As if the IPL wasn’t loud enough over the last two years, what with the likes of Ravi Shastri, Danny Morrison and company bellowing commercials into their microphones, SET MAX kicked off their 2010 coverage with Navjot Singh Sidhu back in the experts saddle, after like an eternity. 
The other day on Twitter I came across the channel’s marketing VP’s (don’t remember her name!) tweet that they had a surprise in their line-up. I thought Mandira Bedi was going back to wearing sarees – with noodle straps of course. But now that it has come to light, no one can trump up our Member of Parliament Mr. Siddhu. The hosts on MAX should ask Siddhu his views on the Women’s Reservation Bill as well, while they are at it!
Lalit Modi’s ceremonial opening day speech rested on the banal and frankly does anyone care? By the time he stopped talking, everyone I know wanted to see the action unfold. And when it did, I thought Adam Gilchrist made a blunder not batting first. It is all very fine knowing what target to chase but this is the first day of the tournament and you are the champions. Dude, make a statement! After all they were up against last year’s hapless side – Kolkata Knight Riders.
It so happened that the statement came from the Shah Rukh Khan camp. Rather one should call it the ‘Sourav Ganguly camp’. The match see-sawed for the first thirty overs and both teams looked like wanting to gift the other a win. But when it came down to the last ten overs, suddenly Ganguly was seen frantically making changes, bowling and fielding ones, and they brought him results. You could see he was pumped up and had decided late that he wanted the win, badly.
Probably that was the difference between the two sides today and that can happen when one of the teams has had a previously bad enough season. This opening match takes me to last year’s opening game where Bangalore Royal Challengers beat 2008 champions Rajasthan Royals. Bangalore came through thanks to Anil Kumble’s intensity who picked up five wickets in that T20 game, yes! When you see guys like Kumble and Ganguly perform with their fire of old despite having retired from the international game, then you know watching the travesty that is IPL has turned out to be productive.
On a different note, I experienced my first on-air “cricket expert gig” with Radio One 94.3 today (12th March). It felt good to be talking cricket when you know more than one person might be listening in. The hilariously good part was the alias assigned to me, Dr. IPL! The bad part I would say was that the bites were too small, four of them stretched not more than two to three minutes each spread across one hour of programming. I would have loved to keep talking cricket incessantly but it is a music channel first and foremost. The best part is there are 45 more days to go yet!
