Sorry for the Break!

By Gulu Ezekiel

Lalit Modi has perhaps never heard of Joseph Goebbels. But the IPL chief and Hitler’s notorious propaganda minister share something in common. They both believe (in Goebell’s notorious words): “If you tell a big lie enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Not only Modi but all the high-profile mouthpieces he has surrounded himself with led by motor-mouth Ravi Shastri have been following this philosophy.
No matter how many times Modi may try to justify his idiotic break between innings as a ‘strategy break’, no one is going to except it for anything other than another way to milk money from ad breaks.
One national newspaper on Saturday referred to the ruse as “the prostitution of cricket.”
The farce was exposed for what it was on a rain-hit Sunday when the break was taken after six overs in Punjab XI’s innings which last all of 12!
Being a TV veteran Shastri should know that the camera never lies. And no matter how many times he may wax eloquent about the “huge crowds lining the streets” of Cape Town for the IPL parade on Friday, it was plain for viewers on TV (and the more honest journalists on the spot) to see that the crowd was miserably thin and the reception lukewarm at best.
The same was the case with the fans in the stands for the opening weekend’s double-headers.
Modi and his men have been telling us for days that the games were complete sellouts. Yet the panning cameras clearly revealed there were wide swathes of empty seats all around. And that buzz so evident at Indian grounds was woefully absent.
Of all Modi’s boasts though the one that takes the cake is comparing organizing the IPL in South Africa in three weeks to Fifa taking eight years to plan for the 2010 World Cup football.
There are eight franchises from one nation in the IPL while the World Cup consists of 32 national teams from around the world for which a number of new stadiums and hotels have had to be constructed.
Goebbels must be grinning from his grave!

www.sportshero.com (20/4/09)