Do you know what? Forget it. I'm not participating this time around.
I enjoyed last year's Indian Premier League. The cricket was pretty good with bona fide Twenty20 legend Brendon McCullum setting the tone with a breathtaking 158 not out on the opening night. Shaun Marsh became a star and, fittingly, the team assembled at lowest cost went and won it. Despite my initial misgivings over a completely artificial construct as the teams - I refuse to use the word 'franchise' apart from in this sentence - are, it kind of swept me along.
No mas. It's gone beyond parody and for this reason: while on the one hand imposing whopping great fines for slow over rate (actually something the ICC could look at), they're also introducing what they call 'strategy breaks', essentially a seven-and-a-half minute hiatus half way through each innings. I've never seen the word 'ad' spelled 'strategy' before. Deep down, we all knew it was more about TV figures and ad revenue than it was about cricket, but to make it explicitly so just spoils everything and you can forget all about it this year.
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