| Author | Message | ||
     Esperanza Bewarse Legend Username: Esperanza Post Number: 15806 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 91.152.99.131 Rating: N/A |
The IPL is a rank fraud Tuesday 12-April-2011 14:30 Forced smiles amid the fraudulent tournament. Tedious, over-long, a naked exercise in money-making and pro-India propaganda, and Ireland aren't invited to play. Yes, it's the Indian Premier League, back for a fourth campaign. This latest instalment got under way the same weekend as the US Masters golf, which may have been a shrewd diversionary tactic. There are few events guilty of greater self-mythology than the dreadful pantomime in Augusta, where a private country club refuses the general public not only the chance to play the course but even to buy tickets, and then graciously allows us to look on in awestruck silence. Yet even compared to the green-jacketed self-importance in Georgia, the IPL is more objectionable still. This season's event has not been fluffed with quite the same level of hype as previous years, partly due to the World Cup and partly because erstwhile ringmaster Lalit Modi is these days engaged in a tug-of-war for his passport with the Indian ambassador to Britain. Nevertheless the IPL continues to strut with absurd confidence given its credibility vacuum. Of course, it is a cash cow for World Cup-winning galacticos, Bollywood superstars, and organised crime through gambling. But after three years we also know a bald truth: the IPL is a fraud. Of course, we don't mean that it is a criminal enterprise. However much the IPL looks as if it might easily be exploited for money-laundering, there is absolutely no evidence of that. Nor have there been any convictions on how team and broadcasting licences were distributed. Any suggestion to the contrary could be actionable. We mean it is fraudulent simply in pretending to be a competition. This is not about the 'randomness' of Twenty20 as a whole but specific to the IPL. It simply isn't a contest or meritocracy in any meaningful sense. Think back to the 2010 league table. Four of the eight teams had 7/7 records, a further two 8/6. Deccan Chargers have reached two of the three finals despite having lost more games than they have won in the IPL. Certainly this evenness is preferable to a competition dominated by a few teams, but without a sense of meritocracy, of the best being duly rewarded, closeness is not dramatic but a free-for-all. After 20 matches last year Sourav Ganguly wrote: 'Any team in this tournament will target full points from the home games and every away win will be a bonus. A loss at home means one has to try and make up by winning away.' This was a classic example of how the IPL tries to mimic consciously other sporting events to give meaning to the chaos. At the time Ganguly wrote there had been 10 home wins and 10 away, and over three years there is no significant difference between winning records for those who bat first or for those playing at home. Then there is the commentary, which is categorically the worst of any established professional sports event I have ever heard. Recently David Lloyd bemoaned its silliness, a sure sign that things aren't quite right. The commentary, like the attempts to interpret form and strategy, are distractions from the truth. The IPL is not a competition so much as a roulette wheel - a generator of random numbers and when the noise dies down the owners have taken the bulk of the cash. Peter May space for lease |