Having weathered a boycott threat from the media and numerous other controversies, the Indian Premier League is all set to roll with a heady mix of cricket and glamour on show in the opening match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Bangalore Royal Challengers here on Friday.
The Shah Rukh Khan-owned Knight Riders and Vijay Mallya's Royal Challengers will kick off the 44-day Twenty20 tournament that has several international stars playing alongside the best of Indian domestic cricket and under-19 rookies.
Led by two former Indian captains — Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid — who currently don't have a fixed place in the ODI squad, it will be intriguing to see how the Knight Riders and Royal Challengers match up to each other in the floodlit Twenty20 contest.
Knight Riders also features the flamboyance of Australian skipper Ricky Ponting besides Indian teen pace sensation Ishant Sharma, who has just recovered from a finger injury.
The Bangalore team may not have as a big a star as Ponting in its fold but the presence of players like South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis and Indian Test skipper Anil Kumble makes it a formidable unit.
Kumble, though, is likely to miss the lung-opener, as he recuperates from a groin injury picked up during the recent series against South Africa.
But more than the cricket, it is the whopping money at stake that has been making headlines. The winner of the tournament is all set to take home Rs 4 crore, while even the last-placed team would end up with Rs 40 lakh in its kitty.
Millions were spent during the players' auction, which made some cricketers feel like livestock.
The money on offer also ignited a debate on whether the players will be able to keep their country above IPL as a few weeks of cricket was offering them several folds more than what they are earning through their central contracts right now.
Players, as expected, denied that any such thought ever crossed their mind but the English cricketers' clamour to be in the IPL, even at the cost of their central contracts, suggested otherwise.
The issue of player-burnout was all but lost in the maddening millions and not one cricketer complained of how the 59-match tourney was going to rob them of a break in a choc-a-bloc international calendar.
Instead, there is already talk of creating a window for IPL in the Future Tours Program (FTP), a suggestion likely to get the ICC nod, given the BCCI's influence in the governing body.
The money-talk has taken over the tournament to such an extent that ever since its launch, IPL has always been described in the millions that it has generated.
The film stars and business barons who lined up to buy the teams have left no stone unturned in their efforts to build loyal fan clubs on the line of football leagues.
But despite the media blitz and aggressive promotion, the response at best has been lukewarm and there are already concerns about the still-to-pick-up ticket sales.
However, the stakeholders are keeping their fingers crossed for the tempo to build after the tournament gets underway. And it remains to be seen whether the fans will be interested in seeing Bangalore's Dravid facing off against Kolkata's Ganguly.
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