There has been a lot of talking about IPL Season II moving to South Africa making way for a safe and secure Election process. The debate and discussion about the shift in venue is well over now. Questions about the eccentricity and the enthusiasm for this second edition of the tournament have been coming through. Now that the season 2 has got off to a start, it is time to find out what has changed and what has not from the inaugural edition of the tournament. The start did make a success story. The newspaper headlines had the catchy slogans. But is the cricket fan satisfied? What does he feel about watching all this from a distance?
For a start, i would like to analyze how big a fan i am of this highly spoken about version of the game. This shorter version has always been interesting. The fervour and passion was sure to come right from the inception of this form of the game. Season 1 was really interesting. The teams did not manage to accrue passionate fanatics supporting them die hard. The cricket lovers were more enthused by the very nature of this form of the game and did not resort to wildfire regional supporting tendencies. I was one of the kind too. I did manage to cross my fingers for Chennai Super Kings sporadically during the first edition and i would owe that gesture to the feeling of local support being a long time dweller of the city. But as the build up for season 2 started, the passion increased. I wanted to own a yellow jersey to support the team through season II. I decided that i would watch a few games at the stadium too. Those hopes were dented by the decision to move the tournament overseas. With so much homework from my side done, i geared up for the inaugural match. But at last i ironically managed to miss the match in view of my last minute plans to go to Bangalore. I learned about the results late in the night though.
Fellow supporters told about the loss to Mumbai Indians on the opening day. Surprisingly it did not create any hard feelings for me. May be it was too late in the night for me to fret and discuss the sad story after all for co-supporters would've done the post match analysis which i missed citing personal reasons. I thought i would catch up with the tournament in full swing and with complete ecstasy from the next match day. But the interests were not sustained. As i returned to work on Monday, i could just not think about it with the backlog items at the workplace daunting me after a tired weekend. I watched a couple of slog overs in the CSK-RCB match late night after i got back home.
I noticed the same dip in the passion levels with my fellow fans not knowing the reason though. But whats quite clear is that the move overseas has brought down levels of interest as one cannot enjoy the ecstatic atmosphere in the stadium if the tournament had stayed in India. The idea of screening the matches at multiplexes was welcome during the build up to the season. But nothing materialized at the end, lowering the hopes for a sizzling month of IPL fever. Watching the matches this season i reckon would just be more of a time pass activity rather than being a fervour. I do support the decision to move the tournament away from the country for security reasons, but i somehow feel the passion and enthusiasm which showed positive signs during preseason have died down nevertheless.
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