Let's embrace IPL, but with a little more maturity

Graeme Smith's catch off Ganguly was looking perfectly right to me. It was as fair as you can get and I was baffled when the third umpire ruled it not out. Also, Ganguly should not have asked the on-field umpire to check with the third umpire. I expected a few words to be exchanged, knowing Ganguly, Smith & Warne and that did happen.

But, what I saw on news channels this morning was atrocious. They were trying to make it yet another India v Australia issue. There were even clips of the Sydney test where Australia clearly played foul. But, for heaven's sake, let's not mix the IPL with international cricket.

Everyone should learn to see IPL as a stand-alone league and it will definitely help the game in all ways. Let's not drag in issues in international cricket and extend the verbal warfare to IPL as well.

I have started to love IPL and I'm not particularly concerned about all the talk of Bollywood, cheergirls and too much glamour, as I love the cricket that's being played and it's extremely nice to see McGrath and Sehwag celebrating Dravid's dismissal or Afridi knocking fists with Rohit Sharma after the latter's sixer or Sohail Tanvir getting ecstatic after dismissing Salman Butt and being hugged by a lesser known Indian cricketer or Laxman, along with Symonds and Gilchrist, plotting ways to dismiss Watson.

To me, instances like these make IPL very interesting though I still like international cricket and Test cricket is definitely my first love. IPL is superb cricket entertainment without the international boundaries. Let's keep it that way and not create unnecessary controversies. Things are bad as it is with two Indian cricketers having a go at each other. Let's not make it worse by bringing international cricket's enmity into IPL.

Let IPL live for long and forever as I definitely feel that it would reduce animosity among players and it would be carried over to international games as well which is eventually what we are all looking for, in the best interests of the game.

Labels: ganguly, graeme smith, india, indian premier league, ipl 2008, twenty20, umpires, walking, warne