Is anything more Indian - and foreign - than the IPL?

  

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Aiden Markram is one of three overseas captains in the 2023 edition of the IPL
Aiden Markram is one of three overseas captains in the 2023 edition of the IPL ©BCCI/IPL

Is anything more Indian than the IPL? To some Indians that would be a provocation: Yoga, Bollywood and richly varied cuisine, for a start. But, just as it would be arrogant to expect the world to know who or what 'Adho Mukha Svanasana, Shah Rukh Khan or Roti are, it would be naive to assume everyone knows cricket existed in India before April 18, 2008.

Since that day, when Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders took to the Chinnaswamy to play the first IPL match, the tournament has done for cricket what slicers have done for bread. Bread that comes in loaves, that is. So not roti. Nor indeed chapati, naan or paratha.

Just as true is that Bollywood blares with blingy bombast on screens far from India in the thrall of people who are anything but Indian, and that yoga has, in Westernised countries, been bastardised into exercise muddled with pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo, aromatherapy candles and incense and incongruous statues of Buddha.

But while you can take the IPL out of India - as was done completely in 2009 and 2020 and partly in 2014 and 2021 - there is no taking India out of the IPL. Even its satellite tournament, South Africa's SA20, is more Indian than South African. Indeed, the fact that all six of the SA20's franchises are IPL-owned is an important part of its ability to attract sponsors, broadcasters and spectators.

The IPL has changed cricket in vast and irrevocable ways. So much so that it can be difficult to remember a time when these few weeks weren't central to the global game's annual calendar. Whether watching in person or from afar, it's barely possible for cricket-minded non-Indians to imagine anything more utterly and entirely Indian than the IPL.

Except that that has never been true. Foreigners have been intrinsic to the tournament since its inception. Its first winning captain was Shane Warne, its first player of the series Shane Watson, its first leading run-scorer Shaun Marsh and its first leading wicket-taker Sohail Tanvir.

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