Why I like the IPL

For someone who knows more about cricket than I want to or need to it seems a bit out of character that Irsquom looking forward to the gamersquos giant annual tamasha I believe that the IPL is due to start one day soon or so I gather from ads on TV I donrsquot watch IPL because Farah Khan features in the ads or there will be some usually pathetic attempt at what passes for dancing by ldquocheer leadersrdquo or even that film stars that I can rarely recognise will be behaving in some vulgar manner whenever TV cameras come near them Unlike most Indians I am ashamed to say my life does not revolve around cricket and Bollywood My reasons for liking the Indian Premier League are simple I can understand it For years I have tried to grapple with the intricacies of cricket its subtle use of philosophy and some strange machinations of your fingers which send aficionados into a spin They all go over my head In my extreme youth I peered at our black and white EC TV with a Readerrsquos Digest encyclopaedia on my lap trying to match the fielding positions on screen with those on the page Simplicity sells There are things about the IPL other than film stars and controversy that appeal to the author The TV was very small and those little men standing on a grey field all looked the same to me but I soldiered on I confess I did not know Virat Kohli was a cricketer when I saw him in the Fast Track ads I saw his picture in a newspaper later and connected the dots I didnrsquot know that the girl was Genelia the actress either Now I do know that shersquos married to Riteish Deshmukh hey her late fatherinlaw was a former chief minister not my fault I cannot make the requisite jokes about silly mid on and off because I never really got the point and third man remains a Graham Greene novel to me oh Lord forgive me The only result of all that childhood cricketwatching was that my knowledge of Hindi numbers became superlative My Hindi teacher who tore her hair out when she read my essays was singularly impressed that I knew the difference between 98 and 99 and that I did not mistake 75 for 45 like my other class mates for most of whom watching cricket meant lusting after Imran Khan who was top horse in those days Subsequently all my reading of Neville Cardus and CLR James led me to admire them as writers so also some other homegrown cricket writers But the cricket continued to elude me Until IPL The cricket is so basic that I even can do what I love doing best mdash show off Aah that shot is just agricultural I say knowingly as some hefty yokel hoists the ball into the far distance with little thought for technique subtlety or philosophy IPL of course best resembles the Indian street corner game of gilli danda which was always appealing You hit in whatever way you could and had a lot of fun and no one preached on about how cricket was life and life was India and who invented cricket and Oliver Goldsmith and an oak tree in a village green Meanwhile it is time for harrumphing old purists to splutter and squeak their way through TV studios talking about how IPL has destroyed all old values for various superior notbrownorblack journalists working for newspapers and websites not based in the subcontinent to bemoan this Asian takeover tamasha of what was once a solid English preserve blah blah blah Closer to home all the bhabhis starlings hangerson will be on display in botoxed splendour while Indiarsquos top industrialists will behave like hooligans during a street festival Those who know more than the BCCI 12 billion Indians will decide which player should make it to the main draw and so on Whatrsquos not to love I know the studio chats between matches And then on May 5 Roger Federer takes to the courts again O come on Irsquod have watched a month of cricket by then Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on Twitter ranjonau00a0