The Great Indian Festival
India has a myriad of festivals owing to its diverse cultures. The year starts with the celebration of Makar Sakranti, Lohri and continues with Holi, Eid, Gurupurab, Diwali and culminates in Christmas. Classifying one of the festivals as the Great Indian Festival amongst these will definitely be a tough task for the public. On the contrary, this task turned out to be a very easy and unanimous task. The Great Indian Festival is Indian Premier League (IPL) that is held every year from March-May (albeit a few years owing to the pandemic when it was shifted in September).
IPL is a league-based cricket tournament that involves world’s best cricketers fighting it out for their respective city franchisees to bring glory every year. It is hosted by BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) every year and has a fixed slot in the international cricket calendar. For the non-cricket savvy folks, this is a shorter cricket version of the English Premier League or the La Liga. It involves huge moolah of money and high stakes for the owners and players to win the league. People across the world specially India are glued to their phones and television sets to watch the IPL year after year to celebrate this Big Indian Festival. This festival started way back in 2008 after India’s title winning campaign in the inaugural T20 world Cup and there has been no turning. On 26th March 2022, IPL will be entering its 15th year and the passion for the festival still remains intact. Amidst so many changes across 15 years, what keep IPL the flavor of the country every summer and make people celebrate it even bigger than any traditional festival?
1. Dream Team: IPL is the only league in the world where you can see the best players in the world play for the same team. Imagine Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers and Chris Gayle playing together. That made the public in India (who are religious about cricket) look forward to such mouth-watering line ups. The dream teams have continued to evolve over years and the public has never been disappointed with the line ups that are presented across matches. As opposed to international matches, this is a spectacle for them and a welcome change from the mundane support for one’s nation. You can have allegiances based on the team’s composition and not out of patriotism.
2. Vacations: The period from March to May is an extremely warm period in most parts of India where the students are having vacations while the working professionals are just coming off a hectic fiscal year and are looking to reset. In the midst of the heat and hectic life, IPL comes like a blessing in disguise where people sit in front of the television with their evening coolers and dinner and support their teams. IPL cracked the code in terms of understanding their target segment and their mentality during March — May. Imagine having an IPL from January to March. The viewership would not even be half of what it boasts of.
3. Sensationalism: Any franchisee-based tournament needs to capture the pulse of the viewers to make them glued to it for years. There have been multiple tournaments that have come in cricket similar to IPL, but nothing beats the monopoly that IPL has created. The sheer weightage of having all the best players (especially Indian players) playing together is unmatched in any other tournament. Indian cricket fans worship players and IPL is the only league in cricket which allows us to celebrate their lives and skillset apart from International tournaments.
4. Regionalisation: As the years have progressed, IPL has tapped into smaller cities with their unique concept of fan parks and hosting IPL matches in small cities where international matches are not held. This has enabled the public that would watch the matches only on TV to embrace it even more. They feel that IPL is meant for everyone and not the elite. You wouldn’t see any person in the internal reaches of India supporting a Big Bash League (Australia) cricket team or a Manchester United. They would be oblivious to such things. IPL has regionalized its concept by reaching out to all interior parts of India as well and ensuring that every is united in their celebration across the years.
All these factors indicate the 15 years of festival that Indians celebrate and will continue to celebrate in coming future. We have festivals for every region but IPL binds together people from all religions to support their favourite players and franchisee and celebrate their glory.
The Great Indian festival is also a platform to give the budding cricketers a glimmer of hope to rise at the highest level in cricket. IPL brings joy not only to the general public, but also builds careers of a lot of aspirational cricketers who are still playing at the domestic level. A lot of world beaters like Jasprit Bumrah, Ravichandran Ashwin, David Warner have risen from IPL in the past decade and went on to dominate international cricket in a way no one would have imagined. So, let’s all brace ourselves for a roller coaster filled 45 days of celebration as Tata IPL 2022 begins with yet another mouth watering rivalry amongst our favourite teams. Be ready to distribute sweet and criticize your favourite players out of passion and inculcate this sense of festivities within us this year again.
