IPL: Adding more glamour and entertainment to Cricket!

So, IPL is back. You can feel it everywhere. Switch on your television; there you go with every second commercial promoting IPL. Pick up any magazine and you will find an article on IPL. It may be a business magazine discussing the economics of IPL or an entertainment magazine highlighting the glamour quotient of IPL or a sports magazine quoting some cricketing and statistical information about IPL. Or it is the franchises putting up big hoardings at the best possible locations in their respective cities or states. They leave no stone unturned while marketing their teams; they make sure their team stays in the limelight. You can see it or like some people say, ‘you can feel it everywhere’.

When was the last time you saw any cricket tournament advertised or marketed on such a big scale? Maybe never! May it be the India – Pakistan matches, Ashes or World cup – none of them can come close to what IPL does to cricket. “Milk the Money and Entertainment out of cricket”. My idea in writing this article is not to pen down the pros and cons of IPL. Neither do I want to get into “IPL is not real cricket” kind of discussions. The idea here is to discuss what new additions IPL has brought into the cricketing world.

Watch an IPL match at the stadium and you will surely realize the difference in audience experience, which increases by ten folds to what we experience in any ODI or Test match. So all these franchises are competing like any other leading FMCG companies or Automobile manufactures. They make sure their customers get as much attention as possible. They engage their fans in a manner which no other International cricket boards have even thought of. Initially, they make sure their fans become aware of home matches at their respective cities through advertisements, promotional activities, player – fans interactions (The best a fan can ask for!) etc. Next is the match ticket. You know how difficult it is to get any team India match tickets. The state cricketing boards make it virtually impossible to acquire the match tickets. You will have no clue when and where the tickets will be sold, if you know the venue and time then you will have to mentally and physically drain yourself to get your hands on a ticket. It’s quite reverse during IPL, franchises make sure they sell as many tickets as possible to the fans, as making money from tickets is one of their ways of getting thin marginal profits. So, they make sure you can buy tickets from the comforts of your home or office. They make sure tickets are available at multi point counters so we don’t have to ride all the way to the state cricket board office or any other centers.

Once you get a ticket, when you park your vehicle and walk closer to the arena you can sense the electrifying atmosphere or hear the loud music beats from the stadium which boosts you up and makes you want to enter the stadium as fast as possible. Franchise owners go to great lengths to decorate the stadium in such a way that one can be assured that you are sitting in their den. And you realize in some time that home team flag that you or your friends are waving is free of cost. Then of course there are the DJ and cheer girls to make sure the crowd enjoys every single pause in the cricket – between the overs, after a boundary, between fall of wickets, innings breaks or during senseless strategic timeouts. Not to exaggerate but this is the experience which we lack while watching an ODI or Test match at stadium.

And I haven’t spoken a bit about cricket yet, which is the same in an IPL or ODI or a Test match for any cricket fan. A real cricket fan will watch cricket no matter how hard or horrible the context or conditions of the game are. Through IPL, I have noticed many new cricket followers. They may be attracted because of the entertainment or movie celebrities, but IPL is generating some new, mild and fresh cricket lovers.

At this stage the only negative aspect of IPL which comes to my mind is Navjot Singh Sidhu at Extraa Innings, Shibani Dhandekar asking witless questions to players and Ravindra Jadeja’s razor carving ‘CSK’ on his head. The rest is all thumbs up from my side.

So, grab a ticket and catch a glimpse of your favourite and other international cricketers at stadium. If you are a cricket lover, you would love IPL to the core. Which cricket tournament will offer you 60 days of non-stop and entertaining cricket?