With a straight bat

Even as the Indian Premier League gets the eyeballs in its early days, the jury is still out on its success. Balancing the ledger is made that much more difficult by the uncertainty about what it is that the League was meant to accomplish. To announce to the world that India is the centre of cricket8217;s universe? The opening matches have done so, but it could be argued that the IPL would not have been born had this not already been so. To fill the BCCI8217;s coffers with an idea whose time is just beginning to come? Check that too, but it still does not show that league cricket is financially sustainable. To realign support for the game by establishing city loyalties? Very difficult to do, as our columnist8217;s story today suggests. To entertain us? Most certainly, at least on the evidence of the opening days. To irritate the purists? Absolutely, going by the swirling cries that this is just not cricket.

It is, in fact, the purists who may be getting it all wrong. Twenty20, in celebration of the excess brought to us every night this season by the IPL, may in fact be that solution they have been seeking to preserve, in some way, the sanctity of all that they hold dear 8212; in other words, of Test cricket. The point has already been made that, in terms of actual cricketing skills, T20 is less of a threat to Tests than one-dayers have been these past couple of decades. One-day cricket, with its valuation of bits-and-pieces allrounders, was seen to be an assault on Test8217;s traditional priority to specialists. The best of teams in the world will go into a one-day match with four, even three, specialist bowlers. But even in the clubby matches of the IPL catch a team doing that. Strangely, T20 has restored the importance of bowlers.

The future of league T20 cricket is anybody8217;s guess. But as it begins building loyalties for teams made of players from all parts of India and the world, it could begin to keep the international cricket calendar free of too many T20 distractions. By keeping T20 out of the traditional calendar, the IPL has perhaps done Test cricket a favour.