IPL Is Much More Than What ‘Inside Edge’ Suggests

‘Inside Edge’, the show, makes us forget that the IPL brought with it many positive firsts for India.

The mega IPL media rights auction in Mumbai a few weeks ago couldn’t have brought better or happier news for the IPL or the BCCI. The amount – Rs 16,347.50 crore – will now come into the board’s coffers, with Star India picking the broadcast and digital rights for the T20 tournament for the next five years.

Everyone is astonished by the success of this league and how much it has grown in the last 10 years. According to Twitter, IPL is the fastest growing league in the world, and if it continues at this rate, it could very well be placed with the NFL and the Premier League in the next few years.

However, all that has to do with the financial side of the IPL. What about the perception of this league? Recently, an example of the IPL’s tattered image was showcased in Amazon India’s web series ‘Inside Edge’, produced by Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar.

The plot of ‘Inside Edge’ is weaved around all the controversies of the IPL. Obviously, it starts with the usual disclaimer, “All the characters in this series are fictional and any similarity or connection with the real event is purely co-incidental.”

But, that’s where the fiction ends.

Most of the events and incidents in the 10-part series have a direct reference to some of the most terrible things that have happened in the IPL. It has fading film stars trying to hold on to every second of fame using cricket, greedy corporate houses who have come to cricket with the sole intention of making money, wheeler-dealers of cricket who will go to any distance to make quick bucks, corrupt cricketers who would manipulate their colleagues and situations to benefit their bookie handlers, young cricketers overwhelmed by the glamour and the honey-traps laid to lure them, and ex-cricket stars dealing with their past and helpless present.

Mixed with drugs, sex, sleaze, betting, fixing, manipulation, the underworld and mafia, the series came out as quite a heady cocktail that could confuse an honest cricket fan and make him believe in the perceived reality of this league.

Well, one can’t deny that some of these factors have surely given the IPL its bad days and tarnished its image. But, the world’s biggest T20 league has more to it than what meets the eye.

The IPL has been one of the most robust sporting leagues in the world, started and managed by the country’s best sports visionaries and administrators – if the BCCI didn’t have this breed, they wouldn’t have come this far – and some of the best professionals in the world of sports. Match after match, season after season, year after year, the BCCI has been able to run the show seamlessly and without any glitches, and ensured that the aura of IPL keeps growing with each passing year.

After all, the IPL is where a young Bumrah learnt his tricks from Malinga and where many boys of Indian cricket turned to men. Stars of the world have come and mingled with the local boys and shared their experience.

The IPL has made Indian cricketers aspirational, ambitious and committed. It brought much-needed professionalism and accountability into the system. It has also provided much-needed money and security to local cricketers who lived just under the radar of international cricket.  For two years, I worked very closely around the tournament and marvelled at the kind of platform and opportunities it has created for the cricketers.

How such a mammoth event rolls out like a well-oiled engine ever year, is something to fathom. The sheer formula of the IPL galvanised domestic sports culture in India, and every sport followed its path to start their own leagues, eg kabbadi, football, and hockey.

However, despite all these deeds, the IPL’s generic perception has been more on the negative side. At the advent, the league may have needed a mixture of entertainment and stars to attract new audiences and sustain the interest, but then it went too far. At one point in time, it was making headlines not because of the performances but because of late night parties followed by incidents of spot fixing.

The coverage of the IPL match started with dancing girls and Thoko tali line of Navjot Singh Sidhu. Well, somehow that stayed with the general cricket viewers. Somehow, cricket always remained a sub-plot in the script of the IPL.

With the start of the next decade and a fresh broadcaster, it seems like an ideal opportunity for all the stakeholders in the IPL to work towards reconstructing the image of the league and get it its due recognition.

CEO of Star, Uday Shankar, indicated that the IPL is all about cricket and that’s how it should be and will be presented. The IPL needs this kind of approach to make headlines for all the right reasons in the next 10 years. Hopefully, the next web series inspired by the IPL will be about how it was a place where ‘talent meets opportunity’.

Yes, that is the tagline of the IPL.

(Nishant Arora is an award-winning cricket journalist, and most recently, the media manager of the Indian Cricket Team. He also co-authored the best-selling book on Yuvraj Singh’s battle with cancer.)

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