Actually Following The IPL

Is the IPL your gold star or death star? Sam Perry on what it’s like to follow the IPL from Australia, and – if you’ll allow – some thoughts on the 2024 edition.

Artwork by Fisher Classics

It’s mid-season and Rajasthan’s Jos Buttler is about to slay an IPL record. Chasing Kolkata’s mammoth 223, he begins with his custom rust (this season, anyway), before scintillatingly moving through the gears to bring up his hundred from 55 balls. He shields tailender Avesh Khan from the strike in the 20th over, endures a series of Varun Chakravarthy dot balls, then finds the decisive, winning runs from the game’s final delivery.

In the immediate aftermath, Buttler agrees it’s his greatest IPL innings. He pays deference to MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli without prompt, noting “the way they stay till the end and keep believing”. Kolkata’s Sunil Narine made an extraordinary 109 from 56 and took 2/30 (4), provoking queries as to his availability for the West Indies ahead of their home T20 World Cup. Windies captain Rovman Powell reveals he’s been “whispering” to him. He wants him. Narine says he “[doesn’t] know what future holds”. Yet Buttler’s winning hand means he’s Player of the Match in this top-of-the-table clash. The Royals are now four points clear of second in an otherwise congested table. They’ve fallen away from similar positions in recent years. Can they transcend that trend?

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A certain ambivalence can accompany straight, prosaic IPL coverage. Does one reject their red ball roots by writing that Buttler batted well? If analysis ignores the existential dimensions, is it tacit validation of franchise cricket’s imperial march? The doyen of this stack itself, Gideon Haigh, wryly notes each week that the IPL is either still, or apparently, on. The point is well taken. To many, the tournament is nothing but an emblem of saturation sports culture, appealing to our shallowest instincts, its mere existence an insult to our sensibilities, and the arch threat to the cricket many hold dear. So yeah, maybe the solemn chronicling of a power play is a slash in Test cricket’s death by a thousand (upper) cuts.

We certainly receive lots of that sentiment at The Grade Cricketer, where we’ve entered our fourth year of providing IPL coverage via our Morning After IPL show on YouTube: a 20-ish minute recap of most (not all) games, combing for mirth among the…maximums.

For us, the mere act of narrating any cricket involving India elicits scepticism among portions of our Anglosphere audience. There are plenty of people who view TGC’s “India suck off”, as it is often coined, as motivated purely by money, click farming, and is a sort-of treachery to the traditions upon which our fragile game stands.

To us, that is part of, but not the full, picture. When we started doing this back in 2021, we weren’t sure if our style would translate in India. And doubtless for many (whether in India or otherwise) it doesn’t. But in a time where the fissures between Asian and Anglo discourse have only seemed to widen, where only a small few appear able (or interested?) in connecting meaningfully and productively with both worlds, we’re proud at having established a relationship with hundreds of thousands of Indians who, like us, enjoy a bit of loose humour to accompany their enjoyment of cricket.

I calculate I spent about two full years of my life fielding at short cover and fearing showers when playing lower grade cricket in my twenties, chasing a professional dream that had died at least a decade earlier. Never did I think that both satirising and holding up a mirror to those experiences would ladder to a world where India is a feature of my life, with opportunities to travel there, meet people and make friends. My world is incalculably richer for it. This is a function of love and connection to the game, and if you’ll forgive the cheese, it knows no geographical bounds.

But lots of people understandably eschew the IPL in Australia. A midnight start, a 4am finish and the wintry energy of footy season are common, practical reasons. Many don’t like the aesthetics, the “Big Dipper” cricket – and that’s fair enough, too. And then there are the principled stances. IPL v Tests. India v everyone. These frames mutate matters into culture war territory, tribalism, and trench warfare viewpoints.

In my experience, too easily do people conflate India with those that run Indian cricket. And now, the IPL has become such a lightning rod for the commercial dreams and existential angst of the global cricket polis, it resultingly feels strange and risky to talk or write exclusively about the cricket that happens on-field, in a way that it doesn’t when covering the game in any other place. To many, the act of apportioning attention to it, let alone chronicling it, is tantamount to a subtle sort of betrayal.

Anyway, against that rickety context, here’s some brief thoughts on what’s happening.

MS Dhoni and Mt Rushmore Players

It’s still about MS Dhoni. He receives a bigger ovation for his entrance to the crease than any player does for anything they do. He really is a deity; his omnipresence is frankly not understood here in Australia. Every ground he plays at – home and away – is drowned in CSK yellow. He personifies the modern Indian cricketing ideal: cool, calm, strong, successful. He’s 42, he’s going round again, and he’s still doing the business – albeit in deeply efficient, almost comical ways. He is a 3-5 ball, last over specialist: if he faces any more than that, something has gone wrong. He’s still lightning behind the stumps, looks like he could bench twice his weight, and with the blade, no one can do more with less. His 20 from 4 balls against Mumbai earlier this week is the biggest story of the IPL so far. No matter that India’s actual captain, Rohit Sharma, made 105* in the same game.

This speaks somewhat to the cult of the individual that pervades Indian cricket. No doubt it appears to some degree in every sport in every nation, but it’s amplified in the IPL. Player armies dwarf team support. Dhoni sits atop this mountain of love, followed by Kohli, then Rohit, and there’s probably a gap to the next tier. I often wonder about the cultural forces drive that electric worship at the altar of the individual. How deeply does it seep into the psyche, and does it hamper the national cricketing cause? A senior TV executive once told me that if your channel isn’t “The Virat and Rohit show”, you’d soon be out of business. So as a joke (sort of?), we decided to title the aforementioned CSK v MI match: “Dhoni Dhoni Dhoni Click! Click! Click!”. It’s our highest rating episode in 2024.

They say that pre-Internet, the streets cleared when Sachin batted. When it comes to Dhoni, the screens light up. The online parlance is to ascribe any excellence with the term “God-tier”. In Dhoni’s case, it’s almost true.

Aussies Are Unders

There are better analyses of Aussie performances around, see the excellent Alex Malcolm here, but just a few notes. For their own reasons, each of Marsh, Maxwell, Green, and Starc have either failed to consistently fire, or failed to fire at all. The tone of many TGC YouTube commenters seems to be: the money’s good, so where are the performances?

There is another theme within our comments here, too, which are teeming with Indians disappointed that so many of the players who vanquished their World Cup heroes have not followed with commensurate performances this IPL.

Of course, sitting underneath this is a sincere respect within India for Australian players. This is no doubt historically informed, but most recently buttressed by the events of November 19, 2023, best known in our studio for the day Australia won the World Cup, and The Grade Cricketer lost literally 5000 YouTube subscribers. Did the Indian team – who clearly played the best cricket across the tournament – afford Australia too much respect on the day? Did they, as one player said, need to use pitch psychology to bluff Australia into batting first?

IPL fans had hoped the stellar performances of star Australians might carry across to their team. In the main they haven’t, but if you’re a Sunrisers Hyderabad fan, they have. Pat Cummins – hitherto an underperformer in the format – has stamped his world class credentials on the tournament. Second only to Jasprit Bumrah in effectiveness so far, he’s reached old school speeds of 147km on occasion, and combined hard lengths and a wily mix of slow, into-the-wicket gear. It bodes well for the Caribbean.

He's been joined by Travis Head, who’s already managed to take down a couple of teams with trademark slashing, cutting, and bludgeoning. In a recent review, Higgos and I questioned whether last year’s new Impact Sub somewhat diminished the sanctity of cricket as an 11 v 11 game. Head – having just smashed 100 from 39 balls as an Impact Sub – replied “sounds like two blokes that’s never been an impact sub…” followed by two laughing emoji’s.

Bowlers Win Things

Sixes have rained and reined. There have been more sixes than at any equivalent point in previous tournaments, by some distance. There are more runs than ever. There is now almost no correlation between the highest individual score and that team winning. “Match losing hundreds” are common parlance. Ergo, if you can bowl, you can be the difference. Rajasthan are well-served with an attack brandishing variety and quality within disciplines, angles, and speed. And at the other end of the spectrum, big market teams like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru – packed with batting superstars – cannot find any cohesion with the ball (with the stark exception of Mumbai’s Jasprit Bumrah, who is head and shoulders above any bowler in the tournament).

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The grind of mid-season now takes hold. Traditionally, that means tired tracks, hungry spinners, and the emergence of big market teams who’ve endured slow starts. As the nightly rhythm of each game starts to blend into the other, it also means “content creators” look for moments to highlight. For TGC, we want to entertain off the back of lesser known lights, like 32 year old Shashank Singh, the Punjab Kings journeyman mistakenly selected in the auction over a 19 year old with the same name. Or youngster Riyan Parag, yet another Indian batting prodigy who appears to be finally delivering on his promise. But whether right or wrong, it’s Dhoni, Kohli, or Rohit that will get the clicks.