Thankfully, after the start of the tournament, the off-the-field issues have stopped, but on the field, the players have continued to make news for all the wrong reasons. Here is a lowdown of all the things that have gone wrong in the tournament so far:

Yuvraj proposes, Ness disposes:
After been disposed off as the captain of the Kings XI Punjab side, Yuvraj Singh wanted to shift to the Mumbai Indians side according to a report in a newspaper. The owner of the side, Ness Wadia refused, but then was worried that the combination of the loss of captaincy and the lack of desire to play for Punjab would mean that he could underperform. Wadia is then said to have supposedly spoken to the BCCI about his fears, who had had a talk with the player.

The result? Yuvraj Singh struggles through most part of the first half of the tournament, whereas the Punjab side capitulate to one loss after another and after having played ten games, they are already out of the tournament.

Ordinary or extra-ordinary?
Gautam Gambhir is a rather angry man on most occasions, but this time around he seemed to have stirred the hornet’s nest by calling the Rajasthan side ordinary. He was been asked whether he thought he was worried about the Royals chasing down the target that was set by the Daredevils, and he replied that apart from Yusuf Pathan, he was barely worried about the ordinary side.

Modi reprimanded Gambhir, but that did not mean that the dashing southpaw stopped making statements. He said that he stood by what he said and did not care much for people who had not held a bat in their hands – alluding to Shilpa Shetty in this case. Rajasthan went on to beat Deccan and Punjab in two successive games and look to be heading their way into the semi-finals.

While diplomacy was never Gambhir’s middle name, surprising to hear Gambhir call the Royals ordinary anyway, given that they have won the first edition of the IPL and look good to enter the semi-finals in the second!

Over-rate issues:
While it was good to observe that the IPL had taken upon itself to sweep the slow over-rate offenders with fines that were anything but tiny, the surprising bit was that not only the captain but all the rest of the players were fined a bomb as well.

So picture this. Kumar Sangakkara gets fined $20k for his first offence, $40k for his second and gets banned for his third one. He has already lost more than $100k in fines. But more importantly, each of his player has also lost around $50k, which is probably more than what some of the players even earn in the entire duration of the tournament! This means that by playing in the IPL, these players, with contracts worth $30,000 or $50,000 stand to gain nothing, all thanks to some slow thinking captains! Quite a joke I tell you!

Shane Warne has called out to put an end to the fifty overs format and have only test matches and the T20s being played. According to the former leg-spinner from Australia, the fifty overs format is past its sell-by date and it does not make too much sense to continue playing it.

Warne accepted that it was a big call to make – given the history – but had no doubts that it had ceased to be interesting enough.

In fact, the T20 cricket was introduced by England after the first class features in the four-day and forty overs cricket was found to be dying a slow death and hence the counties had been running into huge losses. With the introduction of the T20 cricket, the coffers have been buzzing again for the counties.

There have been many such calls in the past as well, but the ICC has not yet come out with a statement regarding this.

According to me, it is difficult to put a format to sleep, especially if the audiences still flock to watch the game and if there is a market for it. It also does seem that between redundant test matches and ODIs, the former will be the first to die, but having an ODI series with seven matches was clearly over-stepping the limits, especially after an exciting Ashes series like the one played earlier.

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