Next steps for IPL

With 472 runs and 17 wickets for the Rajasthan Royals, Shane Watson won the Player of the Tournament award, beating Shaun Marsh and Shane Warne to the US$23,500 prize

Nishi Narayanan

25-Feb-2013

Shane Watson pumps his fist after trapping Mahela Jayawardene lbw, Australia v Sri Lanka, World Cup final, Barbados, April 28, 2007

With 472 runs and 17 wickets for the Rajasthan Royals, Shane Watson won the Player of the Tournament award, beating Shaun Marsh and Shane Warne to the US$23,500 prize. Hindustan Times' Varun Gupta catches up with him and finds out how Watson has struggled through several injuries to get where he is.

"The last couple of years were hellish as I missed the Ashes, and it's been a pretty long process since then. But I have been lucky to have one person, my guiding light, who has simply been amazing. Popov [sports physiotherapist] did quite a few different things with my body, he shook it up. And the guidance, time and the knowledge he has given me have been vital in me being where I am now."

In the same paper Anand Vasu writes that IPL will change the way the game is governed and consumed around the world.

The IPL has been a wild success, according to Rahul Bhattacharya, but such success can be disquieting, he adds. The cricket is a bit like video-game cricket, he writes in the Guardian.

The best games had a kind of compressed intensity where each delivery held the weight of an entire match... A six in the IPL, every 622 of them, was no longer a six, it was a 'DLF Maximum.' A sharp catch came branded as a 'Citi Moment Of Success'. Commentators tripped over each other to make these plugs. A future where a batsman executes a Toyota Front-Foot Drive against an Intel Faster One may not be the stuff of satire.

In the same paper, Randeep Ramesh ponders whether the IPL is a sign of a nation breaking free of a colonial legacy or just a crass money-making machine.

Cricket historian Boria Majumdar is convinced the IPL has been a resounding success. In the Times of India he lists out what the franchises have planned over the next year:

There’s talk of some franchise owners speaking to Australian state sides like Victoria to organise home and away games during the IPL off-season. If such plans are successful, we might soon see Rajasthan or Punjab taking on Victoria or New South Wales in attempts to keep the brands alive. Shah Rukh’s opening of an exclusive store in Kolkata to sell Knight Riders apparel is another such attempt. If industry estimates are to be believed, Knight Riders merchandise worth more than Rs 5 crore have already been sold from the Kolkata store since its opening on May 12.

The editors at Indian Express feel the IPL has revealed talented domestic players and India, who just a year ago had a shock exit from the World Cup at the league stage, have been shown to possess a bench strength no one could have suspected before last month.

It should not have taken the IPL to reveal this. And the next step in nurturing this talent after the conclusion of Lalit Modi’s extravaganza need not necessarily be the squeezing in of a bi-annual Twenty20 competition. The capacity of Yusuf Pathan and Shikhar Dhawan, to name just two of IPL’s biggest stars, to hold their own against the best must focus the BCCI on making the domestic circuit more competitive and marketable. Those who play for the country must be made more involved with domestic cricket.

Meanwhile, over in the Telegraph, Nick Hoult reveals some of the franchises' ambitious plans to extend their interest beyond cricket.

If a match against a top (English Premier League football) side gets off the ground, the (Deccan) Chargers will look into creating their own football team, comprising recently retired players. The prospect of a team of travelling all-stars, made up of the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, is being explored.

Indian Premier League

Nishi Narayanan is a staff writer at ESPNcricinfo