Evaluating the IPL's second season

Boria Majumdar, in his column on Espnstar.com, assesses this year's IPL, it's positives and the areas where organizers need to work more to ensure another success in 2010.

In fact, for sixty plus years since independence, India hasn't been able to cultivate a sports brand of its own. We still crave for the Wimbledon, English Premier League or even the more fancy Formula One circuit, a recent rage in the country. Never, however, have we bothered about our own international sports brand, which the IPL is finally turning out to be.

In the Indian Express, Siddhartha Mishra writes that the IPL has been a success despite a variety of factors working against it: the shift away from India, the over-the-top punditry, and the reduced number of sixes because of bowler-friendly pitches.

An amalgam of good old curiosity, the drawing power of cricket’s poster boys dr­essed up in coloured pyjamas and, above all, the ability of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to sell a bed of nails to a porcupine has led to favourable ev­idence coming smoking out from the outsourced cricket circus.