The 5 things I won't miss about the IPL

By Rajyasree Sen And it’s finally over. The wonder that is the IPL. Sony Max will be devastated that they’ll have to wait another year for this kind of ad spend, but I couldn’t be happier. While I must admit that I will miss guessing Nita Ambani’s dress size next week, here are the five things I’m certainly not going to miss about the IPL. [caption id=“attachment_17279” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The five things I’m certainly not going to miss about the IPL. Reuters.”]  [/caption]   1.     The WAGS and the celebrity owners playing kissing cousins. My cornea was scarred every day, by repeated pictures of bad boy Shane Warne playing tonsil tennis with Liz Hurley, and Deepika Padukone with Fat Boy Slim Siddhartha Mallya who has pinker lips than she has. It’s bad enough to watch back-to-back cricket tournaments through the year without having to be subjected to these visions from sports hell. 2.     Those wonderful team names. I didn’t know who to support – Kochi Krusaders, Panjim Patriots or Travancore Troubadors. Now that they are done with the IPL, they can participate in any of the dance shows on TV. Instant entry for kitschiest name. 3.     The endless discussions on The Tragic History of Dada, the Prince of Kolkata. How will he recover from being left out of KKR? How could SRK do this? Will everyone in Kolkata boycott the KKR matches? The nation grieved for and pitied him all at once. And then the tide turned with dada’s fall from grace when he agreed to play for the Pune Pumperknickels. How could he agree to play for Pune, did he have no pride? Could he hear the Bengal fan’s heartbeat? He agreed to play because they gave him good money to do so. Twenty seasons of hosting the Bangla version of KBC won’t get him even a fraction of the obscene amount the cricketers make from the IPL. Either way, must we read about how he warmed the bench, then took the field, then stayed near the boundary, then blinked his eyes repeatedly at Yuvraj? 4.     Those utterly hideous costumes – on and off the field. The only pertinent words which have emerged from Lizzy’s lips during her special appearance at the IPL, was to wonder why anyone would want to spend hours on a cricket field wearing nylon outfits in multi-coloured hues in the heat of the Indian summer. 5.     Of course you didn’t really need to watch the matches, if you were on facebook or twitter. Like me, you could not only follow the entire match just by reading the stream-of-consciousness updates, you could also discover that the utterly unfit colleague who doesn’t look like he’s ever exerted himself to even walk up to his TV to switch it on, is actually a commentator, cricket expert and critic, all rolled into one. Also, he seems to believe that Warne, Gayle and the Pathan brothers all have access to his facebook page. Why else would he be writing homilies, admonitions and cricketing tips addressed to them on his status?! I will miss Kamaal R Khan’s brilliant tweets on the IPL matches though. The man truly deserves a seat next to Sidhu and Chota Gavaskar next year. Now that the IPL spectacle is over, I can return to watching my mediocre television programmes and reading my cricket-free newspapers, until the next tournament which I’ve been informed by my facebook cricket-expert friends will not be played by any of the Indian team cricketers as they must take time off to decide where to invest their earnings – funding a state revolution or buying an island in Seychelles… Rajyasree Sen is a Restaurateur who enjoys watching all television other than a cricket telecast.