IPL what success?
In this great attempt to make the IPL appear the biggest success of the century none of us is being told how the organisers, except perhaps in Kolkata, are struggling to sell tickets and most of the full houses we watched are courtesy generously
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
In this great attempt to make the IPL appear the biggest success of the century none of us is being told how the organisers, except perhaps in Kolkata, are struggling to sell tickets and most of the full houses we watched are courtesy generously distributed passes, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.
That the media too has lapped up this concept is evident from the amount of space being given to in newspapers and TV channels. What I found baffling was that when the news channels were discussing the issue of cheerleaders, they only harped upon the wrongs of moral policing and how our politicians are 'spolitsports'. No one focused on the fact that the cheerleaders themselves are feeling harassed by the crowd and find themselves the target of appalling, shocking and disgusting comments.
Deccan Chargers are still to win a game and their captain VVS Laxman is copping a lot of flak for their poor show. Sandeep Dwivedi writes in the Indian Express:
When VVS Laxman entered Eden Gardens to play his first Twenty20 game, it was akin to a maestro turning up for a boy-band on a stage that had witnessed his timeless classic.
The IPL’s entire structure rests on the TV ratings advertising generator for which it is critical that on TV it continues to look like it has host cities agog— for the next five weeks, writes Sharda Ugra in India Today.
Nishi Narayanan is a staff writer at ESPNcricinfo