SachDan Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 90 per cent IPL tickets sold: Modi :omg: Forget about the thought of crowd turning in good numbers only for matches falling on weekends ! It seems South African public have embraced IPL wholeheartedly. And there is nothing wrong in believing second season of IPL will be even more successful than the first edition ! Well done Lalit Modi :hatsoff: link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zubinpepsi Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 Dan, dont get ur panties in twist so soon..the filthy SOD thatModi is , he is jus hypin it out .. Read this.. Rather surreal Big numbers are chucked about, followed by fake moustaches and an open-top bus parade Lawrence Booth April 17, 2009 Kevin Pietersen and the rest of the Bangalore Royal Challengers wave to the public during a parade through the streets of Cape Town, Indian Premier League, April 16, 2009 KP and the rest of the Bangalore side greet the non-existent crowds who line their route © Getty Images As the big day approaches, the claims made on behalf of the IPL grow more fabulous. Admittedly most of them come from the mouth of the ubiquitous - and apparently tireless - Lalit Modi, although Shah Rukh Khan is rarely far behind, and today Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty arrived at the official pre-tournament press Conference, just in case we got bored. But it is Modi - a man who could calculate his way out of a straitjacket - who keeps feeding us the awesome numbers. According to him, the IPL will generate between 1.5 and 2 billion rand for the South African economy, although how he knows this is anyone's guess. Last year, we had already learned, three billion "sets of eyeballs" watched the IPL. The 700 IPL employees currently in South Africa have generated 40,000 hotel-room bookings, and goodness knows how many domestic flights. A record 1.2m rand has been spent on advertising the tournament here. And an unprecedented 68 journalists - a number believed never before to have been in the same room - lapped it all up. I invented that last figure, but, well, it felt like a day for juggling with numbers. Maybe it's the fact that the "I" bit of the IPL no longer applies, but Modi seems compelled to make grander statements this year than last. It could be the need to create an impression on foreign soil, the way some people act up when they are introduced to a friend of a friend for the first time. It could all be true down to the three-billionth set of eyeballs. But what is for sure is that surrealism is in the air. This suspicion was not quelled by the bus parade through the streets of Cape Town by the players, franchise owners and assorted hangers-on. It certainly didn't help that, for the first time in a while, the skies on the Western Cape were grey and occasionally wet, but it would be an exaggeration to say the crowds were more than one person deep. The players, perhaps sensing an undercurrent of bemusement, decided against the royal wave, while the Rajasthan Royals team sported comedy big black moustaches. These, it turns out, were in homage to their moustachioed team mascot, Moochu Singh, who according to a press release is "an urbane lion, who believes in the values of strength, dignity and pride much the same as his fellow teammates the Rajasthan Royals". Whether Shane Watson looked strong, dignified or proud with what looked like a small rodent attached to his upper lip, however, is another matter altogether. Lawrence Booth is a cricket correspondent at the Guardian. He writes the acclaimed weekly cricket email The Spin for guardian.co.uk © Cricinfo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sachinism Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 hmmm, could it be real? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Show_stopper Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 hmmm' date=' could it be real?[/quote'] My guess is that both articles are OTT..the truth could be closer to the middle of the two extre,es being suggested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Desi Cartman Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 I dont understand why some of the writers are so against IPL but still continue to write about it . They didnt like mooch or the crowd or figure or the idea of IPL in SA but he still went to the press conference .. on top of all that he decided to write an article on it and Im sure he will be following it closely during the whole season ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tapioca Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 My guess is that both articles are OTT..the truth could be closer to the middle of the two extre' date='es being suggested.[/quote'] Pretty much every statement that Modi makes is an obvious lie or exaggeration, but this is about the first time I have seen an journalist directly contradicting him. One good thing about IPL moving to SA may be that not every journalist will wag the tail infront of Modi for fear of being kicked out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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