Indian Premier League 3: Where will you be watching?

I was quite excited that March 2006 morning in Mumbai. To conjoin with the controversial Barmy Army (heard of them?) and watch an India-England test match live at the seaside Wankhede Stadium. That's an experience every cricket fan would like. So off I trudged, tricolor in hand, to sit bang in the midst of 300 loud English cricket fans. The cousin and I, we were to be the trojan Indian voices in the pro-British din, that was the patriotic plan. I had heard they sing songs, chant slogans; it had all the promise of a bleacher war blow out.

But it wasn’t meant to be. 

That's because Wankhede, previously considered one of the country's best cricketing venues, was hot, had wooden planks to sit on, lacked drinking water and food, and much to the disbelief of my English friends, had no access to beer! 

"How can you lot watch a game without beer? It's a full day's cricket!" 

Bats and balls, not beer

Now most people need a drink or two to make a test match bearable, but not me. And certainly not the Barmy Army. For them the beer isn’t about intoxicated revelry, it’s about the kind of relaxation that involves stretching your calves in the sun to the soft tick ticking of bat against ball as morning turns into lunch and tea and so on. 

But watching live cricket in India is different. It's hot and hectic. Real hectic.

Take the Indian Premier League for example, whose third edition begins this week (March 12). First, there’s a mad scramble for tickets and passes. Passes I can understand, the VIP and hospitality boxes are quite comfortable. There’s lots of conversation, networking, booze and food. And yes, some cricket too. But it's hardly die-hard cricket fans who inhabit those air-conditioned boxes. The real fans are slumming it out in the stands under the sun.

If you’ve ever been to a stadium in India, any stadium for that matter, to watch a sports game you’ll understand why this experience gives the word slumming a whole new spin. 

Can I summarise? Yes. Wooden planks for seats, no free water, definitely no beer, dirty toilets, stale deep fried food. It really is like a prison yard, the difference being that most of these 'prisoners' would unquestionably kill or rob again to watch Sachin bat.

"If you’ve ever been to a stadium in India you’ll understand why this experience gives the word slumming a whole new spin."

Howzat for a celebration

For those of you who’ve never been to these stands, lucky you, because you could be misled by how happy the fans look on television. But that’s an Indian thing. You point a camera at a stand and you see them go nuts like no one in the world. I saw it in South Africa, hosts of the 2009 Indian Premier League. The South Africans would wave and smile at the camera. The Indian fans would start shaking their bodies like reject break-dancers having epileptic fits.

Probably because we Indians are an inherently uninhibited lot bound by archaic rules, and a live cricket game is close to about the most uninhibited fun you can have in public. A close second would be a Rajnikant film on opening night in Chennai.

In both these, there’s very little watching of the event in progress, and more of a celebration of just being there. Which is what I don’t get. How can people be this happy in such shoddy conditions? It baffles me. I’ve watched live cricket in England, Australia and South Africa. Baseball in New York, football all over Europe.

Nowhere have I seen such disdain as that which is shown to the average Indian cricket fan. I won't even get into specifics, it may start a revolution.

Cricket and commerce

I think the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has been spoilt over the last few years. A packed stadium in South Africa means 15-25,000 people. In India, that’s just the number of people waiting with fake tickets outside the stadium. When you have such a fast moving product being lapped up without question, then you don’t really have the motivation to make the product better. And they’re clever about it too; the rotation system ensures that a city sees an international game only once a year at best, so people will flock regardless.

This means that our cricketers have to travel to the boondocks and visiting teams get to stay in the recesses of the country’s armpits, but as long as everyone’s making money, no one really minds. Or so it all seemed. Till the IPL came along.

Now we’ve all heard our fair share of naysayers when it comes to the IPL and its consequences for the future of cricket in India. They cry hoarse about the commercialization of cricket and how it’s a bad thing. But I don’t think so.

New stadiums, better facilities, and the paying spectator being treated with the respect and dignity he deserves.

More, bigger, better

I spent some time with Lalit Modi (IPL head honcho chairman and commissioner) a week ago, and he told me that a better viewing experience was high up on his agenda. All the eight IPL franchises are either in the process of getting new stadiums or upgrading existing ones, including Mumbai's Wankhede. We shall get all the facilities that spectators all over the world take for granted. And on March 21, two new IPL franchises will be announced. Cities Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Vizag, Rajkot, Cuttack, Baroda, Kochi, Indore and Gwalior are in the fray. Bidders had to cough up a deposit of US$10 million, before the bid. That's to remind you of the size and scope and almighty love for cricket in India.

Soon we may have a Diamond Club like The Emirates stadium, a stand like Stretford End at Old Trafford in Manchester, or our own Yankee stadium. Stands that will have plenty of food and drink in lieu of soggy sandwiches. Seats that will have actual numbers and back support. Clean loos, lots of entry/exit points but sadly, I guarantee, no beer. For if Indian authorities can’t trust us with a beer for the 70 minutes of a hockey match, I doubt it'll run on tap for a full day’s cricket.

We have an administration that doesn’t allow its people to celebrate their own Independence Day with a toast, so being allowed a tipple for the national game stands about the same chance of an icecube in a barrel of single malt. But, as always, we will be thrilled just to be there. And we will show it by shaking our sober bodies regardless.

IPL matches in Mumbai will be held at the Brabourne Stadium at the Cricket Club of India. Buy tickets here. Don't live in India? You can watch the IPL live and official on www.YouTube.com/IPL