IPL's insouciant charm

Evening after sweaty evening, we become flash mobs for the 240 legal deliveries of the white ball

Recently, Ricky Ponting and Mahendra Singh Dhoni squared off against each other as captains of rival teams in a limited-overs cricket match. Ho-hum! Haven't they done that times beyondcounting? But Dhoni sporting yellow and Ponting wearing blue and leading Indians, albeit the Mumbai variety? That's the refreshing and in-your-face charm of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

The shortest form of cricket is the most popular one as well. Every country, even Bangladesh, has its own national tournament that includes international stars. These modern-day itinerant gladiators don't seem to take any time at all travelling from country to country and changing team colours and mates with the ease of moulting bird. No, that's a wrong analogy; the bird gets back its old plumage, but Marlon Samuels, Azhar Mahmood and Lasith Malinga don so many colours that they must have their own if-it's-Tuesday,-it must-be-Belgium moments!

Yet the IPL is the most glamorous star in this crowded firmament. And that is not just because of the enormous sums of money and the glitter of Bollywood (also Tollywood, Kollywood, and many other regional woods) that are the kavacha and kundala the IPL was born with. They help, of course, but there is something that goes beyond them. And that is you, dear fan!

We have abandoned our otherwise fierce nationalism when we watch the IPL. Rahul Dravid ruefully admitted to being perplexed at the thundering silence that greeted his 50 against Mumbai at the Wankhede. Ask any true-blue Mumbai Indian who her heroes are, and as surely as night follows day, Lasith will follow Sachin. In fact, some of us thought Malinga bowling to us in the 2011 ICC World Cup finals was not quite cricket, so to speak! Couldn't he have somehow sat out the game, especially since it was played in Mumbai at the Wankhede, which is his real home? And that made-for-each-other Dhoni-Chennai pair would spawn many sociology dissertations.

The Kolkata bhadralok curse Irfan Pathan when he bowls to native son Yusuf, the small matter of their being brothers is just an accident of birth. Surely that is a Left-inspired conspiracy against the honourable chief minister? The Morkels pit the Delhi-Chennai fans against each other, and the Hussey brothers split the Chennai-Chandigarh crowds. Team loyalty is all; kinship, nationality, count for nothing.

Owners add their own X factor to the heady elixir the IPL concocts. He may be otherwise preoccupied right now, but Vijay Mallya brought extra strong loyalty brew to the field for Gayle, Kohli, Dilshan and company in Bangalore and wherever else the kingfisher flew. Nita Ambani, sober one minute and clapping hands with becoming girlish enthusiasm the next, is a far cry from the First Lady of India Inc with her own jet and a 27-storey fortress. Even the otherwise grim-faced GMR patriarchs have been known to break out into beaming smiles as wide as the distance to which David Warner and Virender Sehwag daringly attack the ball. Shahrukh Khan, of course, wrote the original owner-fan manual.

Stay-at-home fans like yours truly discover additional delights in the special �"uvres our own Mad Men dish out for the IPL. The Zoozoos and small Pug walked into advertising's hall of fame thanks to the IPL. And Aircel and Dhoni are a match made in heaven. Both were relatively unknown when they got together, but now it would be impossible to say who has led whom to star billings! But this year there is a rather unsavoury taste. Not one but two advertisements have a superstar who endorses everything and then some, speaking with his mouth full. That is a total turn-off, especially as one of them uses an embarrassingly insulting tone for the domestic staff. It is not just products that need to be concerned about best-before dates.

The key to the charm of the IPL is one word: involvement. Evening after sweaty evening, we put aside concerns of runaway inflation, faltering economy, collapsing buildings, unfeeling politicians speaking insensitively, and become flash mobs for the 240 legal deliveries of the white ball. Ten-year-olds display unbearable tension by putting their pudgy fists against their cheeks if their team is not doing well. Pretty young ladies avoid eye contact with the all-seeing camera not out of demureness but because the asking rate for their team chasing a target has climbed to over 15 for the last four overs. Grandmothers and business tycoons alike jump in joy for every boundary hit in the death overs.

We are a nation of one billion coaches, someone said. We decide what is the right position for Kieron Pollard to bat. We wonder whether Hyderabad has enough strength with the bat and Chandigarh with the ball. We decide if Munaf Patel is fit to bowl in the death. We tell Dhoni not to delay the finish till the last ball. And, occasionally, the on-field events actually do follow our decisions! That is enough to keep us fully engaged and asking for more. Can one ask for a more enduring love affair?