Twenty20 vision

It has been hailed by some as crickets most dramatic innovation not just since the one-day format took shape,but since the beginnings of international Test cricket. But,as Lalit Modis unbridled ambition to now make it a bi-annual affair shows,the Indian Premier League is very much a work in progress. And as its second installment came to a close with a thrilling night of the underdogs,it also left questions for its organisers and for cricket.

Nothing of the many controversies that Modi and his crew courted can detract from the romance of seeing old masters like Anil Kumble,Adam Gilchrist and Rahul Dravid swing the team rankings to their lowly-seeded squads. Bangalore and Hyderabad were 2008s also-rans; under mostly unchanged leaderships they made the final. That result brought more than just nostalgia; it gave cricket new players to track in the future. Manish Pandey of Bangalore,for instance,bubbled above the rest with the first century by an Indian in the IPL and he showed he had the grit to tackle tense situations. The connect between domestic cricket and the national team is so broken in India,that the IPL could be one of the avenues to give young cricketers,like Pandey and Kamran Khan,a chance to show their promise. That the tournament is configured to maximise entertainment,of course,does not hurt.

But the point is this. The IPL is not just a distraction from crickets international calendar. It is a part of the game. The big question before the organisers is not whether they can sustain the IPLs insistent excessiveness to squeeze in two tournaments a year. It is whether they can prove the maturing of the IPL by showing that it adheres to sports pervasive norms. So,gaining private funds through a franchisee league format is good but only if ownership and the terms of contracts are open to scrutiny. And enlarging spaces in crickets international calendar is not problematic but only if basic principles are honoured,like separation between organisers and commentators and abandoning monopolistic exclusion from national cricket of members of rebel leagues.