BCCI Sena

The two agents, or henchmen, or pimps, or the Shiv Sainik archetypes who spread BCCI’s isms are Ravi Shastri and Harsha Bhogle.

Ravi Shastri is an embodiment of the drum-beating villain from the feted blockbuster, Agneepath. Like Kaancha Cheena he brainwashes the impressionable villagers (fans) to lynch Master Dinanath (anyone who opposes BCCI). Like an intolerant Shiv Sainik, he sees every disagreement from an outsider a menace to BCCI Sena. Anyone who stands up to BCCI is insinuated as India’s enemy. Anyone who questions BCCI’s policies is deemed jealous of IPL.

The bespectacled Harsha Bhogle has the semblance of a calm, innocuous geek. But there is something sinister about his aura and his cultic discourses of BCCI. He is like BCCI’s pimp. Sophistry is his strength to endorse BCCI’s views. He uses chicanery to solicit IPL to the gullible fans. He purports that playing less cricket is the way to save Test matches. It is a counter-intuitive idea, considering that in the year 2011 South Africa had played only one Test match until October. Australia and South Africa — the two best teams in the best of rivalries of modern cricket — played a two-Test series instead of the customary three, in one of the most disgraceful scheduling of cricket. Sri Lanka cancelled their tour of England in 2009 to play in IPL. This year they only held a short, two-match Test series against England in order to render themselves to IPL’s behest. And Mr. Bhogle thinks that fewer matches should be played. Is playing one Test in eight–ten months too much? 

He doesn’t have the courage to criticise the mishmash that one-day cricket has become. He doesn’t write a word against the excessive amount of one-day matches played between India and Sri Lanka, which have gone past ridiculous proportions: in the last four years, they have played forty-four ODIs against each other. The man who complains about too much cricket doesn’t have the nerve to say that IPL’s season stretches for too long. He doesn’t find the Champions League an unwanted addition to the jam-packed schedule, which has always been a dud despite the addition of four IPL teams. But Mr. Bhogle touts it as a successful and essential fixture. 

Their near concupiscent cultism of BCCI squirts intolerance. Hitting the day entrenched in IPL porn dungeon, drunk with power, clad in saffron, playing percussion kartal blocks, Bhogle and Shastri continue to chant BCCI’s hymns.

A Streetcar Named IPL

May I use this platform to raise a rhetorical question: Is the Indian Premier League as popular as portrayed by BCCI?

They have craftily inculcated a suggestion: “If you are a cricket fan and you don’t support IPL or T20, you are anti-Indian.” This ploy is effective in manipulating the impressionable masses. For Indian fans in particular, the fear of being ostracised or branded as unpatriotic triggers an obligatory concession for IPL.

Do Indian fans really adore IPL? Inherently, Indians watch cricket to support their country rather than IPL’s franchises — it does not surpass international cricket. Can IPL match the buzz of Pakistan’s tour of India in 2005 or the 2011 World Cup? Surely IPL draws crowd to the stadiums but the television ratings have plunged in the last two seasons. Watching IPL matches at grounds is like a picnic for the spectators, for it’s a short T20 format; it’s an outing, a deviation from their dreary routines; it’s a use-and-throw, watch-and-forget entertainment for them, like an intercourse without foreplay with a streetwalker. Indians are losing interest in “real” cricket, let alone the vaudville of IPL. But BCCI and its agents continue to flaunt a story of success. At times they open gates to let the indolent, ticketless throng fill the stadium. The dearth of T20 international matches — except for the frequent world cups — can be imputed to depriving people of T20 cricket so that IPL remains the flagship brand. Repetition is the key: the agents, in the form of media and commentators, keep hammering IPL’s tremendous stature, till it permeates the psyche of the peer-pressured consumers.

BCCI’s scullions crow and snigger whenever a foreign cricketer chooses IPL over his country. If an Indian cricketer chose Big Bash or county cricket over India, would they extend the same tolerance?

Red Carpet Cricket

Saeed Ajmal’s surprising exclusion from ICC’s awards has incited vehement remonstrations from Pakistan Cricket Board and sympathisers. ICC’s awards are as important to cricket as Oscars are to cinema. The winners of the last year’s awards are crystal clear in our memories, just like the awards from the years before. I clearly remember how we all waited with bated breath after every nomination, only to exult or utter invectives thenceforth, depending on the outcome. Don’t we remember watching the news channels showing enthusiastic fans carousing and revelling on streets? Don’t we remember the ubiquitous Ravi Shastri’s encomium, filled with his signature expressions, in the leading newspapers? How can we forget the winners’ parade in an open-air omnibus, a la Shahrukh Khan’s team’s victory march in Kolkata? It was the ICC’s award that enchanted England’s win in the T20 World Cup, 2010. (For those struggling to keep up with the T20 world cups, yes, England are the defending champions in the upcoming world cup.) It was the award that rocketed Vinay Kumar’s “price” in the IPL auction and fetched M.S. Dhoni a multi-million-dollar deal.

In one of other ICC’s vagaries, Australia have descended to number ten, below Ireland and Bangladesh, in ICC’s T20 rankings. The ranking system appears to be over-simplistic; Ireland and Bangladesh have more victories than Australia but all their wins have come against associate nations (non-Test playing nations); whereas, Australia’s comparatively fewer victories have been against superior teams. Cricket Australia should take a leaf out of PCB’s book and threaten to boycott ICC until the rankings are annulled thereof, and they are ascended to a more respectable position; moreover, preferably higher than New Zealand.