Jaipur, April 21: Whether it’s the Rajsamand Pelicans or the Jhunjunu Dragons, they greet you revealing a set of canines that could never add up to a friendly grin. Even the usually-docile camel seems to acquire predatory pouts under the Barmer-district banner.

Lalit Modi’s fetish for team names, elaborate logos and scope for merchandising can be traced back to two seasons ago when he decided to distribute these tags to 32 districts, which now play under these allotted banners. “The idea came up two years back that we could have names for districts across Rajasthan to help in merchandising,” Lalit Modi says.

The IPL went the whole hog employing the best creative minds, thinking out of ad agency offices in metropolitan cities to come up with names for the billion-dollar babies, most of whom ring of royalty, and its variously, unimaginatively permuted combinations.

There’s also the gaming-console inspired Knight Riders, not without its warrior-tinge, and the fantastically obvious Mumbai Indians.

But here at Modi-HQ, it is Rajasthan’s celebrated wildlife, hosted at its four famous sanctuaries and beyond, that has baptised the city-units Jalore Sambhars, Bhiwani Bisons, Ajmer Bucks and Baran Bustards.

This top-down approach — where the names were handed out from Jaipur, not necessarily picked by the district units — can lead to a few comical scepticisms.

Identity crisis

Like a city unit which insists that there are more camels in their area than the endangered specimen that was thrust on them, and as such doesn’t represent them. Or another unit whose secretary maintains that they still get called the same District Association, because he isn’t aware of the new appendage featuring an antelope — though he doesn’t mind the change in these fashionable times of city-names.

Not that Twenty20 would’ve been hard to sell in this desert-state, the only IPL franchise besides their Monday opponents Punjab to stick to a pan-state identity, instead of narrowing it down to a famous city.

“It gets so hot here that we hardly ever play the whole 50 overs, or four-day games in districts. It’s Twenty20 anyway,” says Churu’s Sushil Sharma, excited about the IPL trickle-down that will give them a format best suited to playing conditions here.

Just a sprinkling of T20 tournaments spread across the state, with district associations hosting invitational competitions, means the Tonk Eagles haven’t quite metaphorically or statistically preyed on the Sikar Doves.

Jaipur hosted its first night-golf tournament at the Rambagh golfing expanse recently, and even small-time T20 night-cricket should be a sell-out — names of teams notwithstanding — in a city whose day conditions during summers are unforgiving.