You’re either relieved or jealous, or both, if you’re not in India. Envious that the world’s greatest cricket spectacle is about to begin without you. Feeling relieved since you’re avoiding nine and a half weeks of turmoil. Both because you understand that the turmoil is necessary for the show to happen.
People experience strange experiences from the IPL. Even while T20 has outgrown its enfant terribleness and passed it on to strangiosities like T10 and the Hundred, it still holds true as its 17th edition gets underway. At least 66 different competitions have been held in major men’s T20 tournaments, spanning from Canada to Kenya to Hong Kong. 34 people have made it out alive. One is far more important than all of the others put together. Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore are playing in this year’s tournament, which gets begin at the gorgeous Chepauk on Friday, March 22.
For a vast number of Indians, the IPL stops time. It permeates the media, transcends politics, and controls public conversation. The competition revolves around itself for millions of other people globally. It creates its own rules, dances to its own music, and reimagines the classic game in its own likeness. The IPL is either the Death Star of the game or Planet Cricket itself, depending on who you ask. In general, the division occurs along generational lines.
For those with only dim recollections from before the mid-1990s, or when the internet became pervasive in our lives, it was essential to their cricket consumption. novel and inventive strokes? IPL, thank you. Wrist spin: back on the rise? IPL, thank you. The revolution in data that has changed how games are won and lost? IPL, thank you.
Their elders couldn’t be happier. They see the Indian Premier League as both the cause and the result of many of the issues with contemporary cricket. Are players even lowering or removing international cricket from their lists of priorities? Put the IPL to blame. The slow, depressing death of premier cricket? Put the IPL to blame. Bazball? Put the IPL to blame.
Even if it is hard to imagine from within the IPL bubble, this is the most contentious subject in the sport. Everyone in that bubble agrees that the tournament has given cricket a fresh lease on life and that without it, the sport would be lifeless and stunted. The question of why, as one eminent Indian cricket journalist put it in private a few days ago, “this bloody IPL has killed cricket” remains a puzzle to many outside the bubble.
It should be mentioned that he is a particular age. His younger colleagues, as well as nearly every other person involved in the tournament, lack the leisure time and mental stamina necessary to consider such lofty philosophical ideas. We all receive a lot from the IPL, but those entrusted with providing food for the ravenous beast must give tenfold more. They suffer from a level of fatigue best left unseen and unheard, characterized by dead fish eyes, shoulders bent like molehills, a shambling, shuffling stride, and meaningless mumbling that only their peers can comprehend. Just be aware that others must work themselves to the bone if you are to enjoy the IPL the way you have been accustomed to.
Nobody should claim that the IPL is solely about India or Indians.
Nobody should claim that the IPL is solely about India or Indians. ©BCCI
They work significantly harder and for far less money than the players, of course. However, nobody purchases a ticket or switches on a TV to witness a driver biding their time for athletes to board the team bus, a police officer controlling onlookers, or a reporter tapping away at a laptop with both hands.
Another thing that divides the supporters of the Indian Premier League from its detractors is the money that sloshes around the tournament and the one-way route in which it sloshes. Geographical concepts also apply. There is no way to avoid the IPL if you are in India. You can choose to pay attention or not if you’re not.
Here’s a reality that may cause people in other countries to take notice: the Indian Premier League is more foreign than Indian when it comes to who gets the blame, not who puts it. According to Friday’s currency rate, the combined pay bill for the ten franchises for 2024 is currently USD 88,100,177. Of that, 62.54%, or over two thirds, or USD 55,094,562, have been paid for players from other nations. And that’s even with the 78 international players making up only 31.97% of the 244 players in all 10 squads. It is possible to argue that the outsiders’ combined competence and talent are worth more than twice as much in money. Nobody should claim that the IPL is solely about India or Indians.
This year, Australia and South Africa have sent 15 players each, England 13, the West Indies 11, New Zealand and Afghanistan 8 each, Sri Lanka 5, Zimbabwe 1, and Ireland 1. The largest portion of the foreign currency—USD 16,172,345 or 29.35%—goes to South Africa. Australia comes in second with USD 15,671,029. The English bill is USD 7,024,428 on average, which is USD 537,816 less than the South Africans individually and only 12.75% of the overseas total.
Despite having two fewer players than the English team, the West Indians receive USD 1,090,075 more with a kitty of USD 8,114,503. Despite having the same number of participants in the event, the Kiwis are ahead of the Afghans by USD 1,368,593. Mustafizur Rahman of Bangladesh, Sikandar Raza of Zimbabwe, and Josh Little of Ireland make a total of three and a half times less than Mitchell Starc, who set the all-time record for the IPL with a signing fee of USD 2,963,309.
Feeling jealous of all that wealth? Feeling relieved that you can monitor from a distance? Both? Expect nine and a half weeks of everything mentioned above and more if you’re even somewhat interested in cricket, which you probably are if you’ve read this far.
