Let me first state my biases, as one more cricket-crazy Indian, upfront. I am an unabashed admirer of the IPL and do not believe, for one moment, that it was either responsible for India’s early exit from the ICC World T20, or that it has in any way contributed to a decline in the standards of Indian cricket.

Quite to the contrary, the IPL has brought a new zest to it. It produced more young talent in one year than our domestic cricket would have normally done in five. It has also fired the imagination of so many talented young cricketers by spreading the spoils much wider, to a pool of nearly a hundred, rather than just the 20-odd at the top in the past. It has brought about an improvement in all aspects of Indian cricket, something the entire cricketing world was acknowledging till the other day. In fact when the same Indian team was casually topping the 300-mark in the ODI series in New Zealand earlier this year, many, including Kevin Pietersen famously, said that Indians had raised their game to an entirely different level, thanks to the IPL.

The IPL has also monetised the game of cricket as no idea has done, even the advent of other short versions of the game in the past three decades. What is even better, these new riches are enriching, besides cricketers, the media, sponsors, event managers, the hospitality industry and so on. For a game dying because of spectator apathy this has been a brilliant economic stimulus with pretty effective trickle-down. What’s even better, this came as a most welcome tonic at a time when Indian cricket was in the dumps, and a terrific revival followed.

... contd.