IPL Notes

We watched the IPL T20 Finals yesterday. Some random musings:

• We had subscribed to Willow.tv but YouTube quality was way better even though free. Willow.tv was $60 for the entire season. I wonder if advertising can pull in that kind of revenue per viewer. There was a lot of wastage, I thought. That dual SIM ad with Gambhir and Sehwag is now deeply etched on my brain for no useful purpose at all.
• We were supporting Chennai but not really with any passion (I didn’t have a hoarse throat at the end of the game). We have supported an Indian team for so long that it is difficult to take sides when Dhoni and Tendulkar are on different teams. I wonder if this happens to other folks too. A friend from Bangalore was actually supporting the Chennai team just because they liked Dhoni. Another one, also, from Bangalore supports KKR for similar reasons. Is it because we so much identify with the Indian team or is it because we are all rootless, economic migrants who don’t identify with a particular city?
• When Raina [corrected from Tendulkar] was dropped off Zaheer Khan, you could read his lips so clearly it should have been bleeped out.
• The whole Shashi Tharoor matter has got me foxed. I cannot make head or tail of it. Some woman who had some connection with Tharoor got sweat equity in a company that was part of the consortium that won the bid for the Cochin IPL team. Now, I don’t watch Indian TV. Nor am I part of the grapevine on this kind of a thing. But from just reading online, I couldn’t make out why he had to leave. To leave he either had to have used his position as a minister to influence the selection process or there was some hanky panky going on between Tharoor and the woman which could not be denied. Or he chose not to deny it. If anyone can illuminate this clueless NRI with some links in the comments, it will be much appreciated.
• The IPL has too much money involved for politicians to stay away from it. BCCI is already in their clutches. Cricket is too important to mess around with. How about if someone with unimpeachable credentials who also cared deeply about cricket became interim Chairman of IPL. Just long enough to put a new charter in place and hire a Commissioner with great credentials. Running IPL is like running a mega corporation. Experience with regional sports bodies has no relevance to the job. The new charter should put the players and owners in charge with some other people on the board who will make sure that short-term greed doesn’t destroy the national pastime.
• The stats could be much, much better. The IPL website was pathetic on stats. Cricinfo was better, but not quite there. Or maybe I wasn’t looking in the right place.