IPL approaches but will it deal another blow to Indian cricket?

Cheerleaders perform prior to the start of an IPL match

It is again that time of the year when coffers are filled in a jiffy, fortunes are made overnight and the largest of pockets become undersized. Even the most hyperbolic of metaphors cease to sound outlandish at this juncture as we embark on a safari enriched with an ensemble of ‘rags to riches’ sagas where millionaires are born within a wink.

The much awaited IPL auction is back with all fanfare, pop and splendour. The brand IPL has perennially been categorized as a double edged sword, which has taken the game to heights unprecedented before and to pits unfathomed before. Yes, controversy with chaos has been IPL’s middle name, but it was an institution the BCCI persisted with recalcitrant authoritativeness because, for all its vices IPL offered what the fans, the game’s biggest stakeholders craved for.

An atmosphere of adulation. An arena to exult. A platform for global excellence, to a local audience. And there is and ever was an archetypal anecdote to it all. The BCCI’s propensity provides the thrust to dip its long financial fingers deep into IPL’s ever-enlarging buck pie, with the conviction of pulling out the plums, every single time.

The fact that the T-20 league has masked the masses towards a reality, unfolding with alarming clarity by the day, is flabbergasting and astounding. We gaze unblinkingly, dazed to deliriousness with delight, fazed into a frenzy at astonishingly frenetic rates.

The profligacy exhibited in excessive indulgence in the paraphernalia which IPL offers is hardly noticed in this age when tempestuous trash talk is doled out by the minute. But is the league anything but a bandwagon of frivolous, rambunctious hubbub, high in style but blaringly low in substance?

It was the last decade of the previous century. Indian cricket had crossed a bridge, climbed a hill and turned a corner. But the albatross was hanging around its neck, looming insanely larger than life. The unenviable tag of a one man army was increasingly becoming inescapable.

It was a certain Sachin Tendulkar who won many a game, encrypted many a legacy with his willow. Setting aside the master’s achievements, the bottom line was more often than not a case of how long, how far, after he was gone. Throw in a green top and a bunch of fearsome quickies, whoosh! The Indian line up became a run-through, one to be battered and bruised by the fast bowling cats.

And we are back now to where it all kicked off. Without doubt, some truly remarkable victories have been scripted. With due respect to past laurels, resting on past accolades and dwelling on past accomplishments, waiting for the storm to pass is akin to plunging into the dungeon of disaster and doom. You go circles rather than finding your way out.

Without mincing words, Indian cricket is not in an enviable niche, at present. When you are comprehensively thrashed by a side ranked seven rungs below, it pretty much sums up a shambolic story of a shameful performance. When Rohit Sharma racked up the third double hundred in limited overs cricket, hope was injected. When he lead Mumbai to its maiden IPL title with a flurry of slick exhibitions of clean hitting down the order, optimism was imbued regarding a new dawn.

Shikhar Dhawan’s exploits in the IPL combined with his dream debut in an Australian whitewash made even the most pessimistic of analysts furrow a future in the corridors of glory. But the dawn meandered into a loony nightmarish darkness and the ‘future’ was anything but glorifying.

Batsmen like Suresh Raina has struggled outside India

Technical adeptness or rather the lack of it is protruding out at present, making the Indian colts resemble a bunch of amateurs against the rising, seaming ball, with a deadly swing. Ironically, the very three attributes one ceases to find on an Indian strip.

Virat Kohli aside, the middle order is incorporeal to say the least. Hitting through the line, an ever reliable modus operandi which one employs with maximum returns on dour batting paradises in the subcontinent doesn’t work and rather scripts your doom on bouncy wickets down under.

Suresh Raina walks in. Bring your big hairy quick man on. Pepper him up with a couple of bouncy ones on his rib cage. A quicker one hurrying in on him, aimed at his grill follows. The bloke is caught at fine leg. The job cannot get any simpler, if you are an opposition captain. But, Raina is among those retained for big bucks in the IPL. It doesn’t get more ironical than this.

Star value is imbuing a boorish culture where corporate returns hold the reins and the IPL falters right from the grassroots. For the simple reason that flat track bullies bag the bucks, shoving technical ineptitude to ignominy. Equally disturbing is the fact that IPL performances and exuberance in the league enamors the attention of the national selectors, highly prejudiced selections (towards IPL accolades) being the result.

It is exacerbating to the core, that many a cricketer eyes and projects the IPL as a channel to stage a comeback and make a case for donning the national whites again. The Indian Premier League with all its financial muscle is instilling false confidence, incurring faulty decisions, and imbuing false hope of a future which is merely non-existent.

You dream of performers in IPL on flat Bangalore wickets repeating their heroics or even half of the glitterati on a Wanderers or an MCG strip, but alas, the thespians get transformed into toddlers trundling in the dark, with nothing in the world, but a saga of IPL laurels to rest on.

As the nation braces itself towards another incarnation of the cash rich domestic extravaganza, one needs to lift the veil, remove the blindfolds and retrospect regarding the role played by the IPL caravan. A verity which needs to be drunk and digested is the adeptness of flat track bullies to roar in the IPL den, and whimper outside the same. It is a mirage, akin to a charlatan combining glamour with guile. The hardest hit, worse than any connoisseur or stakeholder of the game, is the game itself; in its largest powerhouse, India.