More Plaudits & Gripes (Re: Second IPL Semifinal, Punjab v. Chennai)

Yet another horribly one-sided semifinal with depleted teams... what's going on here? How could it all go so horribly wrong? (Next thing you know, Matthew Hayden will be dropping in and score a hundred in the final  playing on a broken Achilles' heel.) The final better make up for all this bullshit. Here are some more notes on the second semi:

• Seriously, did no one bother planning these final stages of the IPL season? It's work so negligent and sloppy it almost has a touch of George Dubya to it. There is no absolutely no understanding of The Occasion in the planning; no attempt to cultivate the power of The Event in people's minds.
  
  How could they possibly have the two semifinals and the final on three consecutive days? This is supposed to be the most exciting part of the year for the IPL, and the finals of any tournament must always seem special, unique in some way. You have to space them out a little, let the drama build, make the hacks speculate in order to fill column space. Why is the IPL sidling away from view as quickly as possible? We already waited a month-and-a-half to reach this point... make it worth our while, will ya?
  
  
• Leading Contender for Best Name of The IPL... Wilkin Mota. We've already seen some strong nominees during the tournament, with the likes of "Swapnil Asnodkar" and "Yo Mahesh" leading the pack. "Wilkin Mota", however, is just a cool name. It's like the name of a forgotten jazz-age legend, wild and mercurial... the great Wilkin Mota, ladies and gentlemen, sitting in with the Thelonius Monk Quartet, for one night only. (Now if we can just get Wilkin Mota and Willy Saha in the same team, we'd be all set.)
  
  
• The broadcasters chose a strange time, with a couple of games to go, to start plugging the emerging internet presence of the league. All of a sudden, they start talking about interactive polls, live forums, online stats and graphs, completely oblivious to the fact that the IPL will pretty much disappear from the public consciousness in about two days. It just serves to remind you how much this league is still functioning in Beta mode. As long as it doesn't crash, we should all be happy.
  
  

Comments

[Miriam]

Ah, Swapnil Asnodkar.

HOW is that a name? It's just a random collection of sounds!