Wake up and smell the coffee
Will the ICC wake up to the reality of a player-centric popular tournament and create a window so that all, including the English players, can get into the IPL and enjoy the competition and the monetary benefit, asks R Mohan in the Asian Age .
The closing ceremony of the tournament made the commentators look classy, it was that bad. It was a mix of a cheap Bollywood variety show, a circus from hell and a school annual day.
Celebrity has powered the IPL, and why not. A colleague muttered that a frown-wearing Preity Zinta was complaining about Punjab's catching. A cricketer's friend on utilising a free ticket gushed not about the game but about sitting in aura-touching distance of Akshay Kumar. Shah Rukh Khan brought energy, famous friends, strange text messages and was in more cricket stories than Sachin.
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is a former assistant editor at Cricinfo