“Ridiculing the Indian Premier League for turning cricketers into a bunch of avaricious people, World Cup winning Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga today said that the cash-rich T20 league has given Indian cricket nothing but disrepute.” mentions Indian Express.
Arjuna Ranatunga’s case is surely of a sour-grapes one. Since he is outside the IPL event, he can afford to, or even amused to criticize it. The fact is that Spot-fixing and IPL are not related phenomena. All sorts of corruption and fixing dates much back from the year IPL started. We have seen enough of fixing scandals in many world events and Cricket tournaments before and IPL’s fixing exposure in the current season is only a small part of it. Therefore people like Arjuna Ranatunga who have become outdated like fossil in world cricket should not speak in the kind of language Ranatunga has used.
He says further, “I don’t understand that what is the need of such a league. What has Indian cricket gained from it. It is spoiling players. I don’t remember any world class player produced from IPL. India will not get Tendulkars, Dravids or Gavaskars from IPL. BCCI’s domestic structure is good enough to produce good cricketers, so what is the need of this league,” Ranatunga said.
If Arjuna does not understand the need of IPL then he should rather spend his time trying to understand it than going top guns and talking nonsense. Is he a prophet to predict that India will not get new great players from IPL? Even in his above mentioned rant, it could be understood that he is looking at IPL as a kind of domestic event in India, completely ignoring the fact that IPL is rather an international event which involves so many international players including Sri Lankan players. Instead of praying to India to stop such a successful and entertaining format of the game, Ranatunga should rather beg his fellow Sri Lankan players not to participate in IPL. How will that be? But intellectually bankrupt that Ranatunga has become (perhaps fossils are not expected to have intellect?), he won’t understand.
All of Ranatunga’s rant can be associated with world of sports, Cricket game in general, or the T20 format. But he targets IPL and India very unfairly. It should be hoped that our media and the press stops giving time and space to such irrelevant and outdated individuals like Ranatunga.
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