The dog doing a lap of honour, eating biscuits and holding up play, wasn’t part of the spectacle lined up at the inauguration of the second IPL, but the ‘strategy breaks’ were conceived meticulously to line up television ads and bail out broadcasters. Whatever end they achieve, at first sight, the IPL’s latest attempt at filling up coffers seemed to be only killing the momentum of the game.

On Saturday, these breaks made the cheerleaders work overtime, forced the DJ to dish out Jai Ho a few more times, and allowed the fourth umpire to make a public appearance with towels and drinks. But at a very basic level, it seemed to suddenly rob the T20 format of the fuel its supposed to chug on — non-stop excitement.

For a format that’s about thinking on your feet, soaking in the beauty of mindless hitting, peppered with lots of blink-and-you-miss situations, and quick changeovers with batsmen rushing in to take guard, a break to the players to plan their next move seems horribly out of place, especially while sitting in the stadium.

Little difference

On the first day, these ‘strategy breaks’ made little difference to the teams before or after the seven-and-a-half minute intervals. The Mumbai Indians were dominating before and after the break in the afternoon; Bangalore were down in the dumps in the first 10, and didn’t do much different in the next set. The players were merely using the breaks to catch their breath, allowing seniors such as Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid to feel more at ease with the format as they played well to score half-centuries.

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