All About Latest Sports Action: Spinners make their mark in IPL 2

There was a time when the spinners were considered a luxury for the limited-overs games and the sides usually packed themselves with fast bowlers and medium-pacers as the emphasis was on containment.

It was the mindset of the 1960s and 1970s when the one-day matches were mostly held in England where the overcast conditions helped the seam bowlers considerably. Even the famous quartet of Indian spinners having engineered quite a few historic conquests in Test cricket were not rated highly for the one-dayers.

There was hardly a change of heart among the captains even when the version of the game was spread to other countries. They were unwilling to take the risk of tossing the ball to the slow bowlers, relying on the medium-pacers even when the surfaces they were playing on were dry and offered some purchase to the spinners.
All About Latest Sports Action: Spinners make their mark in IPL 2

Shilpa and Preity fight it out

Preity Zinta loves her team and what she can do, no one else can! Well, we are not saying this. The one-liner comes from Preity Zinta.

But what made the peppy girl and co-owner of Kings XI say this? That's because Shilpa Shetty reportedly took a dig at Preity by saying she will never run to the ground and hug her team.

Well, Shilpa we say, right now you should worry more about the team's mood than your own mood. Encourage them and give them a jaadu ki jhappi. After all that is what Preity has done in the past! She has made sure her team is in a pepped-up mood before every match. But then you don't agree with Preity at all, isn't it?

This is what Preity told a leading film magazine, "What I can do, no one else can. The way I do things is different and have always been different from everybody else. My team is like my family."

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Innovative value creation - lessons from the IPL

Sitting here watching the opening Indian Premier League [IPL] games this weekend made me realise how smart those guys and girls [that developed it] actually are. They have innovated to create something that is unleashing immense value.

iplWhat have they done? Think about it for a minute - there are some excellent lessons about value here for us. Here’s what stands out to me:

Blending a mixture of old and new to innovate

The Age-old game of cricket [about 400 years old]

+ professional sports marketing [fairly established]

+ a new exciting format [20/20 games - only a few years old]

= a brand new product

Very simple in theory, but it hadn’t been done before like this. They weren’t afraid to try it.

Sharing what they’ve created

Political instability in India meant that the IPL could not be held in India this year. So what did they do - simply move it to South Africa. They were not afraid to share the benefits of what they’ve created with another country - smartly realising that they would gain more by letting go than by cancelling the IPL season because they refuse to share the financial benefits.

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IPL-2 on the verge of a bubble burst (www.merinews.com)

Peripheral entertainment at core and destroying the basic fabric of the game seems to be the short-sightedness of IPL-2 commissioner Lalit Modi. If things go like this then dooms day is not far for the overvalued IPL bubble to burst..

THE SELF proclaimed messiah of world cricket, Lalit Modi, seems to have taken too many liberties with the brand ‘cricket India’; resulting in heartache for IPL broadcaster-Sony, IPL sponsors and advertisers; not to forget the most important constituent - the cricket fans of the country. This time round Modi and his coterie of franchisees felt that moneybags gave them the final say in terms of what was best for the game ridiculing cricketers, legends and the basic ethos of cricket.

The first problem arose when an arrogant Modi called his product recession proof and bullied his broadcaster to cough out an extra Rs 400 Crores, completely ignoring the market conditions. Sony took the bait of Modi’s proposed product modifications (forced mid innings break); ignoring consumer requirements as well as player considerations.

Fans, experts and cricketers (none less than Shane Warne, Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh) have been unanimous in their protest against the marketing gimmick that has affected the sport product adversely. The coaches have no say in the timing of the break that makes it a poor cousin of the original time-out concept adopted by sporting disciplines such as basketball and volley-ball.

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