Comments on: Is the IPL in South Africa a dog?

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:18:28 +0000

Please remember that South Africa has one of the biggest Indian communities outside of India and the choice to move it here was not such a bad one.
Is there some security risk in India because of SL cricket players attacked in Pakistan a while back?
I feel it is unfair to claim Aus and Eng have the best cricket grounds as SA has beautiful and comparable cricket grounds to anywhere in the world.
I, as a South African, am very excited about the IPL in SA. It has been great for tourism. I can only imagine cricket grounds are empty due to games being played on week days. Tickets for games for weekends are sold out long in advance.
I pity the Indian supporters for not being able to attend these games, I know how fiery the support is in India.
Demographics in SA will show that cricket is not the most popular game here, but I believe that cricket lovers support this league 100% and are attending the games if possible.

By: tifosi

tifosi — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:53:25 +0000

Dave cricket getting bigger?

All they have done is move it from one cricket nation to another. Move it to say to the USA and get a crowd then you are talking.

Remember most teams have plenty of foreigners so it makes it worthwhile to watch. If they were all indians i’d doubt any people would turn up.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:52:46 +0000

TV ratings are up in India and that’s what matters. Not many other sports would be able to take their domestic comp to another country and expect to get a crowd. What’s happening is amazing and shows how cricket continues to get bigger and bigger, which in the end is what we all want.

By: challa

challa — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:35:17 +0000

Last years IPL started out ok but became tedious and repetitive.

This years has started out tedious and is now repetitve.

Remember IPL stands for Indian PL. The IPL was moved to SA because it has the second greatest number of resident Indians outside of India and behind Dubai. (FYI some 25 million Indians live overseas)
SA also has the added benefit of being in the prime time tv time slot for India. India is of couse the primary source of revenue. And in India TV revenue generates over 90% of the revenue.

So unfortunately (or fortunately in my humble opinion) the IPL is unlikely to be played in England or Australia.

Personally I think 2020 is a sloggers game and needs batting pitches enabling unrestrained slogging without any inhibitions.
Batting pitches need little thought and even less strategy.

Long live the TEST.

By: Kersi Meher-Homji

Kersi Meher-Homji — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:45:17 +0000

Well put, Greg,
To me IPL in South Africa resembles Alice in Wonderland. Imagine, a domestic Indian tournament (enriched with overseas greats) played in South Africa. Why? Because there are general elections in India. But wait a mo, there are general elections currently going on in South Africa also. Things are getting “curiouser and curiouser”.
Kersi