Posted by venkatesh018 on (May 9, 2013, 10:28 GMT)

Sharda, I too watched the Holding-Ravi Shastri interview and watched the passion with which Holding was conveying his angst and sadness over how IPL had ruined Windies cricket and Shastri laughing the concerns off with his silly repartee! It is a minor miracle that the interview actually went on air. Truly there couldn't be two more disparate commentators in the Cricket world.

Posted by anshu.s on (May 9, 2013, 9:42 GMT)

@baghels.a, brilliant point you put, question is not about quality of cricket or format in general, it is club v/s country debate, lot of Indian fans as Harsha puts it who are below the age of 25 are brought upon Man United and Barcelonas of the world relate to IPL a lot better than older folks, these older folks who are brought up upon nation v/s nation cricket find it hard to support any team other than India for 2 months when rest of the 10 months you have to support team India,this lot does watch IPL but mainly to see how Indian players are performing or weather there is some exiting young prospect who can serve team India, they are not bothered about which team is winning or losing hence they are not that emotionally involved ... as for me i love IPL and following team India when they play and follow all the scores in Ranji even u-19 matches, however when team India crashes out of a international touney i much prefer to watch my fix of European footbal rather than other teams

Posted by baghels.a on (May 9, 2013, 7:33 GMT)

@symsun,Anands06,if you guys followed other professional sports like Football and Basketball you would never say those things , club or franchise structure is backbone of those sports, clubs play well over 9 months in an season , weather nation v/s nation is played just once across every 4 years for Worldscups/Euros or qualifying phases ....Clubs create a feeling of tribalism where every fan of that club totally invest there emotions for duration of entire season. While in Cricket domestic sides are just feeder to the national sides and not many care about them , hence Ranji matches,Duleep ,Deodhar trophy are so poorly attended and barely watched on TV !!! .IPL best thing about it it gives chance to local Indian players, so these local players have a chance to enjoy some limelight and money along the way,IPL casts the net wide and provides a opportunity to 300 odd players instead of elite 15 who play for the national side.

Posted by symsun on (May 9, 2013, 5:12 GMT)

IPL is just fun to watch and enjoy. It can no way get closer to the enthusiasm International cricket creates. As Dhoni said once, in IPL you can ignore the best bowlers and hit out the other poor rookies. Like, 1) WI players (Bravo, Narine, Badri, Pollard), 2) SA (Steyn, Morkel, Botha, Parnell), 3) AUS players plays for different teams in IPL. But in international cricket you cant find who is weaker among them to hit runs.

Posted by Anands06 on (May 9, 2013, 4:36 GMT)

I am a big big fan of cricket, I used to skip school/college and office to watch test cricket or one days. With IPL I never think doing that. It only excites to some extent but no comparison to the international match. International match is much more exciting compared to IPL In IPL I don't care who wins or loose.

Posted by vswami on (May 9, 2013, 2:53 GMT)

Sajib ..he is talking about Indian television market for test matches played by Bangladesh. This is not a judgement of cricket played by Bangladesh, but merely a market assessment.

Posted by   on (May 9, 2013, 2:41 GMT)

This particular huddle was a chaos. Nobody had a consistent point to make. Thinking aloud and contradicting their own view points, doesn't make the huddle a worthwhile watch. Please plan better so that my time will be better served. Trust me, I have to catch up with the retelecast of the match in the evenings and then tune in to programs such as the Huddle and the like (the other one with Damien Martyn, Akash Chopra, Gavin Robertson and McGill). This episode really put me off. One more like this one and you can subtract one from your viewership. Nitin Sundar is doing a commendable job (both moderation and opinion) even around the well known names. Keep it up.

Posted by caught_knott_bowled_old on (May 9, 2013, 2:31 GMT)

Nitin, I don't know if you intentionally brought in the ICC cricket committee topic into an IPL conversation, but the two are very closely inter-connected. I believe, IPL as a product in its current packaging is not sustainable. 76 games crammed into 8 weeks with players coming in and out neither serve the serious cricket lover, nor the franchise owners well. One, the window has to be expanded to give a little breathing room and for people to 'remember' the matches and the performances, and Two the top players have to remain fit, available and committed to playing for their franchises. Neither of this is possible without the ICC and the respective cricket boards' permission; which is where the Sivaramakrishnan led players' committee comes in. Hopefully it will lead to a better IPL product that is more about Cricket and less about the 'glitz', makes more revenues for all stakeholders, and therefore continues to subsidize Test Cricket. Very good show. Thanks.

Posted by soumyas on (May 8, 2013, 20:28 GMT)

i watched michal holding, ravi shastry conversation, Initially michal holding started as he is unhappy abt IPL, keeping in mind shastry told BCCI will fix their problems, Again it has bit of a history, during last years's IPL, Westindies were playing Tests with England, and michale holding in commentary team. he was really angry as westindies were loosing and their best player chris gayle was playing IPL.

Posted by sajib_gooner on (May 8, 2013, 20:16 GMT)

So Mr. Karthik Nagarajan, you believe you will have to switch off on the 2nd day when Bangladesh plays test cricket? The truth is it is people like you who are pushing test cricket to the brink. What you people only see is money. And what we, the actual romantics of cricket, want is good quality cricket, which is exactly not what IPL has been providing of late. And funny enough, people forget that there is a huge cricket fan base in Bangladesh who follow IPL, too. It's rather sad that Bangladesh cricket is belittled every now and then when the country can actually do with some encouragement.