IPL 2: Its time to sit back, relax and watch

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Mumbai
It was a strange sight indeed on Sunday, when Brendon McCullum, and not Saurav Ganguly, walked out for the toss with Team Hyderabad skipper Adam Gilchrist, the burning golden helmet printed prominently on his shirt.

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)' manager John Buchanan's theory of multiple-captaincy gets rolling with McCullum being the first to get a shot at it. Twenty20 is a format that thrives on innovations and Buchanan has just added some more spice to this 'masala-mix' called IPL. The coming weeks will tell us how hot it is going to be.

The tournament, which at one stage looked uncertain, got off to a colourful start with Bollywood and cricket stars coming together for a glamour parade on Thursday. There was Shah Rukh Khan dancing to the tunes of Korbo Lorbo Jeetbo Re, something he would be found doing quite often for the next 40 days. Cape Town is not quite Kolkata, yet Ganguly was among the favourites.

There was Shilpa Shetty too, making an appearance as the new co-owner of the defending champions, Team Jaipur. Shilpa sizzled in royal blue, but it was the presence of Shane Warne that mattered.

The legendary Aussie leg-spinner proved to be a shrewd cricketing brain last time around. This time though, he will face stiff test as he would be without his two key performers, Shane Watson and Sohail Tanvir.

Shilpa will ensure high decibel Halla Bol from the stands, but then Warne will have to draw on his cricketing acumen, if Team Jaipur are aiming for an encore. Mahendra Singh Dhoni's Team Chennai are the bookmakers' favourite and they are certain to draw a lot of cheers.

Cheers and cheerleaders have become a part of the T20 culture, the latter in particular, being a major draw. There'll be an abundance of them, some handpicked by Ganguly himself. The concept of cheerleaders has been taken from the NBA and was one of the USPs of the first edition.

Last year, most of them had to be covered up midway through the tournament due to protests, but this time, there are no such fears, as South Africa is quite comfortable with this concept.

Friday's parade was just a prelude to the marriage of money, Bollywood and cricket that the rest of April and most of May will witness. The concoction has proved to be highly successful and there is no reason why it should not be so again.

Organisers claim to have sold most of the tickets, grabbed by a large number of South Africans and a substantial number of Indians. However, it will be the eyeballs, millions of them, on television screens that will matter most.

Several broadcasting networks have associated themselves with the IPL 2. For the first time in India, a Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) is a team co-sponsor at the IPL. Star Plus has partnered with KKR, wherein its players will have the Star Plus logo prominently displayed on the back of their T-shirts.

Keertan Adyanthaya, executive vice-president and general manager, Star Plus, says, "We have a long-standing association with Shah Rukh Khan. Both Star Plus and KKR are partners in the true sense of the word and it is indeed a pleasure to have associate with the Kolkata Knight Rider team."

IBN18 Network, which owns news channels CNN-IBN, IBN7 and IBN-Lokmat, has launched a contest on KKR, which focuses on the trivia about the IPL teams and players.

Strategic time-outs will ensure more advertisements for these eyeballs, which translates into more money. So what, as long as the entertainment is of the right kind. Well, the game has begun and its time to sit back and watch.