The Indian Premier League is back on the menu so roll up for some, give me strength, Delhicious T20 action. That won’t be for a few months yet, though, but we have just had the whore d’oeuvres of the IPL player auction.
The well-lunched, sweaty-browed executives of the ten franchises all waggled rolled up wads of dollar bills at dead-eyed international cricketers as they sauntered up and down a diamond encrusted catwalk wearing nothing but a box in a satin thong and a slutty pout.
Well, I didn’t actually seen the coverage so I’m not absolutely sure that’s how it works, but it is basically a flesh sale where the world’s big-hitters (and a couple of bowlers, though not yet England Ashes stars James Anderson or Graeme Swann who went unsold) can become instant millionaires if invited to represent one of the teams.
Although I always love the final stages, I usually get a bit big-bashed out by the IPL’s first few weeks – there’s only so many times you can see Kieron Pollard lump a young Indian seamer to cow corner before the novelty wears off – and it’s not a tournament I can claim to offer any great insight into.
So on the basis that it’s therefore akin to all forms of the game, here’s my top three IPL things to watch out for:
Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds together at last (Mumbai Indians). There’s a bit of bile under the bridge here after India’s acrimonious tour of Oz in 2007-8 when Harbi allegedly called Symonds a rotten, Simeon-based racial epithet.
It was a horrid incident, made worse by the fact I was forced to feel genuine warmth towards Matthew Hayden who interjected on behalf of his fishing buddy, although he then reverted to type by going on air to gleefully call India’s favourite Prince Harry impersonator “an obnoxious weed”.
Sachin Tendulkar will also be at the Mumbai Indians, which further livens things up because he gave evidence in Harbhajan’s defence at a subsequent disciplinary hearing. After an initial three-match ban, the fearlessly realpolitik ICC fined the culprit a meagre $3000 on appeal and quite possibly sent every member of the BCCI a lovely box of fudge to apologise for the trouble caused.
Anyway, with all this in the not-too-distant past, IPL 4 will be the biggest test yet for Harbhajan’s innovative slap-round-the-chops team-building methods. If only Sreesanth was there too…
-Ryan Ten Doeschate’s chance to show some Dutch courage (Kolkata Knight Riders). The leading Netherlands ODI player also happens to have the world’s leading batting average in ODIs so it’s a little surprising it’s taken till now for him to be snapped up by the IPL.
This is especially so given that his hurrying medium-fast seamers snapped up five prize Indian wickets in the 2007 World Cup – Ganguly, Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni, and Harbi (whose wicket has gained prize status in retrospection) – and that he’s long been a leading light in English domestic T20 and something of a bat for hire around the globe.
He went for three times his reserve price, but, at only $150,000, still looks the best value buy and, with Gambhir and Pathan also heading to Kolkata, it’s clear that the Knight Riders will be very well kitted out indeed.
-Scandal! Scandal! Danger! Scandal! (All teams). From the hilarious fake blogger fandango to the current corruption scandal engulfing its disgraced founder, Lalit Modi, the IPL has attracted the most India-related negative publicity since the late Jade Goody flapped her Harbi-esque kebab at Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother.
Add in that it also had to up sticks to South Africa in 2009 due to civil unrest and you’ve got a powder keg of a tournament – which, to the delight of its owners, is now valued at a Balti bum-clenching $4.13bn dollars. It will be a major surprise if there’s not some sort of kerfuffle during this year’s outing.
The IPL4 will be live on YouTube in April.
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