On Tuesday evening, at a press conference that turned into a double act
between Lalit Modi and Shah Rukh Khan, the chairman and commissioner of the
IPL began an answer by waxing eloquent about a 'carnival of cricket' and ended it by referring to the testing conditions that await Indian batsmen in South Africa. The order in which he made his
points may have been instructive: this year, as last, the IPL is basing its
ruthless business model on entertainment. Now, as then, cricket feels
suspiciously like a means to an end. Perhaps the sooner we get used to the
idea, the sooner we can all move on.
It may not be easy. An email that landed from the company employed to do the IPL's public relations cheerily alerted us to the floats which were scheduled to drive around Cape Town as part of Modi's plan to seduce the locals. They would, it said, contain players and other celebrities. No matter that the IPL has moved to another continent: Shah Rukh and Preity Zinta, interviewed by Mark Nicholas during the mid-innings break in Monday's one-day international between South Africa and Australia in Port Elizabeth, remain irrepressibly to the fore.
The mass transportation across the Indian Ocean Modi referred to has been reasonably fluent, which reflects well both on the ad hoc hosts and the drive and efficiency of Modi himself. Blockbusters are not supposed to take an unexpected twist as early as the second chapter, so the fact that a 36-day, 59-match tournament is taking place at such short notice is a miracle in itself, even if Modi's claim that all has been 'smooth sailing' is stretching the self-congratulation a little.
In reality there are plenty of thorny issues beneath the surface. The small matter of
the suiteholders at Newlands, who pay good money every year to watch cricket
from the comfort of their own personalised boxes but have now agreed (some
of them, at least) to make way for the IPL's great and good, needed hours of
Easter-holiday meetings to resolve. Castle Lager's parent company,
SABMiller, have reluctantly consented to pay for the privilege of serving
beer at the grounds which have been their own private drinking dens for years.
And now we are going to have
time-outs, dreaded by those who fear the
Americanisation of the sport but regarded as a no-brainer by the money men
who spy extra advertising opportunities.
These, though, are the details, and the bigger picture, for the time being at least, is less finicky. Ticket sales for Cape Town's back-to-back double-headers (expect more new terminology as the tournament progresses) have been so overwhelming that Newlands was a sell-out within a couple of hours of tickets being made available; this week an extra 5,000 seats were conjured from very nearly thin air. That probably tells us what we already knew: that South Africans love their sport and Cape Townians their cricket, even at the end of a domestic season which might have sated other nations' appetites. But it's impressive nonetheless: grey England, with the competing attraction of the County Championship, could not have pulled off a similar
stunt.
Modi has made all the right noises, of course. He was gratitude personified
on Tuesday evening, cooing over Cape Town's welcome and even tugging at the
heart strings by claiming that the decision to relocate to South Africa was
the 'most difficult of my life'. Shah Rukh, meanwhile, did his bit by
pointing out that it was in South Africa in late 2007 that he first fell for
short-form cricket. India pushed him in the right direction by lifting the
World Twenty20 and even revealed that his house is full of South African
furniture. This is a tournament that knows it is a temporary guest, but as
the thorny issues indicate it is clearly determined to behave like the man
about town.
All of which leaves us with the cricket, for it's easy to forget that all
the celebrities, all the mutual back-slapping, all the professed affinity
between two nations, would be nothing without a bat and a ball. Genuine
questions await. Will Shane Warne overcome a year of rustiness to rip his
legbreaks and rally the Rajasthan Royals? Will Kevin Pietersen slip
effortlessly back into the role of captain? Will Sourav Ganguly overcome his
irritation at John Buchanan's multiple-skipper theory? Will Delhi Daredevils
live up to their billing as pre-tournament favourites?
Last year the cricket provided its own answer to the hype and hyperbole. If
it does the same again, the minor inconveniences of the build-up may even be
forgotten.