V GANGADHAR says that corporatization of Indian sports has glamorized the sports.
Cinestar Shah Rukh khan adopted Kolkatta Knight Riders for the cash-rich IPL which became a hit in India. Khan, already hugely popular for his movies and dancing at the weddings of billionaires did not need the extra money or glamour but found it difficult to refuse such offers.
The IPL publicity was more welcome. In this cricket-crazy nation where crowds in the region of 30,000 plus turned up to watch World Cup matches between teams like Kenya, Afghanistan or Ireland the IPL continued to draw huge crowds, the novelty of night cricket, coloured clothing and the presence of semi-nude girls and cricket balls which seemed to drop from Heaven to register one more six from Chris Gayle, A.B.De Villiers or Tillakaratne Dilshan .They did not want the fun to end seem to end.
IPL which generated big money caught on and soon enveloped nations which were at the bottom of international rankings besides being short of funds. With Sri Lanka, war-torn Afghanistan and the West Indian islands (on an individual basis) started their own IPL leagues and star players like Gayle moved from one venue to another hitting more sixes and fattening their purses. Big and consistent talent did not matter, slogging and six-hitting did.
The Indian Celebrity Circus, particularly its young business tycoons movie stars which came to dominate the Page 3 culture in the media stepped in Some of them like business tycoon Ness Wadia and Bollywood heartthrob Preity Zinta adopted Kings XI Punjab was a dazzling pair. London-based tycoon Raj Kundra married Bollywood model and starlet Shilpa Shetty, flaunted their wealth, jewels and the Rajastan Royals cricket team whose reputation got sullied by its association with Lalit Modi. IPL did not bother too much with reputations. It made lots of money and generated publicity like never before
Watching from the sidelines were dozens of ‘beautiful people’ who felt left out and believed they were missing out on most of the fun. Some of the Bollywood stars attended IPL matches, congratulated King Khan and Shilpa and felt it was high time to be part of the fun. But IPL could accommodate only 8 teams to start with and why should cricket monopolize the show? Meanwhile despite our international ranking never rising above 150, foreign football league was catching on Indian TV. Tired of ‘country’ names like East Bengal or Mohun Bagan or Goa Gladiators our sports channels went for the real thing and our soccer fans, over bottles of beer began to talk of ‘Real’ Madrid (after a heated argument if there was an ‘Unreal’ Madrid, the differences between the Manchester ( United and City) teams. Bollywood rushed to adopt the soccer teams for their IFL.
Indian women did not lag behind in forming their own Tennis League. There are no more ‘Doubles’ worlds to conquer for Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis who had conquered all other womens Combinations. With rare wisdom, Sania and Martina persuaded Saina (Badminton star) and her favoutite partner to be partners in (ITBML) Indian Tennis and Badminton Mixed League sponsored by Lingerie giants
