The big bazaar
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan
25-Feb-2013
AFP
Since discovering its own value, Indian cricket has courted money often to the exclusion of all else. The IPL auction was the logical extension of this love affair with the free market, says Sharda Ugra in India Today.
IPL franchises are now left holding their big brood of babies. They have their teams, their teams have an event that begins in less than two months. Already some are feeling frazzled. A Delhi insider said all team owners wanted was to get the first tournament under way and over with.
The impact of such money on young cricketers who traditionally dreamed only of playing Tests for their country is yet to be seen, but they may now go to sleep dreaming of the incredible riches to be made in the short-form competition, says Peter Lalor in the Australian.
Sorry for being a voice of dissent in these times when everyone wants to celebrate the power of India’s cricket economy, writes Kunal Pradhan in the Indian Express, but true loyalty is not easy to buy — especially not in a country such as ours, where cricket is linked so closely with national pride.
Liverpool fans who went to Istanbul, despite 21 years of despair, for the Champions League final against AC Milan in 2004, will tell you. Boston Red Sox fans, who waited 86 seasons at Fenway Park for a World Series title, will tell you some more. They had stuck it out through the bad times; that’s why they wept on the streets in the good.
Meanwhile in the Week magazine P. Sreevalsan Menon and Neeru Bhatia wonder how the IPL franchisees fill their coffers.
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is a former assistant editor at Cricinfo