The Surfer

“It is a clear-cut objective,” he says in a voice that resembles Saif Ali Khan’s. “I’m sick and tired of seeing the way every sport is molested and raped by people administering it, and I say this with utmost responsibility.”

In a country where even personal disputes languish for years in court, wouldn’t a case involving several organisations take forever? Mehra’s reply is on the tip of his tongue and out before the question is completed. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

When they speak of him, usually through pilfered opinions, they reveal fragments of their own fears and private grouses. So when a guy says that Rahul Dravid is a more useful Test player than Sachin, he means to say, ‘I am an ordinary person and I want the ordinary to triumph over the flamboyant, I want hard work to be accorded the same respect as unattainable genius, otherwise what is the whole point of my existence.’ When he says Laxman is more beautiful to watch than Sachin, he is saying, ‘I want you to believe that I am classy, an opera among rock concerts.’ And when he says that Ganguly was a better one-day opener than Sachin, he is saying, ‘I am a Bengali.’

There is little point resisting the logic of the global market, unless you want your sport to be dependent on the subscriptions of half a dozen members. I happen to love the tempo of Test cricket, its soothing rhythms and evocative associations, but I would be foolish to suppose that my preference counts for more than one vote in the democracy of the market.

Those who proclaim that there is something “wrong” with Twenty20, or that administrators should somehow resist its march, do not recognise how capitalism works. Either the existing governing bodies (the ICC, ECB and so on) embrace what the fans want, or they leave the door ajar for others to take control, able to purchase the best players and the biggest stars with money the traditionalists can never match.

Where this will take players’ salaries is the big buzz already in board rooms and dressing rooms. Some of the figures being mentioned for stars with strong brand value are so astronomical that I can’t even repeat them here for fear of being considered a lunatic. All I can say is that cricket, and particularly the IPL, appears to be going out of whack.

It is a country with little other than enormous manpower. The only positive stories to emerge recently out of Bangladesh are the Nobel prize given to Muhammad Yunus for his revolution in microcredit, and the Bangladesh cricket team. People recall the celebrations after the unexpected World Cup victories over Pakistan in 1999 and India in 2007, and the outpouring of national pride that followed. Suddenly, people were seen wearing Bangladesh cricket shirts and Bangladesh flags were paraded proudly in the street.

Now Shakib Al Hasan, the captain, is one of the world’s leading all-rounders — a great source of shared pride — and his contract with Worcestershire is seen as evidence of Bangladesh’s growing influence on the cricket world. Each landmark — Siddique’s maiden hundred and Bangladesh’s highest Test score against England, for example — is cherished as a step in the right direction. Cricket provides rich nourishment in a diet that is low on self-esteem.

For the most part, there is only one big motivation for playing — and playing well — in the IPL: money. In the league, there are many players whose international careers are over (Warne, Gilchrist, Kumble, Ganguly).

The money from this is all they can make out of playing cricket now. But for fans like me, it's different. I don't get paid to watch the IPL.

And my cricket-watching days are far from over. (At the flick of a remote, I can watch an Australia v New Zealand Test in Sydney.) Without the frisson that watching one's country play, the IPL seems like what I've suggested before: a game that is not cricket at all.

We are already seeing data that suggest viewers are now being more finicky and watching only those matches that feature their teams. It is likely that IPL may not keep getting new viewers, but existing viewers may be spread across more matches. Since broadcasting revenues are so critical to profitability, this is a risk the IPL management will have to grapple with.