IPL Season II

Watching IPL this time round, brings back memories of last year: We were all interning in Bombay, had no access to TV and thus only distantly and sporadically followed the fortunes of the various teams. No TV also meant a few other things:

1. That we spent most free evenings hanging out on Marine Drive. And once....
After spending an entire day bumbling around Bandra and Hill Road - 'shopping', we landed at Bandra Banstand for, you know hanging out, were extremely disappointed at the kind of sea front we encountered, decided that ONLY Marine Drive could be good enough for our tired souls, made the hour long train journey to Grant Road and then started the 15 minute walk required to reach our favourite quiet spot. But Lo and Behold! The fast moving traffic on Marine Drive was crawling, the entire place was swarming with police vehicles, policemen, the Press, the general public... pandemonium prevailed! It prompted us to ask a policeman for an explanation. "The Match!" was the only thing he said before rushing to sort out yet another road fight. It took us a little while longer to put 2 and 20 together - to remember and realise that it was the IPL opening ceremony at the Wankhede stadium that we had stumbled upon. I would like to believe that but for the near empty pockets, we would have gotten into the stadium. So anyway, we contended ourselves with sitting on the embankment, our hair blowing in the cool sea breeze, licking a series of Naturals Ice creams, listening to the music playing inside, hearing the crowd roar every time a new jig started, and then finally seeing first hand, what was arguably the best fireworks display I have seen in a loong time. And that is how ladies and gentlemen, I ended up 'watching' the opening ceremony of IPL! It is indeed a unique pleasure to be able to tell people, while watching a rerun of last year's opening ceremony on TV, exactly which flavour of ice cream you were eating, right outside the stadium when a particular roar from the crowd went up. :)

2. That I waited to get to office everyday so that I could read the newspaper to find out as much as I could about the previous day's match and read the post match analyses. It was during these surreptitious paper reading sessions that I fell in love with the printed, one day late coverage of cricket matches. All I can say is, it has a charm which watching the match or watching the news of the match on NDTV and such like, can never match.

Last year, my favourite two teams did horribly, Vijay Mallya cried foul and washed dirty linen in public, I got all the IPL news in slow-mo, watched nearly nothing live, and hated the cheerleaders. This year by contrast, though I missed the opening ceremony (both live as well as the rerun), my favourite team has suddenly started doing well (touch-wood), I like the jerseys better, there has been very little washing of dirty linen in public, and the only kind that exists (the Fake IPL Player) - I find very funny, and I have seen the ball by ball coverage of almost every match on TV. Also, off field, I love the new Vodafone ads and wait anxiously everyday to see what new wonder they have come up with.

So, all in all I should have enjoyed this year's edition better than last year's. I wonder why it is then, that IPL for me, still means IPL 2008.