The International Premier League: Taking Cricket to the World

The Indian Premier League,  it’s loud, cheesy, brassy, and very Bollywood, but it’s also a lot of fun...dammit. Try as I might, I just can’t quite bring myself to hate the IPL or Twenty20 cricket in general.

As a traditionalist, I know that it’s bad for the real game, test cricket, but it’s a guilty pleasure. It's the extra scoop of ice cream that your doctor tells you is blocking your arteries. It’s a diversion, just enough to whet the appetite between real games.

As much as it annoys me, I strongly suspect that if there is a form of the glorious game of cricket that will capture the hearts and minds of those in non-cricket nations, then it just might be T20. Hell, it’s even short enough and loud enough to keep the attention of the Fisher-Price generation.

Make no mistake, T20 is an abomination, a game created for the sole reason of making money; and lots of it. Despite that, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been successful and it has raked in some serious dollars. Better than that, it gets bums on seats, and that adds to the carnival atmosphere of the game.

So, if T20 is the game, then the IPL may just be the vehicle to do the job. It has the financial backing to take it as far as it needs to go and all it really needs is marketing and the desire to break in to new territories.

Even better, the I in IPL has become somewhat irrelevant thanks to the scheduling conflict with the Indian elections. So why don’t we just change the I for India to I for International to create the International Premier League.

Instead of sticking to the Indian franchises, why not move to cities around the globe. We could still have the Delhi Daredevils, but we could also have the Beijing Walls, the New York Liberty, the London Queens, the Barcelona Bullfighters or the Brazilian Waxes (yes, I know Brazil isn’t a city, but I couldn’t resist)

If the whole IPL can be moved to South Africa in a matter of a few weeks, why not take it to the world? Why not share the joy with the entire planet? Who knows, once they understand this simple little game, the might even develop a taste for the real one. We live in hope.