gaurav Kapur and the not so pretty lad Angad Bedi will have to find a real job. They had their time in the sun all the while making us feel better that we were not them.

2. The Extraa Innings Expert Panel - Do you really take the opinions seriously of a panel which consists of:

• Arun Lal: Who? - Well known for his moronic laugh (He he he) and Guru Gyaan about cricket that equates to Ghanta.

• Saba Karim.... again.. Who? - One time Indian keeper who had his career come to a grinding halt after he was hit on the eye failing to collect a Anil Kumble spinner in a test match against Bangladesh.

• Akash Chopra.... oh yaaa... wasn't he that KKR player who got kicked out of the team in the last season, a one time suspect for Fake IPL player and is now giving cricketing tips on Cricinfo? He is  no way related to Nikhil "who?" Chopra just in case you are wondering.

• Atul Wassan.... Wat say?? The Indian version of Mike Whitney 

and last but not the least, the loud and bombastic Navjot "Jonty" Singh Sidhu whose opinions are as over the top as his fielding was in those days. 

3. The Ad in between balls - As if promoting (read whoring) for a brand was not enough with the DLFs and Maxx Mobiles and the likes that was thrown around with every shot, every catch and every wicket that was being taken, new means were now devised to "promote" brands and make money. An advertisement superimposed poorly on the big screen that was for your eyes only (the TV viewer) that was shown between balls and that's what it made you say "Bollocks!"

4. The Commentary Gems -  "That sped to the fence like a tracer bullet" - patent rights held by Ravi "Sten Gun" Shastri who along with his gang of merry men  assaulted our senses with some mind numbing over the top commentary. 

Sample some commentary gems relived -  

• "In the final if you put runs on the board, you can put the opposition under pressure" - Ravi Shastri comes up with something we never knew before. 

• "That's a BIG one... that's a BIG one... that's out... not so big." - Sunil Gavaskar could atleast change the context faster than the speed of his batting.

  "The reason why it's called a mongoose is because the mongoose is a ferocious animal" - Ravi Shastri the zoology teacher.

  5.Dada and his honest opinion - "We played like rubbish", "If this is how they play, God save their careers" were some incisive comments we heard from Dada on the mic after his team suffered defeats with the youngsters failing the litmus test. After reading my blog Dada thrusted his opinion "You write rubbish" " If this is how you write, then God save your non-existent writing career!". 

  6.Gautam Gambhir and his Gambheer remarks - "They are an ordinary side" remarked  Gambhir after his team thrashed Rajasthan Royals, the least glamorous side of the tournament. One wonders how he must have felt like after having failed to miss the final four along with the side he called "Ordinary". Gambhir after having read my blog went on to call it "an ordinary piece of writing". 

  7. Danny and the Double-D's-  One wonders if Danny Moronson Morrison took his eyes off the action on the field and concentrated more on "grabbing"  some opportunities off the field whenever he fondly referred the Delhi Daredevils as "Double D's", no wonder with a name like that he was backing them to go the last mile.

  8. The Pimps and the Blimp-  Sivaramakrishnan, Sunil Gavaskar, Robin Jackman, Danny Morrison, Ravi Shastri have all spoken highly of MRF which has suddenly come to the forefront of technology by putting up a Dick shaped Zepplin high in the sky. The blimp was spoken about with a lot of affection and fondness, on cue every four overs whenever the camera focussed on it, as if it were the love child of Morrison and Sivaramakrishnan. It took the centerstage this year much like the fugly IPL trophy last year.

  9. Corporate Pimping- Added to the DLFers and the Citi Moments of Success were the Karbonn Kamaal ka Catch and the Maxx Mobile mandatory timeout where teams discussed "strategies" to counter the opposition. Now in the next edition we may see a bowler bowling a Navaratna yorker which will be converted into a Godrej fulltoss and dispatched through the Nokia covers for a TVS four.

  10. Eye Pee Yell @ twitter - If we had the Fake IPL Player last year then we have the Eye Pee Yell this year who has a photo of an Alaskan snow dog as his display image on twitter, giving a sarcastic and rude in-your-face ball-by-ball commentary this year through his witty tweets. Woof ! Woof!

  11. Yuvraj Singh, the Paunch and his Princely sulk - If you had seen any game of the Kings XI Punjab, then you would not have missed that sulk that Yuvaraj Singh seemed to dish out as frequently as he used to dish out those sixes in his heydays. If he seemed uncomfortable with the idea of a foreign national lead his team, he made it seem quite clear with the contortions his face made. He did throw his weight around on and off the field, pun intended, to show that all was well within the camp  but to no avail.

  12. Modi and his tweets - "Think before you tweet" should be the new adage coined thanks to the storm that those mere 140 characters raised across the nation. Death threats, the resignation of a minister, the exposure of the rich and famous and the greedy, and the fall of a Messiah ( so proclaimed his stooges in a chest thumping manner). All of this thanks to that blue twitter bird which was Modi's pet, that finally  went on to crap on his head.

  Honorary mention

  Sreesanth' s "Appam Chutya" moment- Every IPL feels incomplete without a Sreesanth "Appam Chutya" moment. If in the first IPL we saw Sreesanth whimpering away after having been slapped by Harbhajan, then in the second IPL we saw him run all the way to the third man boundary celebrating Dhoni's wicket after having bowled him, that further went on to affirm the fact that the guy really was living upto his nick name. But this time around Sreesanth took the chutiyapa to a new level when he clapped sarcastically at the umpire for having signalled him for a no-ball, and then turned around to clap at the batsman who had promptly dispatched him for a boundary on the free hit delivery. 

  Thus ends this year's IPL which was known for the controversies off-the-field than the cricket on the field. With IPL's ageing superstars, the Warnes, the Jayasuriyas, the Haydens and the Gilchrists, and the Gangulys probably having made their final appearance, it remains to be seen if the administrators realize that at the end of the day its not the glitz, the celebrity owners, and the cheergirls who bring the people in but it is these legends who bring the people in. At the end of the day, its all about cricket, and no amount of glitz, glamor and greed can ever rise up to be greater than the game.