Sensing an opportunity on its pet platform of national security, the BJP is already on the warpath arguing that not having the IPL in India is tantamount to losing to terror. This line of thinking goes as follows: Indians love cricket, IPL watchers will be hurt at being deprived of cricket at home, they will blame the government for lack of security. Ergo they might vote for BJP. Cricket has always been a handmaiden of politics in India — the number of politicians running cricket associations is a simple marker — but in a year when Obama has transformed the electoral matrix in Bush-land, the spectacle of India’s two premier parties jostling over cricket just three weeks before the election is symptomatic of a contest bereft of any great ideas. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic. Cricket can not live in its own private la-la land, even if it is run by some of India’s richest people.   

The second thread running through the debate is the outrage over the IPL going overseas. One would think the government has just pawned away the national gold reserves. In a world where the Microsofts and the Googles outsource a great deal of their work to India, why can India not outsource its most famous export to England or South Africa, as a one-off? The IPL could not have been postponed because the dates clashed with the international cricket calendar. The failure to foresee a clash with the elections is a blunder that should cost someone their job at the League. It was a Hobson’s choice: shut down this year’s edition, with the all the attendant damage to branding and revenue losses, or outsource. But the outsourcing itself brings in huge costing over-runs. Early estimates range from losses to the tune of 300-1,000 crore in terms of logistics, travel, diminished gate earnings, higher stadium fees, in-stadia advertising and the possibility of a rethink on the price of TV rights.  

... contd.