The IPL can bring us cheer too

When Brendon McCullum slammed 158 in the first match of the Indian Premier League we watched with satisfaction. “This is what it is all about,” we thought to ourselves. Five years later the league has changed from being one for the boys to one you can take your family to, where cheerleaders have been covered up (at least most of them) and enough stardust is still sprinkled on every match. At least some of them. Nine teams will play a whopping 76 matches in the space of around two months. Most of them will be completely forgettable. Face it, we love the big shots but we don’t really care whose bat they came of. Do you really care if it was Chris Gayle, Sachin Tendulkar, Kieron Pollard or Shaun Watson who hit the ball out of the ground? As long as the leather is hit off the ball and we have a cold bottle of brew in hand, it’s all good. [caption id=“attachment_266509” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“It’s that time of the year again. AFP”] [/caption] The IPL allows us to throw statistics out of the window. We don’t really need to watch every match, just the good innings. We don’t even need to watch it from beginning to end. If you catch the snippets at the end of every innings, it’s enough since that’s pretty much all you missed anyway. If a batsman made 50 running singles, would you really want to see it? If you’re a fan of bowling you learn the fine of art of how to bowl without trying to get wickets. Sure Lasith Malinga and R Ashwin get their share of wickets, but the ones you really like are the ones who don’t get hit out of the park. And the best part is you don’t need to remember any of the matches. In two months there’s enough cricket thrown at you to help you forget your distant relatives and maybe even some close ones. Does it really matter how the Mumbai Indians get to the finals as long as long as they get there? And if you’re skeptical, try remembering which was your favourite Chris Gayle innings last year. Feel a bit like a patient of temporary amnesia suddenly? On the domestic front, the IPL will also allow cricket watchers to corner the television for every weekday match and will mean they don’t have to watch a serial anyone else wants to watch at the time. In India there’s still no good argument to counter,"Arre, Sachin is playing." Of course now, there are a plethora of names to quote and no prime time serial watcher has a hope of countering it. Football thankfully is played later in the night and the hard core sports buffs have something to keep them busy until about half an hour before kickoff. And best of all, if you’ve wanted to watch films, particularly Hollywood films, there’s no better time. Movie halls are empty, the air conditioner’s are still on at full blast and the popcorn’s still fresh. Sure Bollywood will give us the nonsense – at least, Shah Rukh Khan won’t – that they might not want to watch themselves but our movie maker friends in Hollywood are going to keep churning out their wares. ‘Titanic 3D’ releases this week, a remake of ‘The Three Stooges’, the newest version of ‘Men in Black’ and the much awaited ‘The Avengers’ are just some of the releases expected during the IPL season. And if they aren’t released, well they’re most probably going to play IPL on the screens anyway. Minus the brew but then it can be substituted with a sugary high. So now that the carnival is back in town, put on your party hats, grab a glass of something cold, switch off your brain, paste a silly smile on your face and try to enjoy yourself. You might as well, it’s not like you have too many other choices.