IPL – A Rookie Magic Machine

By: Sandipan Bose

Playing in the Indian Premier League is like working with the newspaper industry. As a rookie or a small-time reporter, you break a big story to become a hero the next year.

This is quite opposite to what the television news industry offers, where you have to be an established star to make a mark over the years. And just like that the T20 format can catapult a newbie into the cricket stratosphere with one outstanding performance.

Ask Rising Pune Supergiants’ Ashok Dinda and he will tell you. He is the lone cricketer from Bengal to be a part of the IPL and a former Indian pacer.

Initially, Dinda did’t play the first five games for his franchisee. Not that Dinda is a rookie. He has been around for a while on the circuit and has shown a big heart on various occasions.

As luck would have it, when Dinda was inducted into the playing XI for Tuesday’s match against Hyderabad Sunrisers, he came through with flying colours to become the star of the match.

His innings gave a fresh lease of life for his team, which had lost four games on the trot, and for the pacer himself. This is not the first time that the IPL has given stardom to a not so famous cricketers.

In last nine seasons or so, this richest T20 league in the world has given birth to several stars and will continue to do so in the years to come.

This is the magical bit about this format and the tournament. There were a few who faded after one or two seasons. But the IPL is definitely a tournament to shoot to fame in no time at all.

There are domestic stars who are not seen and heard about during the Ranji Trophy season, yet they are in the IPL set-up. They keep coming in in droves and disappear.

This queer nature of the tournament is the reason why the hardliners don’t rely much on the IPL performances. But the fact is that the cricketers stage comebacks to their national teams on the basis of IPL performances. It’s a more than a heady concoction of Bollywood and cricket for sure!