Playing for peace

The IPL has been a lightning-conductor for controversy and bitter dispute but Adam Gilchrist believes it has a peacemaking role to play. The club structure includes players from different countries in the same team and Gilchrist feels that could ease tensions between players who are currently at loggerheads. “That [the IPL] is going to be an opportunity for players around the world to get to meet, know and understand opposition cultures and customs,’ Gilchrist told the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney. “I think that's going to be a very positive off-shoot of the IPL. Any world XI team I've ever played in there's always been a great camaraderie in the rooms.''

There’s ample scope for that, as the Telegraph noted; in a quirk of fate, or a marketing man’s dream, the Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, will join Ishant Sharma, the teenage Indian bowler who has been his chief tormentor this summer, in playing for the Kolkata team. Over in Chennai, the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, will pad up alongside Matthew Hayden, whose run-ins with his players have made the headlines of late. So the “summer of discontent’, as the paper calls it, may give way to a season of détente. Now that may give the IPL’s detractors something to smile about!