IPL is different, but still exhilarating
To criticise the IPL is one thing; to refuse to recognise the Twenty20 cricket it is built around as sport and to seek to somehow derecognise or delegitimise that is quite another, says Ashok Malik in Hindustan Times .
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
To criticise the IPL is one thing; to refuse to recognise the Twenty20 cricket it is built around as sport and to seek to somehow derecognise or delegitimise that is quite another, says Ashok Malik in Hindustan Times.
Rather than cry for the good old days -- as off-side aficionados no doubt did when Ranji invented the leg glance -- it would be wiser perhaps to see T20/IPL through an independent prism rather than as just a compressed derivative of vintage cricket.
An editorial in the Times of India says that for all its shortcomings as a board, the BCCI has delivered a great product, the IPL, that brings international players together and provides youngsters with a unique learning opportunity.
Again in the Times of India, Ayaz Memon writes that India's growing economic freedom has led to a great deal of grotesqueness and incoherence which manifests itself in myriad ways, the IPL not exempted. He says that cricket has remained the star in the IPL against all odds, but there are several issues that the BCCI needs to resolve.
In the Mumbai Mirror, Amit Gupta takes a look at the make-up of the crowds that have packed the stadiums this IPL season, in the face of falling television ratings.
In a Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bangalore league game at the Wankhede, for example, there was a point mid-match when the crowd reacted as though someone had hit a match-winning six. The DJ played the Mumbai Indians theme song and spectators responded by waving the team flags left on every seat before the game. The ball had gone for leg-byes.