saneindian Posted April 10, 2012 Posted April 10, 2012 Too many top order collapses, no batsman willing to bat through the innings, too many risky shots been played. Not that the pitches have been doing a lot either. Just tat they are not the flat roads unlike the previous editions. Will the trend of low scores continue or will we see 160+ becoming a norm once again in thisIPL? Not that I am complaining though, its good to see bowlers dominating the t20 format for a change.
Executioner Posted April 10, 2012 Posted April 10, 2012 too much pressure Or maybe the batsman where paid extra to bat poorly giving guys like Vinay, balaji, munaf, Dinda a bagful of wickets
vvvslaxman Posted April 10, 2012 Posted April 10, 2012 CHennai pitch will continue to be belter when you bat first. Mohali will also be a good batting surface
kidnextdoor Posted April 11, 2012 Posted April 11, 2012 My wishlist for this year's IPL Rather than becoming more like the EPL, where a few clubs hold sway, the IPL must look at creating greater competition Harsha Bhogle April 6, 2012 Comments: 32 | Text size: A | A It's hard to see this year's IPL winner come from outside of last year's top four Ž© Associated Press Enlarge Related Links Features : Part cricket, part entertainment, part comfort food Opinion : Cricketainment is back; will it win again? Harsha Bhogle : Is the IPL still the ticket? Series/Tournaments: Indian Premier League Teams: India Now that the people from the movies have done what they are best at, even though one of the reigning superstars looked dangerously uninterested, the IPL can focus on what it is best at - cricket. To be honest, I have no problems with a spectacle to get a tournament going, especially if it is a lot of fun before the touring and tension starts, but India's obsession with Hindi movies to the exclusion of all else suggests we are getting increasingly limited in our definition of popular culture. Eventually, though, the IPL will have to survive and blossom as a cricket tournament. The packaging is important. You don't buy quality wrapped in brown paper, but what it packages is critical. There is razzmatazz around a lot of sporting events, but the NBA is good basketball, the EPL is good competition, and the IPL will have to continue to deliver good cricket, which, to be fair, it largely has so far Every season brings with it fresh challenges and the IPL will have to retain one of its strongest assets - the unpredictability of results. That means there has to be as level a playing field as possible, which was the foundation on which the tournament was launched. For all its worldwide appeal the English Premiership is almost a cash-for-results enterprise, as the spectacular rise of Manchester City has shown. It means that while there are club loyalties and the EPL is an evolved league that has managed to build a tradition of fan support, it is also clear that no more than four or five teams can even dream of winning it. All leagues will inevitably produce a division between the richer clubs and their more middle-class cousins, and you can see that happening already in the IPL, with player retention and trades, but the future lies in each club believing at the start that it can win the tournament. Luckily T20 as a format, where possession of short-term skills can be valuable too, allows for closer games, but it is still a worry. I would love to be proven wrong but it is difficult to see a winner at this stage that doesn't come from the best four of last year. One way to create greater competition is to let home teams produce wickets that give them the best chance of winning. Clearly you cannot have bad wickets or those that limit good cricket, but the basic element of cricket, to be able to win on different surfaces, must be retained. If you only prepare flat batting strips, and one ground resembles another and they all look like hitting ranges, you will get the equivalent of the white shirt and the blue shirt in male fashion. An executive may get away with wearing identical suits every day but cricket cannot survive on identical pitches. We cannot let that happen, we must not. What we love is a cricket match, and everything that that beautiful expression stands for, not a batting festival. Cricket, even T20 cricket, cannot look like the last reel of a Hindi movie, where the good guys (the batsmen) are beating the daylights out of the bad guys (the bowlers). In fact given the current alarming preference for taking all pace of the ball (in itself a contrast to what some feared - that the slow bowler would have no place) I would be delighted to see a few games where the ball flies off the track a bit. One of the great sights of last year's IPL was to see Dale Steyn and Ishant Sharma letting it rip for the Deccan Chargers, and then to discover that the batsmen didn't quite enjoy it. So I am looking forward to a few things this year. Good pitches and good outfields; boundaries that are where they should be, not merely at arm's length; young kids coming through and surprising us with their audacity; tickets competitively priced, so that everyone can come to the ground and have a good time. And since we are all sentimental folk somewhere, I would like to see Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly giving us moments of joy. They are at different stages in their playing cycles, but you still want to cheer them on while you can.
anotherhawkeye Posted April 11, 2012 Posted April 11, 2012 Agree with harsha on the need for balanced sides. That's what makes NFL a delight to watch. All teams should have equal amount of money fo the auctions and teams that finished last should be given first shot in the auctions to level the playing field. Sent from my SGH-i937 using Board Express
kidnextdoor Posted April 11, 2012 Posted April 11, 2012 IPL cumulative viewership declines for the first time Tariq Engineer April 11, 2012 The IPL had managed to increase its audience in each successive season till 2011 Ž© Getty The IPL's fifth season has registered a fall in total viewership and television ratings for the opening six games in comparison to the 2011 season. This includes a decline in cumulative viewership for the first time in the IPL's five-year history. The cumulative number of people who tuned in to watch the first six games was 90.1 million, down from 101.77 million last year, according to TAM Sports, a division of Tam Media Research, a leading television ratings agency in India. "Cumulative reach" is the number of individuals who watched a channel/programme for at least one minute. The tournament had managed to increase its audience in each successive season till 2011. Television Viewer Ratings (TVR) were down 18.7% as a result, with the opening six games posting an average TVR of 3.76 compared to 4.63 last season (TVR is a time-weighted figure which accounts for time spent by viewers in addition to the number of viewers). The opening ceremony held in Chennai the day before the first game drew a rating of just 1.16, despite the presence of a number of Bollywood celebrities. The 2012 season is considered something of a litmus test for the league after ratings slumped last year. The 2011 IPL produced the lowest television ratings of any of the first four seasons, down 29% from 2010. That reversal was largely blamed on "cricket fatigue" arising out of India's victorious World Cup campaign, with the IPL starting a mere six days after the final between India and Sri Lanka. With no international cricket in India in the build-up to this season, the league was expected to bounce back, with BCCI president N Srinivasan telling the Hindu he expected the tournament "to be a sweeping success". Sridhar Ramanujam, the head of brand consulting firm Brand Comm, thinks the problem is that there are too many games in the IPL now and that the BCCI needs to find a way to shorten the tournament. "I expect viewership will be selective," he said. "If I like Sachin Tendulkar, then I might watch the Mumbai Indians. I will probably watch Rahul Dravid. There might be people watching Sourav Ganguly. "It is not as if people are going to stop watching it. There will be selective viewing. In a 50-over game, people are now watching the first 10 overs and the last 10 overs. Possibly there is a viewing pattern emerging for T20 as well." Advertisers have also adopted more of a wait-and-watch approach to the tournament this season, with three major brands - Parle, LG Electronics and Godrej - choosing not to continue their association with the league. "Advertisers are starting to look at other options," Alok Bharadwaj, senior vice-president of Canon India, told the Times of India. "Each year the rates have gone up by 15 to 20% and the returns are not directly proportionate." Canon has reportedly cut down its spending on the league by 80%. However, others, such as Vodafone, have backed the league, saying it is still the best platform to reach to reach a mass audience. Sridhar believes Multi-Screen Media, which broadcasts the tournament on its Set Max channel, will need to consider moving to a pricing system that is linked to ratings in order to sell out its advertising space. "I think the whole [iPL] business model is a bit shaky now and not as robust as it was made out to be when it first started." www.espncricinfo.com
kidnextdoor Posted April 11, 2012 Posted April 11, 2012 Part cricket, part entertainment, part comfort food Season five of the IPL, which attempts to strike a fresh balance between hype and sport, is being pitched as a recovery from last year's poor numbers. Time will tell Sharda Ugra and Tariq Engineer April 5, 2012 When did IPL season five really begin? On Wednesday evening, as is faithfully shown on the fixtures list, with defending champions Chennai Super Kings taking on Champions League T20 winners Mumbai Indians at the MA Chidambaram Stadium? Or when 15,000 turned up at Chennai's YMCA College of Physical Education grounds for an opening ceremony that led the audience obediently into mass gawping? Poetry was read, oaths were taken, in keeping with an "honourable IPL tradition", spirit-of-cricket pledges signed, and song and dance burst forth from nimble entertainment heavyweights. Some did look like they were having fun, others watched the evening's "entertainment" as if they had just swallowed a spoonful of bitter tonic after a bout of jaundice. Had the backdrop been changed from "DLF IPL Opening Night 2012" to "Annual XYZ Movie Awards Nite 2012", it all would still have fit. India loves cricketers wherever they turn up anyway. Yet regardless of where season five began, it is how it finishes that really matters. After IPL4's tepid returns - in terms of TV ratings, audience response and general perception - IPL 5 needs to last its seven weeks like a star cricketer does on a successful return after injury - reinvigorated, refreshed and reinvented. The IPL has now become a key component of world cricket's economy. If it falters and fails because it is not alert to the audience climate around it, the domino effect around the cricket world will be damaging. Cricket's superstar status in many parts of its empire will be downgraded from club class to cattle class - all holy cows included. Hanmer MSL, a multi-discipline communications firm, prepared a 14-page document about the last two seasons, concluding that Brand IPL was in "choppy waters". The league needed to win back the confidence of "stakeholders" and the BCCI needed "a stronger game plan to rejuvenate the brand". Season five is significant because it must wipe out the bad memory and the poor numbers from season four. It is the season that will point to the direction the league wants to take and the road down which it is headed. Whether it was viewer fatigue after the World Cup or a shuffling of players between teams after a fresh auction in December 2010, IPL 4 saw TV ratings drop by 29%. The 2011 final, between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore, was the first final to draw single-digit TV rating points - 6.96 from the high of 12.85 in 2010. While broadcaster Set Max did maintain that the viewer numbers had risen, from 55.49m to 58.83m, the time spent by those millions on every IPL match had dropped. Half-empty grounds that made for bad television viewing, though, sent out their own message. Brand value consultancy Brand Finance, which had pegged the IPL's value at $4.13b in 2010, downshifted it by 11% to $3.67b in a 2011 study. Due to corruption controversies and governance issues, the study said, the IPL had begun to represent "the dark microcosm of an epidemic of corruption and short-term frenzy to make a fast buck which has swept India like an avalanche". At a franchise workshop held in Goa earlier this year between franchise owners and the IPL governing council, aggressive marketing to promote season five occupied centrestage. It was accepted that while the IPL could well be India's single most popular sporting event, people could not be expected to turn up at games or switch on their TVs just because they had done so earlier. Middle-class India had other sources of entertainment, and so all promotion needed to drive home the originality of the IPL and the importance of the fans. With that conclusion, the league is actually back to where it started: trying to perfect a perennially precarious balancing act between cricket and entertainment. In the first three, "Modi", years, entertainment, pom-pom girls, mandatory after-parties, Rs 40,000 ($800 approx) tickets, and ad-spot friendly "strategy" breaks overwhelmed all else. Season four, the first minus Modi, had shorter strategy breaks, and offered two new teams and playoff games. Its timing, just after the World Cup, however, was way off and the commentators were still hollering. Fewer folk wanted to come to the party, because there had been far too many parties that year and after a while they really needed to stop. Early glimpses of season five indicate that this tussle for territory between the sport and the entertainment is still on. The league's opening statement was Bollywood-awards-night-style entertainment intended to grab eyeballs. Without the cricket or the awards. The event's own ad campaign, features a glorious slow-motion beyond-all-boundaries montage of on-field action, and scenes from a carnival. Broadcasters Set Max have kept cricket deliberately off-centre in their set of adverts. They promote season five as a mauka (chance) to enjoy summer evenings with family, friends and an egalitarian audience of "100 crores". An advertising executive involved in the Set Max campaign explains its subtext: "Don't talk about cricket, because it's a thorny topic. Don't talk about Lalit Modi, he's controversial. Steer clear from cricket and talk about entertainment. The question being asked is, 'Won't you have a good time? Won't it all be fun?' " We will know in two months. Along with the audiences, it is the IPL's advertisers who will answer that question. An industry insider says, "This year sponsorship will be about the brave and the convinced." What the brave and the convinced are banking on, Hiren Pandit, from media planning giant Group M, says, is an easily entranced audience. "This is a big year for everybody. For Sony, for BCCI, for everyone At the end of the day, it is going to come to viewership. If you don't get the viewers, nothing can be done." It is the world of advertising that is the real frontline of the IPL's growth. It is victories there, through TV ratings, audience involvement, spectator size, that lead to growing investor numbers India's disastrous tour of Australia could have led advertisers to believe that the IPL was not worth investing in, but Pandit reminds us: "Viewers are very fickle. One victory, two victories and the whole world changes. A couple of good matches and the whole world will say, 'Watch IPL.'" Good matches are what it will hinge on. So never mind the early burst of Katy Perry and Prabhu Deva, it's back to the cricket. Pandit believes ratings will improve from last year, on the condition that, "in the first six matches, you get three good matches. If you have three or four good matches, high scoring and things like that, then suddenly you will see interest in the IPL." The long Easter weekend will give the IPL "a platform to start off on a good wicket". It is the timing of the IPL itself, right at the start of the school holidays, that can keep it buzzing. Sridhar Ramanujam, the head of brand consulting firm Brand Comm, expects there to be an influx of new viewers from schoolgoing children, even if viewer fatigue leads to old loyalists departing. Ramanujam too returns to the cricket. "The game's interest can never be sustained on hype or PR but on the quality of the cricket and the closeness of the finishes." It is there that the Twenty20 format has an advantage, with a greater chance of last-over death-or-glory finishes. In the tug of war between cricket and entertainment, Pandit says, "cricket should not take a back seat to glamour. They are two separate elements that need to sit together. You need to build the glamour around the cricket." Cricket remains the adhesive keeping the package together. The entertainment is mere wrapping paper. It is the world of advertising that is the real frontline of the IPL's growth. It is victories there, through TV ratings, audience involvement, spectator size, that lead to growing investor numbers. In terms of the valuation business, smaller franchises are thrilled by the news that a Kolkata businessman was actually willing to pay $200m to buy a large stake in Rajasthan Royals, which began life as a $67m investment. The recent meltdown in advertising numbers could, franchise owners say, be a mere stock market-like "correction". Just like in their own operations, where, as the seasons have passed, far less silly money is being spent. At one level removed from advertisers and team owners there is far less gloom around season five. On ESPNcricinfo's Time Out talk show this week, the speakers believed that the prospect the IPL offered, of an India that "could not lose", would come as a relief to fans after all the miserable news around Indian cricket. The new-look IPL: part cricket, part entertainment, part comfort food. MS Dhoni, captain of India and the Chennai Super Kings, explains away a grim season four, telling the Times of India that the World Cup victory must have been "an emotionally draining experience" for all Indians. "With us having won the ultimate prize and the IPL arriving soon thereafter, there was little interest. This year, though, I'm sure there's going to be a remarkable increase in TRPs." Amid the din of the opening ceremony came IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla's announcement that IPL 5 was going to be "rocking". That rocking did involve a boat or two. To add to the promise of fun times, Shukla said: "We have told the curators that every match should at least have a 160-run total so that the spectators can enjoy the most." If that turns out to be true bowlers can consider their boats not so much rocked as sunk. Optimistic organisers, buoyant cheerleaders, nervous sponsors, gung-ho players and the folks on their sofa with the remote control in their hands. IPL 5 is going to be one hell of a shootout.
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