'Show me the money!' screamed Tom Cruise famously in Jerry Maguire...but today..move over Tom,the IPL...the brainchild of the BCCI,seems to be doing exactly that....and much better than you anyway!Glamourising cricket indeed!With Shahrukh Khan,who is a brand himself,Priety Zinta to get the dimples going,Vijay Mallya and Mukesh Ambani to fill in the entrepreneurial bench,Hrithik Roshan,Katrina Kaif,Akshay Kumar,Vijay,Nayantara all adding to the glitz and glamour....the IPL is all about star-power and superlatives.Team anthems sung by the best of musicians,Cheerleaders with skimpy or minimal clothes , flown from abroad specially for 'cheering' the players,some teams with uniforms that would look out of place everywhere except Circuses,......the IPL sure is 'revolutionising' cricket!

On August 6,1975,The New York Times published an obituary of Hercule Poirot(the fictional detective) on its front page.And if I owned a newspaper , I would publish an obituary too...yes...mouring the death of pure Cricket.!The Gentleman's Game is today merely the Showman's Game...and I for one,would definitely mourn the massacre of pure unsophisticated cricket by the glitterati.Call me old-fashioned,not trendy,boring puritan,a weirdo......maybe I am the only one who feels this way.But after having seen cricket -the aura surrounding it,its natural for me to feel this way.The heated pre-match discussions about who will score the highest runs is now replaced by discussions about what SRK and Preity are doing to 'cheer' their team!!I for one cant bring myself to watch this 'show'-yes, I wouldnt call it a 'game of cricket'.

Yes..i believe cricket must be 'modernized',made 'viewer-friendly'...but that is not what is happening now...what is happening now is just a mad mad money-game...with so much of money spent that it is almost obscene!.Special uniforms,trendy helmets(?),cheer leaders,team anthems...to a sport that is perhaps a mint by itself... this ,coming from a man who gave us 'Chak De India'!Ha!the irony is indeed glaring..more money,more and more money to Cricket...and yes,the Indian Men's Hockey Team hasn't even qualified for the Olympics,Pankaj Advani might bring all the awards in snooker...but frankly,who cares?,The World Carrom Champion is an Indian...how many of us know it or care about it?All that is perpetrated by the Media, is Brett Lee acting ,dancing with Preity,Shane Warne's thoughts on Indian food,The Celebrities in attendance at the IPL Matches....so on and so forth .This wouldnt be that big a deal ,if only it was cricket benefitting out of it first ,and cricketers next..but no, it's first the BCCI(Incidentally, the richest Cricketing Board in the entire World..three guesses why?) that benefits...

These are my feelings as a fan of the wonderful game of cricket...I've vented them all in this blog.That's one of the things I can do!As for those who feel the same as I do(If any)...please speak out!And if you feel that all I said was wrong,no problems...after all ,opinions are meant to differ.
''In the hope that one day there'll be 'cricket' played again...the conventional way I love....Amen"