This weekend kicked off the second season of the Indian Premier League. The only catch to this year's follow up to the first highly successful and lucrative cricket tournament is that it is being held in South Africa, not India.
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Thanks to the ongoing elections in India (more on the elections in the next post), the entire tournament was moved to South Africa. State governments insisted that they could not provide adequate security near election days and the IPL was forced to come up with an alternative schedule. This schedule had random cities without an IPL team hosting many matches and several host teams without a home game, including Delhi.
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Finally, Lalit Modi, founder of the IPL announced that the tournament would not be cancelled, but would be held outside of India, in either South Africa or England. I think it's quite a shame for India. The buzz and excitement around last year's IPL was refreshing and the money generated from sponsorships, ticket sales, and merchandise is something that is not usually seen in India. Although people can watch from here and buy all of the Delhi Daredevil t-shirts they want, it's not the same as the real deal.
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Already I find that I'm less inclined to watch the matches, but maybe that will change with time.
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