IPL, the tempest that threatens Test

In 2017, Indian Premier League’s Sunrisers Hyderabad purchased Mohammed Siraj for a whopping Rs 2.6 crore. The following year, Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore bought him at the same price, and he has not looked back ever since. Only, that allimportant figure has gone up to a cool 7 crore. With RCB retaining him this year, the Hyderabadi finds himself in the elite company of Virat Kohli and Glenn Maxwell, the only other two players the popular franchise deemed fit to retain.

In 2018, Siraj took 5 wickets at a cost of 73 runs in a Test at the Brisbane Cricket Ground, Australia. One run short of the best an Indian seamer had done at the Gabba – Madan Lal scalped 5 for 72, way back in 1977. Even that did not stop trolls from asking him to stop playing cricket and drive an autorickshaw instead. He used their sniggering at his father’s profession to strengthen his resolve to make a mark in cricket.

While doing so, he also graduated from riding a rickety motorcycle to driving around in a second-hand Toyota Corolla and further, to owning nothing less than a Mercedes. You get no marks for guessing where the moolah came from. Test cricket, of course, earns the player a big name.

Belonging as he does to a different league, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was destined to enjoy the best money can buy. But it was IPL that placed him alongside none other than Rajinikanth, in Tamil Nadu at that. That also brings together two best forms of entertainment in the country. Adulation the former Indian captain enjoys in the southern state bears testimony to the pan-India mania for the shortest form of the gentleman’s game. He retired from Test cricket in 2014, but still captains Chennai Super Kings. We can’t have enough of adulation, can we?

Question success, but at your own peril. T20 is here to stay, and successfully. The ongoing IPL auction is sure to hammer this in more emphatically. Gone are the days when the Mike Gattings refused to tour India, citing “contaminated” potable water or spicy desi curries that “caused food poisoning”. Every cricketer worth his salt is now ready to make that trip across oceans, sure as they are of returning with a sizeable moneybag. Something has changed. And it not the water we drink, nor where our cooks source their masalas from. That something has universal appeal.

Dear Test cricket, you will always be respected. Like it happened with Satyajit Ray, the awards will always be yours. The crowds, though, will continue to lap up the crunched form of the game. And, IPL will make the best of this euphoria.