Hate or love it but you cannot ignore the popularity of IPL

Restrictions on media, especially for images, have not hindered the growth of IPL. Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP

Does it sometimes feel as if the Indian Premier League (IPL) never ends? For a league that lasts a little over a month, it has a funny way of stretching out through 12 of them, right? That perhaps is both its point and its genius.

Last year, I had the chance to meet Lalit Modi, the founder, creator and, in many ways, true spirit of the IPL.

In explaining its ban on legitimate media organisations covering it, he also revealed the twisted secret to the IPL’s ubiquity and omnipresence.

“We had no money,” he said.

“We had no money to spend on marketing, so it was a strategic move by me to ban the media. It was only for that reason that the media would write about us. Good or bad was not the issue. The issue was we needed to be top of mind, we’re going to be breaking the news.

“What better way to breaking news than by banning all the media honchos from entering my stadium?”

That logic sounded suspiciously like it had been made up on the spot, to try to justify the unjustifiable.

But observe this year, between IPL 7 and IPL 8, which begins tomorrow in Kolkata.

An event that most TV channels and news agencies and websites are not allowed to cover has actually not been out of the news cycle at all.

That it has been in the news through a long-running corruption case is not ideal but top of mind, as Modi will attest, is ultimately top of mind.

Part of it is a cricket calendar which knows no end, either. The World Cup ends, the IPL begins, the Ashes take place and England come to the UAE, and maybe India and Pakistan get it on, and in between the Caribbean Premier League is scheduled and suddenly, another year has gone and the IPL is back.

But this is an opportune moment to take stock.

It seems scarcely believable that this will be the eighth season. When it was launched, it threw the cricket world into such a tizzy it is difficult to believe now.

It hit, unflinchingly, at the strange fatalistic nerve cricket has always had, worried permanently about its own demise. The IPL will kill international cricket; it will kill Tests; it will kill ODIs. As of now, it has killed nothing.

If the World Cup is anything to go by, an argument can be made that the IPL, and Twenty20 generally, has given the 50-over game an adrenalin boost, helped in no small part by fielding changes.

Against the lifetime of great sporting leagues, eight years is nothing.

Some seasons it still feels as if the core identity of the IPL is yet to be found.

How many franchises should there be? What format should the league be in?

In retrospect, that is probably among the league’s most fascinating traits, that despite the sense of impermanence around it, never has it felt more a part of the regular cricket calendar.

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