We’re not against the IPL, but we’re against its timing, says New Indian Express editorial staffer

[caption id="attachment_133469" align="alignleft" width="218"] The Chief Editor of the New Indian Express is G.S. Vasu[/caption]

The Tamil Nadu-based newspaper “the New Indian Express” took a brave and rare step to boycott the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 coverage last week, by the midway of the tournament. The boycott was against the IPL’s insincerity towards those who are dying in India without access to basic healthcare needs during a brutal spike of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here is one of its editorial staffers talking to the Morning Sports as to why they actually decided to do so:

“I was in my hometown until last week. There, most of my friends and relatives have no time to pay any attention to the IPL because every second or third family in my village have one or two Covid-19 positive cases within their families.

“The public mood is extremely grim there which also is a BJP (the ruling Bharatiya Janatha Party) run district. There is a huge scarcity of oxygen and hospital beds there. Mumbai (where the IPL 2021’s initial leg was played) in the state of Maharashtra too is badly affected. Now it is Delhi (in the Indian Capital Territory).

“Yet I don’t think there is any serious dissent or displeasure growing among the general public in India for holding the IPL in this situation (like what happened in Europe against a proposed football tournament, the European Super League).

“The general perception here, as I have gathered, is that those who are affected by the pandemic pretty badly are not following the tournament anyway because they don’t have any time to do so. But those who are under lockdowns in various cities and are restricted to their homes are watching the IPL on TV and are following it closely, and might be enjoying it as well.

“Our Chief Editor G.S. Vasu decided to boycott the IPL coverage because we are not against the competition but because we are against the timing of the tournament this time (Indraneel Das is New Indian Express’ Sports Editor). It is not right to use such large amount of resources for the IPL alone when the general public are dying because of absolute scarcity of them.

“The general mood of the country is very grim at the moment. People are dying because they don’t have access to basic health requirements during a peak of the pandemic.

“Yet I don’t think the current situation will dent the IPL’s image as a whole, in the long run. We all know that in this part of the world, people tend to forget and forgive things very quickly. By next year, when the situation will hopefully be normal, people will flock around the IPL again as usual. That’s the nature of the public, I presume.

“Our (the New Indian Express’) argument in boycotting the IPL was that so much of resources that are utilised in the IPL could have been used for the benefit of the general public. For instance, if you show some symptoms of Covid-19, you don’t have immediate access to life-saving healthcare services in many of the cities now.

“People have to wait for about 24 hours at least to do their RT-PCR tests. Then you might need to wait for another two to three days to get your report. By such time, the situation would have aggravated and you might be on the verge of your death. That’s the actual situation here. How ethical it is to have a sports tournament in such a context is our concern.

“We were the first newspaper to boycott the IPL coverage. Later we understood that our stance to do so came in to be highly appreciated by many quarters, particularly in the social media.”

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[caption id="attachment_133470" align="alignnone" width="518"] Yet, in the long run, anywhere in the globe, can a sport run without the belief, love, and support of its followers, or the general public?[/caption]

The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021, which is now going on in various Indian cities –presently in Delhi and Ahmedabad-- that are ravaged and reduced to virtual mass graves by a raging coronavirus pandemic, has established one important fact: The traditional one-to-one interrelation between sports and the human society is not valid any longer. Cricket does not have any interdependency on its fans or the general society.

There had never been a moment like this since the inception of the annual league in 2008. Now we see the very logic behind the whole IPL setup is blatantly being questioned from many quarters. Yet the organisers are nonchalantly carrying on with the tournament. Even their Delhi matches are being held at the Arun Jaitley Stadium as the city’s morgues and cemeteries are overflowing with dead bodies in a human catastrophe unseen in the past century or so.

IPL accountable only to its investors

This year’s IPL is played behind closed doors as ambulances are rushing around the stadium carrying critical Covid-19 patients who die sans any oxygen. The dark smokes of the burning bodies of hundreds of pyres could possibly be smelt by the very players of the stadia Never had been any cricket tournament that was played amid such a disastrous human catastrophe. In fact, such a thing might well happen only in India, but in other country in the world.

The mantra of the IPL organisers and its franchise owners these days is that they provide the only solace to the dying Indian public; hence the continuation of the tournament unabated.

What the IPL 2021 is displaying quite painfully is that it is accountable now only to its sponsors and investors, but no one else. The uninterrupted continuation of its business cycle is paramount to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) --its pompous organiser-- no matter how many have died in the country like stray dogs, falling dead on the very payments outside the stadium. Aren’t they the very fan base of the IPL? Who cares?

System itself protecting the system

It’s a business looking after the very business itself, nothing else – the system nourishes the very system. Humanity has nothing to do here.

Have you ever thought that it was on its followers that the game of cricket always had to depend on? No. You are bound to be proved wrong. It depends nowadays only and starkly on it investors alone.

The IPL now needs to run no matter what, because any cancellation of it can incur unbearable losses to its organisers, the BCCI, the eight franchise owners, its TV broadcaster Star India, and all its sponsors, headed by smart phone giant Vivo.

“You play sport before you live”

The wise men have once predicted that it won’t be the man who would run the capitalist economy one day; instead the system will run the system itself autonomously. And the man will become just a part of it. The IPL 2021 has proved us the case.

The IPL 2021 has exposed the Indian masses to that naked truth. Those days we were taught that there were priorities in life. You live first before you play sport. India has turned that norm the other way around. You play sport first (for the benefit of the system) before you live (because the system doesn’t care whether you had lived or not).

Protests against ESL

So, where’s the hell of those multi million dollars that are annually generated by the IPL? Why aren’t those money channelled in some way to build hospitals, increase the facilities of the general health sector in India, or at least too buy some refrigerators to put in those decaying bodies which are being kept by their relatives and close ones for over 20 hours on the wayside until their time comes from cremation on hastily-arranged pyres?

Can a sport go on like this forever? One placard that was raised in the fan protests against the now-defunct European Super League (ESL) in England read, “Football belongs to us, the people.”

And, there the people won that battle and the ESL business plan had to be abandoned by its orchestrators at least for the time being.

A cinematic fantasy

The Indian masses will soon forget the haughty selfishness of the IPL and all its stakeholders by the time the tournament is held next year when, hopefully, in a safer post-pandemic world.

Yet, in the long run, anywhere in the globe, can a sport run without the belief, love, and support of its followers, or the general public?

The day the Indian masses will be convinced that the game of cricket, particularly their annual IPL, is played only and nakedly for the existence and betterment of its investors and not for them, those masses will take lead in guiding the game in a different, right direction. But in India, such an eventuality is extremely impossible.

Don’t know if India is home for the greatest fantasy cinema in the world. Or else, is India itself --with all her rulers, businessmen, the cricketers, and the masses-- a cinematic fantasy?