The Letdown that is IPL

The whole cricketing world is going Bonkers at the mention of the Indian Premier League. Supposed to be the next biggest thing to happen to the cricketing world since Kerry Packer, I have to say it has been a letdown for me. It's not the matches....it's the packaging that sucks. Take a few guys from the Sony soaps and put them in the anchor's seat. Their lines seem very forced and the kind of spontaneity that you see from someone like Harsh Bhogle is zilch...non existant..they go according to the rehearsed lines and still make a royal mess out of it. The commentary team sucks big time...ICL had a great commentary team..Even with little known faces on the field, listening to the commentary made it worthwhile....here even though the superstars and the international players are lighting up the scene, we hear Arun Lal saying how the batsman "skied the ball in the air". That acts like a literal haddi in the kabab....spoils the taste of the whole thing.

Moving on, the camera men seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere...often they cannot wait the microsecond to determine where the ball has actually gone....Someone playing a cover drive and gets an edge. The viewers can see that the ball has gone towards mid off but the camera is in a hurry and pans towards the extra cover region. By the time they realise the mistake, the ball has been fielded and returned to the bowler. That's really low quality camera work. Not something expected in such a high profile event.

Don't even get me started on the advertisements....As soon as the batsman plays his shot on the last ball of the over, cut to commercials...if the last ball was a no ball, chances are that you miss the free hit. And in screen commercials which drown out the commentary...especially Godrej and Vodafone...I feel like tearing my hair out on occassions...then I remember how little of that I have and go back to cursing the TV Channel.

All these are the norm rather than the exceptions when you are watching a telecast on Doordarshan...but a channel like SetMax which till now used to provide us with high quality cricket telecasts...this is simply unacceptable.

Last but not the least....another complaint is that they don't give the cheerleaders enough screen time...Cut back to the 20-20 world cup when they used to focus on the cheerleaders after every boundary or six. Come on guys...the Washington Redskins, the first ladies of football were flown in exclusively to cheer for Bangalore Royal Challengers...and you don't give them enough screen time....talk of sacrilage....