IPL is a gimmick, irrelevant and not good for cricket

Hello Kersi! Greetings from a fan! I care and A Billion Others do! It doesn't matter really if the Australians prefer not to watch.Cricket lovers around the world are loving it.It has opened up so many opportunities for hundreds of youngsters who would never have made it to the national teams, the spin off has brought so many new opportunities in many associated fields which is a God send in these gloomy recession times. The Australians discovered a few players thru the IPL too.In fact if it wasn't for the IPL would Shane Watson , the only saving grace in the present Australian team apart from maybe Hussey ,have been where he is today,probably the only consistent performer and Captain material.Another hammering by the Poms , losses at Home and not too many fans will be left to watch The Ashes or Cricket in Australia. Just because IPL is Indian does not make it bad! Be gracious and watch it .It's good entertainment.

Did you even read the article? Of course it matters. The Australian fanbase is not to be dismissed so lightly. Passion counts. IPL is saturation to the max. Go franchise! Yeah. Good luck with the Big Bash. Worth a crack I guess but Punter's here aren't so easily won over. Give us a solid test or ODI any day. Test cricket will survive here. Why? Tue Ashes is THE preeminent cricket contest on the globe. Period. India and the IPL can never, ever take that away.

Kersi, The short answer is "Yes, it's a gimmick". Any competition which includes the likes of long retired players such as Warne and Gilchrist etc. could hardly be anything else. Are there some benefits? Probably, as one or two Roarers have suggested it does give young players a chance to play with, and learn from, those same long retired legends. Does anybody care who wins? No, at least not outside India. Move the IPL concept to South Africa, call it the SAPL and have teams like the Durban Devils and Transvall Trendies and even the Indians won't give a stuff about it. I can say, happily, I have not seen a match on television nor read a result in the paper or on the net. I do not know which team is winning, is top of the ladder, or who their best players have been. If Hodge is performing well it only makes his long exclusion from Australian short form teams even more baffling. The real question is "Why was the IPL concept invented?" If anybody comes up with any reason other than to make money for its investors I suspect they are wrong. Certainly, there are side benefits to players in terms of income but that wasn't why IPL was created. It's the guys off the field who are most interested in the IPL and its financial viability. The investors. The guys who hoped to make millions from the concept. The IPL was invented to make guys rich, richer than they may already be. No more, no less. Any benefit to the game of cricket is purely accidental and a happy coincidence. It certainly wasn't the intention though, to be fair, bringing harm to cricket wasn't the intention either. The aim is money - and the rest is just a by-product.

CRICKET ...conjures up a picture of GREENS and FLANNELS! Anything else is ENTERTAINMENT in SPORT.. Let's not kid ourselves.Test Cricket is Cricket.FULL STOP. If there is fun and games , coloured clothing , dancing girls and a few actors and artists in the Colosseum entertaining a paying public who is lapping it up ....let it be ...let them have their fun....but please don't call it CRICKET!

Russ, I gave only extreme cases of meaningfulness. The final of Sheffield Shield or other domestic first-class cricket championship is also meaningful. In fact all internationals are meaningful unless a Test series when one country is leading 4-0 before the final Test. It is proclaimed that IPL is a domestic tournament. IT IS NOT! If a match keeps you awake at night to find out whether your country or favourite team is winning makes the match meaningful. Not whether you have won a bet. As you say, Ross, it requires a full article to define meaningfulness. The administrators should read our comments.

That's not a lot of games Kersi, maybe one every couple of years. What should be played in the meantime? What makes them meaningful and not others? More importantly, can we make more games meaningful? And you are right, it is a good question, because it lies at the heart of why people watch sport, and by corollary, how sport should be administered.

Good question, Russ. It's the final Test of the Ashes series or Border-Gavaskar Trophy or the Wisden Trophy (England-Windies) and the series is locked 2-2 or 2-1 or 1-1. Who wins this Test is meaningful. Or the final of the World Cup.

Kersi, philosophical question, worthy of a post or two in itself: what makes a game "meaningful"?

"Twenty20 has not peaked", says Mike McKenna, project manager of Big Bash on the CricInfo website. See the link below: http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/current/story/515776.html Does this mean we will be bombarded by more meaningless matches? India has a population of 1.2 billion, a majority cricket-mad. Australia has a population of under 0.2 billion who are also interested in Rugby, League, AFL and tennis. If the interest in IPL cricket is dipping in India, how does he expect Big Bash to flourish in Australia? Please explain, Mr McKenna.

Kersi is spot on. The Indian public can be taken for a ride for only so long with a substandard product and a lot of hot air. IPL 4, what a bore!

why is everyone commenting on this article ignoring the elephant in the room? of course the IPL is a scurge on cricket, given that it seems that it was only ever a money laundering exercise, by the owners, and by the illegal bookmakers. sports illustrated tells us that season two was characterized, and perhaps defined by rife spot fixing. so as a cricket lover, am I to take this competition seriously? no. I should hate this gimmick for the way it is ruining a gentlemans game. it's easy to fix IPL, for the reasons Kersi mentions. no one cares, so what does it matter if I partake in spot fixing? -- Comment left via The Roar's iPhone app. Download The Roar's iPhone App in the App Store

Nice to hear from you Anil and all other Roar-mates. It's turning into an exciting debate and I'm learning something new all the time.

My impression from the few fans, including Indians is the I in IPL hardly stands for "Indian" as well, many see IPL teams as rich mens toys and not much more. True many other sports are moving that way, players are serving and gaining status for their masters, the spectacle is provided primarily to enrich the masters more than please the fans (an upset is a crowd puller less than a crowd pleaser), in short not that much unlike Roman gladiatorial contests.

Kersi, I wouldn't pay much heed to drops in the tv ratings, it is no more than you'd expect, although perhaps the tv companies haven't adjusted to the idea yet. The reason is very simple: the IPL is a domestic competition, not an international one. From a revenue/cost perspective International competition is much better for tv; they only have to pay two teams to play twice per week, and they can focus the entire nation's viewing audience into a couple of games. It is very wasteful from a board's perspective, only the major stars are exposed to attention, grounds sit mostly empty (and underdeveloped) because the national team only plays there a few days per year, games are widely spaced and therefore ticket revenue is down. International competition is bad for cricket, it gives the tv companies too much leverage over the revenue stream, and makes domestic teams dependent on international revenue. In a domestic competition, each team plays a couple of times per week, star players are dispersed around grounds (the quality of play is lower, but the competition is more even), games can be played two or more per day with local crowds at each, so stadiums are better utilised. But a tv company is promoting local teams to local markets, and, by and large, local fans will only watch their local team. As the competition expanded from 8 to 10 teams that will have further segmented local markets. Instead of Mumbai playing 1 in 4 games, they play 1 in 5: tv ratings ought to drop by 25% in that scenario; but total volume of viewers will be higher (more games) as will the total volume of paying spectators. Bad for a tv company that has higher costs for lower ratings, but good for the franchises, the sport, and the consumer who gets more opportunities to watch and (more importantly) attend cricket. As for whether it is "bad for cricket". Perhaps, perhaps not, if T20 is popular (and wealthier), then cricket is appealing to more people, which is no bad thing. It is potentially bad for a particular form of cricket (representative matches) that leveraged the popularity of international games to prevail over domestic league cricket in the late 19th/early 20th century. The lesson from other sports is that players are motivated by money, as we all are, but more importantly that they want a) the money they are worth, which doesn't happen via the highly unequal pay of a game dominated by international contests and b) to prove themselves and leave a legacy. If test cricket suffers, it will be because administrators haven't had the foresight to create fixed windows for T20 to be played everywhere, simultaneously around the globe, or because they involve themselves in an industrial dispute with the leading players. That we are heading towards both outcomes now is as good a sign as any that cricket is poorly served by its administrators.

Hello Kersi! As per the Oxford dictionary: CRICKET…an open-air game played on a large grass field with ball, bats, and two wickets, between teams of eleven players, the object of the game being to score more runs than the opposition… SPORT...an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment: team sports such as soccer and rugby First, what Australia does is GOOD for the game, what India does is BAD for the game, one has to only read the type of comments coming out from the likes of Tony Greig, who already sees himself as the next ICC Chief.. Australia introduced PYJAMA CRICKET AND INDOOR CRICKET...That is not cricket for sure! IPL is a perfect example of Globalisation of Cricket.In the few years that India has come to the forefront it has spread the game worldwide.People in Australia are not watching but millions across the Globe are and IPL has given an opportunity to hundreds of fringe players to rub shoulders with the best in the world.With more leagues coming up in different centers across the world more players , more spectators and more umpires and administrators will get involved ,not the least more television. In Calcutta tickets at the stadium can cost upto $200 for the Club House seats and people are flocking to the games across the country, everyday there is a match and there does not seem to be a OVERDOSE because the Turnstiles are spinning fast and furious.

Kersi, There are further narratives too, if it interests you - Irfan's post back surgery foray into big time cricket, Ishant finding his feet after an insipid second season in International cricket, RP Singh getting into the swing of things... Gambhir's captaincy, especially his handling of spinners, the coming of age of Amit Mishra as a classical leggie ( after being in the sidelines, having lost favor with the team management), Piyush Chawla's redemption, Rahul Sharma's accuracy. Manoj Tiwary's comeback story, Manish Pandey's coming to grips with the hype, Rohit Sharma's second coming. Ambati Rayadu. These and other story lines are what makes the discussion rounds amongst the Indians I interact with. Whether they appeal to an Australian audience is another matter altogether.Quite frankly, why should the Australians care? Cheers,

Kersi, Three points 1. Club cricket in India is dying, replaced by age group cricket. We don't have anything similar to grade cricket in Australia. The IPL is the first tournament, albeit a 20 over one, where the concept of a tyro rubbing shoulders with a veteran comes into play. Which can only augur well for India's future. 2. Because of the IPL performances, the spotlight has shifted back onto the Ranji Trophy. The Ranji ( along with age group cricket) is where the bulk of the domestic players come from and a good performance in the Ranji gets a player a better shot at the IPL. IPL performances then invoke interest on how the player is doing in the Ranji...This back and forth has shifted the discussion back to where it should ideally be - domestic cricket. 3. How often do you find kids fronting up to crowds in excess of 35,000, where what they do next can determine the outcome of the game and the possible future of their franchise? Make no mistake, the kids are there because they have the talent, but what better test of their temperament than being propped up on the big stage? Factor in the money aspect, and a lot of good, talented kids who might have fallen by the wayside because of not breaking into the Indian team now have a future to look upto. While the IPL may not appeal to everyone's sensibilities, the truth is that it is making a profound change on the Indian game. With time, it can only get better. Cheers, PS:- Check the narrative of the Ranji Trophy over the last 5 years. There is a good book waiting to be written.

Jay, I'll take your word for that, all I know is that that the first few games were in my TV guide as being on One, and I even had a element of interest, funnily enough (especially watching how Symonds and Harbhajan would go side by side), but the games weren't shown, and there was none of the usual cross-channel promotion you would normally expect. So I'm guessing it was very late thing, the sudden non-right to broadcast... But again, I've not missed it, as it turns out.

Actually Harbhajan Singh was fined his match fee for an entire season for slapping Indian team mate Sreesanth, which equated to approx US$900,000

In response to "who cares who wins?" : Maybe no one in Australia cares who wins, with One HD deciding to drop the broadcast. Having been in India for the world cup, speaking to the locals there, I can tell you that people there do care who wins, despite the team shuffles. People from the respective cities that the franchises are "representing" are as passionate about their franchises as they are about the Indian team in an international event. I guess the reason for the poor crowds and television viewers in India this season can be equated to cricket overkill with 2 months of the World Cup leading straight into 2 months of the IPL. The same thing happened during the Big Bash last season down under. Crowds were down after the overkill of cricket with an enthralling Ashes series we had here. Although the IPL may be a gimmick, it is relevant as it provides an outlet for lesser known players, both Indian and internationals to push for national selection. Do you not remember that Shane Watson was struggling to make the Australian side on a consistent basis before his man of the series performance in the first IPL season or that Shaun Marsh was selected for Australia on the back of his dominant first season with the Kings XI Punjab?