Dhimant Chovatia

Sorry…. First things first. Its not IPL. It’s the DLF IPL. (Maafi Lalitbhai) Darwin might not have thought about this one. Even the best of Ad Gurus in Kerry Packer era would go crazy, looking at how branding has evolved. My focus in this post is on the marriage of commentary and brands since last 3 seasons…. Have a look… First match Season 1 Mccullum has hit this high in the air and that’s a six. What a shot! After 25% of the Season 1 That’s in the air but going safely into the crowd. Deep midwicket can just watch. That is one for the DLF maximum sixes award. Season 2 Symonds comes down the track and that’s a biggie! That’s a DLF maximum !! Season 3 Tendulkar has creamed this one straight into the sight screen. It had DLF written all over it!! Season 4 – Match 1 – Six 1 That’s hit towards the long on boundary. That’s a DLF !! Season 4 – Match 1 - Last ball of the first inning Albie !! He has DLF ed Kallis… Now that’s a great finish!! ...

As I sit today trying digest the fact that all the matches of IPL have now been moved (almost) to Mumbai, I wonder where this will take us. You see Shiv Sena has already tried doing a lot of damage when they protested against SRK's Movie. And they still have not said anything that comforts a cricket enthusiast about the IPL. You never know what they will be up to. The AP government on the other hand is trying to pursue Deccan Chargers to boycott the entire IPL itself!! This may further lead to confusion this time between a Government and the BCCI which may have complex implications. Hope things fall in place like last time and cricket takes its deserving center stage soon...

Most Indians will answer the above question in negative. In fact if the parameters of the question were politics, or economy or security, even I would have said the same thing. But if it is in relation to organizing successful cricket tournaments, sadly I have to answer in affirmative. While most of us know and agree that the security situation of our country looks better than that of our neighbors', I may have no qualms in saying that the end result may eventually be the same. If kotla had given us a cricketing reason for moving matches out of the venue, Hyderabad gave us another reason. Telengana. Thanks to the agitators who literally took to field in one of the local T20 matches, the IPL opener was shifted to Mumbai. Loss of revenue for the HCA and loss of credibility for the city. More so loss of a great event for the fans of a cricket loving city. Does it end there? No. As I write this there have been signals from shiv sena that they might just oppose the attacks on...

There may have been more than thousand experiments that would have made a common man go “WOW” and then were dead within no time. But there are some real good ones that see the light of the day and then go on to make a difference in the life of thousands. Indian Cricket League, which started as an experiment, or as an alternative to the mainstream cricket in India, has not made it long enough to see the light of a second season. For once this is a proof enough for the popularity of this so called rebel league. Since the last time a ball was bowled in the ICL, there have been a lot of changes in the cricket fraternity in general and people’s attitude towards ICL in particular. T20 cricket has taken over from other forms of cricket so much so that the poor ODI format has suffered like anything. A lot of national teams have practically let their players represent T20 leagues than appear for national duty. This says a lot about what the global fraternity thinks of the game’s latest format...

Monday, 2nd June 2008 (it was supposed to be 1st June but the whole thing ended close to morning), saw the end of an amazingly well fought match between the Rajasthan Royals and the Chennai Superkings marking the end of Indian Premier League. The whole of India must have been glued to their TV sets to watch the epic end. Since then I have read hoards of articles and heard unending talk shows as to what IPL meant to India and its role in blossoming India’s future in cricket. Most of them forget one thing. There would not have been any IPL if the ICL was not born. I personally think IPL owes a lot, and more to Mr. Chandra. There have been comparisons between the two leagues and the IPL has won hands down in all. Be it the TRP’s, or revenues for the teams, crowd support, star appeal or just the way the tournament has been conducted. The IPL has overtaken the ICL in all those departments. But if you are someone who likes to know how cricket is benefited overall, read on. Thanks to the maxi...

Thank goodness… it is finally over. Well, that’s what each and every Hyderabadi present at the Visaka Cricket Ground felt at about 11:30pm on 27th may. The very troubled run of IPL’s Hyderabad representation called Deccan Chargers got over with playing cricket this season. Yes, as usual they lost one more, and there I had a new slogan courtesy two friends of mine. It goes like… One and Two and Three and Four… Deccan Chargers are No more… While the first half is patented to my pen pal (keyboard pal would be apt for this age), Sunny Khandelwal, another friend of mine Robin Cornelius, who works for the Indian Multinational, added the latter half describing the true emotion a cricket fan in Hyderabad went through that night. While we shrugged it off saying a bad season, 12 losses out of 14 attempts was not as easy as a Hyderabadi light lelo yarron, for people who were a part of it. The fact that Adam ‘Churchie’ Glichrist actually apologized to the cheering crowd talks about how the guys in...

One and Two and Three and Four, Deccan Chargers Give us more … As the voice of Sunny Khandelwal (I think it was him… not too sure though) rocked the Visakha Cricket Stadium (now called the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium thanks to the rulers of our nation), standing on the third floor of the Shivlal Yadav Pavilion, wearing a pink colored access card, I was wondering how much more to expect from this “Technically the Best Team in the IPL”? The loss at Kolkata was fresh in my mind. Though the newspaper run by the franchisee of Deccan Chargers screamed and shouted that it was the pitch and the lights and the umpires that did us in at Kolkata, I was sure that the KnightRiders batted on the same strip. A loss after all was a loss and had to be faced. As the Deccan Chargers (I will call them DC now… The franchisee will be really happy with that), practiced in front of about 10,000 people in the stadium (the capacity is about 39000 and growing everyday… They are on an expansion spree), a...

Beloved son against the neglected (rebel!) one…this sounds like an apt description of the two newest babies of the grand old religion, which about half the world follows. Cricket has always been a game that has been very receptive to change though not immediately. The T20 version of cricket suddenly saw a burst of leagues in various parts of the world to counter arguably the most popular game that the world have ever seen… Soccer. While the Alan Stanford backed Stanford T20 has grasped attention of the cricket crazy islands south of America, the ICL and IPL have born much to the amusement of the a billion people back home. The Stanford league has definitely helped the revival of cricket in the West Indies. The dying state of cricket stadiums with empty stands during test matches seems long gone. With black bats and white balls flying around the ground in front of huge screens, it is for sure that the T20 is here to stay. Though the lucky facet of the windies is that the authorities tha...

The juggernaut has started rolling. Soon you would see the Hyderabadis cheering for Aussies, the Delhites Cheering for Indians and the Mumbaikars cheering for Sri Lankans. Well this is not a dream. Welcome to the latest money spinner in sports. The Indian Premier League seems to be here to stay. When Subhash Chandra, the visionary behind ICL (Indian Cricket League) the breakthrough cricket, would have thought about incepting something that was anti BCCI (!) as thought about by the BCCI themselves, not even in his wildest dreams would he have seen a 19 year old Delhi lad who was learning to bowl quick against the GOOD batsmen of the world, contracted for a whopping $950000. As the telecom users thanked Reliance Infocomm in 2003 for lowering the overall market prices in spite of them not having great services themselves, the cricket fraternity of the country should felicitate Mr. Chandra for having pioneered a revolution in cricket where the money goes to its deserving creator, The Playe...