Ten lessons

Your diarist flies back to England tomorrow, so it only seems right to share the wisdom accumulated over three weeks in South Africa. Here, then, are 10 things we've learned at the Indian Premier League 2009.

1. The IPL is not quite the future, whatever the propaganda tells us. But any tournament that can fill out stadiums at short notice in a foreign country has to be taken seriously. Time, then, to acknowledge its success and create a four-week window every year in which no international cricket takes place.

2. Advertising works. The tournament's spend on publicity is said to have been three times the amount coughed up by the ANC on their recent election campaign. The result? More than a few South Africans with no previous allegiances to the IPL are walking around in Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals replica shirts.

3. The timeout after 10 overs, absurdly portrayed as a chance for teams to talk tactics, only favours the bowling side. Stats released yesterday show that teams are now averaging nine runs fewer per wicket in overs 11-15 than they did last year; are scoring at 1.23 runs more slowly; and are losing a wicket every 16 balls rather than every 20. Only the advertisers like the timeout. As many an English cricket hack has remarked when yet another tour goes belly-up, end this farce now.

4. Commentators are shameless creatures. References to DLF maximums have become so ingrained that, in yesterday's game between Rajasthan and Deccan, a bowler who had just been hit for six was said to have been "DLF-ed". The day when a run-out batsman is described as having been "Citi-moment-of-successed" is surely just round the corner.

5. Beauty contests are no less sexist when the prize on offer involves Bollywood. Listening to grown men salivate over young women in the crowd - "I'd say she'll be right up there come the end of the tournament", "Port Elizabeth can be very proud", that kind of thing - has been wince-inducing.

6. England are so off the Twenty20 pace it's not funny. Actually, it's really rather sad. The country that invented the format has been overtaken - on and off the field - at a rate embarrassing even by its standards. Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff arrived as the world's most expensive players and left, in Flintoff's case prematurely, looking like a costly mistake.

7. Warnie's still got it. By God he has. One of the moments of the tournament so far came on the opening day when Shane Warne - whose two wickets in that game came with balls that barely turned - ripped a leggie past the outside edge of Rahul Dravid's groping forward defensive. Rarely has a dot ball provoked such nostalgia.

8. HEAT stands for help, educate and teach. Just in case you weren't clear on that point.

9. If your name's not Sourav Ganguly, the captaincy of the Kolkata Knight Riders is sport's new poisoned chalice. Brendon McCullum, a decent man and a world-class one-day opener, has been reduced to a gibbering wreck out here, offering to resign if/when Kolkata don't make the semis and dropping himself down the order. He deserves better.

10. South Africans are sports junkies. This may be news to rank alongside "bear defecates in wood", but with the Champions Trophy due here later in the year and then, in 2010, football's World Cup, their enthusiasm for this tournament has been heartwarming. The IPL has even been mentioned in passing in one of the country's most popular soaps, Isidingo. If the competition had been held in England, would the IPL have infiltrated the vocabulary of Eastenders or Coronation Street? Nah, didn't think so either.