GLOOM OR GLORY

Season 3 of the much awaited Indian Premier League just started couple of days ago with some glittering extravaganza of music, lights and finally with some cricket.Those present at Dr. D. Y Patil stadium that day were part of the changing face of the our age old classical sort of game. In the first season everybody was little worried rather bit confused regarding success of this mega event. But with 2 years down the line we can surely state that Lalit Modi's little child has grown in stature in these 2 years. Amidst all this glamours, hype, stardom, pure cricket lovers like me are little apprehensive about the future of cricket. There is a huge clutter of cloud in the sky of cricket.

As we all know that cricket has always been a laid back type of sport. It always lacked the speed like soccer or tennis. But it is like classical music, no matter what the craze about rock n roll, pop music, classical music is here to stay forever. Advent of One day cricket in the late 60s and early 70s challenged this but core of the game remained more or less the same.Few years back invention of T20 cricket came as a thunder that changed lots of things around us.With the modern day fastness and lack of time to watch a game looming large on the sports loving mankind, it took very little time to settle down and then surge ahead like a Michael Schumacher's Ferrari. Suddenly there is a unknown cricketing scenario around us. With mainly country vs country concept of this game we moved to club vs club format like many other sport in the world. With IPL we tasted mouth watering as well as unique delicacies in form of a Kallis & Boucher going after their young South African team mate Duminy or Anil Kumble doing everything to get rid of his long time friend Sachin Tendulkar. We have not seen anything like this in this sport, henceforth craziness unfold in terms of fan following. Even women left all those Saas-Bahu dramas for the sake of watching IPL which was some sort of unimaginable thing few years back.Cricketers also having a bath in the shower of money. Many of them playing IPL well after there International retirement.

Here lies the danger. We are confused about where are we heading and I do believe if that's the case my dear then we have a grave problem in our hand. Not all about this T20 soap is bad. It is competitive, enthralling, full of passion.When it started it was like a cool breeze blowing in the evening of a very hot summer day.It challenged the monotonous nature of modern day one day cricket. It was a new concept and Lalit Modi done a wonderful job with his brainchild. So one can't deny the good things that IPL brought.

Like many I am also a lover of this but little sceptic about few things.Sometimes one can question that do we need the Preity Zinta's, Shilpa Shetty's? But that is different issue alltogether. I am solely concerned with the cricketing affairs. When we grew up we saw tough test cricket battles like Steve Waugh facing Walsh or Ambrose on a green top Sabaina Park not giving an inch to the opposition, Sachin Tendulkar trying every trick of his armoury to negate Shane Warne. Those were the battles of test cricket attracted us to the game. But when I see empty stadiums in test cricket apart from Australia & England or think about the 10 or 11 years old kid only interested in the modern brand of cricket that worries me a lot. For cricket to survive we need test cricket to survive. With all those commerce creeping in this game although good in some respect, it has its own detrimental effects.Many cricketers who could have played few years of international cricket opting to retire from that and only play in the IPL. IPL has become that rich brash kid to some extent.I still believe that according to most of the cricketers test cricket is still the ultimate form of cricket. I am not worried about them but afraid for the likes of Raina's, Rohit's, Jadeja's. IPL is certainly a good stage for young prodigies to showcase their talent but one can argue that playing T20 cricket is at all a good idea or not to harness your talent. With so much money galloring from the sponsors,advertisers in this shortest version of the game, the loger formats have to combat that challenge.One staggering statistics is that we will have more than 110 t20 matches within a time frame of 12th March to the end of May icluding IPL, World T20 & other international commitments. We have to acknowledge the fact that too much of T20 can also lead to the fall down of the interest from this game.

So how to go in the future? Nobody is sure. We will have 10 teams from next year that will mean 94 games in IPL season 4. This version is fantastic to attract fans from those countries unaware about this game.So we have to make our priorities very clear about how to strike the right balance among all the 3 formats of the game. I hope that ICC and able administrators around the world of cricket think seriously about this. We want both Lata Mangeskar as well as Michael Jackson songs. It will be great for us if 15 years down the line test cricket still thrives and IPL going as strong as it is now.