IPL needs to be careful about the quality of franchise owners

So cricket again descends to the front pages,normally the abode of tragedies,scams,budgets or,more lately,full page ads.

So cricket again descends to the front pages,normally the abode of tragedies,scams,budgets or,more lately,full page ads. I am not sure it is the right place for sport unless of course a shooter wins a gold medal at the Olympics. Otherwise the sports pages are right; a man or a woman must have feel good places to go to. But now the IPL is being dragged out of there and it is not good for a league that has achieved so much but is still a young child. Sometimes it is good to find your own spaces.

As a sporting event,the IPL has been excellent so far. It has provided a platform for young talent,for players who plied their trade in less reported areas and were a name on a scoreboard if the sports editor thought it worthy. Saurabh Tiwari echoed those sentiments when he said he is noticed more for a twenty in the IPL than for a hundred playing for Jharkhand. We might gather together and bemoan the lack of purity in strokeplay but if we were Tiwari,we would say exactly the same and look to the IPL for the world to know of our existence.

It has allowed us another look at the ageing stars; cricketers we enjoyed watching and thought would now only be available on television re-runs or dvds. One of the most thrilling moments in recent times for me was watching Anil Kumble bowl the first over of a match to Virender Sehwag. And as a result of watching these stars we know now that many can make the journey from test player to T20 cricketer but the reverse is as yet unproven even though Shane Watson did use twenty overs cricket as a platform to return to test cricket.

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But the IPL,I fear,runs the risk of being remembered for what is appearing on the front pages and on breaking news on television channels. The players can perform great deeds but eventually sport,like everything else,is run by finance and the IPL has been as much a financial event as a sporting one. When auctions happen,and resultant financial tangles emerge,everyone becomes an expert on all matters. I will not claim that position but have merely one observation to make. The two areas that the IPL needs to be most careful about are the quality of its franchise owners,and therefore complete transparency,and the distance it can keep from match fixing (or spot fixing,which is more in the news lately).

In the first round of bidding for teams the IPL was lucky that established corporate houses like Reliance,United Breweries,GMR,Deccan Chronicle and India Cements came forth. After initial scepticism,Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta and the partners in Kings XI also emerged as committed team owners. They had a big role to play in the early days of the IPL and the seamless movement to South Africa last year. Indeed Cricket South Africa offered its hand to a vulnerable child and the IPL owes it a bit too. Going ahead the IPL needs the same degree of commitment. You only need to look at the current fortunes of some teams in English football or indeed to the trauma of the Stanford association to realise how easily things can go wrong.

But while storms rage in political and other worlds,you would never know anything was wrong if you watched the cricket or were at the grounds. Kevin Pietersens masterful performance against the Royals showed just why he is one of the great players of our generation. And Harmeet Singhs delightful spell reminded us of how unfancied players can be empowered. The IPL allows Harmeet and Jaskaran and Sumanth and the others to rub shoulders with Gilchrist and Symonds and the others and that cannot be a bad thing!

Indeed if there is something the last week at the IPL has reinforced it is that teams need contributions from local players to survive. The revival of the Deccan Chargers was built around contributions from Tirumalsetti Suman and Harmeet Singh. Till then they had looked an 8 man team but like with the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers,they look much better when there are many contributors!

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And the league table cant be closer. The greatest strength of the IPL is the equalisation of resources brought about by the spending cap. In future,whether it is on the front pages or back,it is this that will separate it from other leagues.