11 crores is too much money for playing a few IPL games and K Rahul and Manish Pandey each being bought by their franchise for this staggering amount came as a surprise to many when Chris Gayle went unsold. IPL is the reason why our Test Cricket standards have gone down as we lost the Test series in South Africa with ease. Today’s international cricketers model their game to suit T-20 cricket which is where the money is and this is bad news for International Cricket. Our cricket board promotes IPL which is sad as the real form of cricket would become a dying sport in the days to come.
IPL attracts bookies and all sorts of ill-legalities. The man who made IPL popular – Lalit Modi is absconding. Many franchises had to be suspended for match fixing and still we are encouraging a league which everybody knows is played for the book-markers. Government needs to intervene and put a cap on players’ auction so that Indian cricket does not suffer in the bargain. Interesting cricket is played when countries playing each other are involved and BCCI should engage countries than franchises to make the league interesting!
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
