Flying daily through India's over-congested airports is a guaranteed recipe for countless delays. Fortunately this affords one the opportunity to engage in numerous chats with affable strangers.
Aas everyone in India is a cricket expert and the action packed IPL is in full swing, there is in no shortage of subject matter for a good old cricket-focused chinwag with someone you have only known for a few moments.
The best is when you are actually on a plane chatting to your neighbour about last night's big game, when the guy in the row in front turns around and joins in. This is usually enough for one or two more aficionados to add their opinion. If you're mad about cricket, there is no better country to be in than India.
A few days ago I was waiting to board a delayed flight at the brand spanking new Rajiv Ghandi airport in Hyderabad. Actually it is 45 kilometres outside Hyderabad, a two-hour taxi ride from the cricket ground. I was waiting in the departure hall for a delayed flight when I saw a chap wearing an IPL golf shirt so I introduced myself asking if he worked for the IPL. The reply came: "Good afternoon, I'm Andrew, pleasure to meet you. Yes, I actually dreamt the whole thing up a year or so ago and then I got together with a guy called Lalit Modi and now here we are."
I shook his hand and smiled, not quite sure whether I loved or hated this Englishman for revolutionising cricket quite so radically. The tournament was about a week old then and I congratulated him, adding that its instant popularity must have far exceeded even his wildest expectations. "Not really, it is exactly as I expected" he replied grinning from ear to ear. I had a pleasant chat with Andrew and enjoyed picking his brain about the relationship between IPL management and the various franchises.
When he admitted that after the low-scoring Eden Gardens match between the Kolkata Night Riders and the Deccan Chargers he had Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) shouting in his face, I said: "Yes, that's no surprise, he must have been mad about that terrible pitch." "Not at all" said Andrew, "he was furious that the big screens weren't big enough!"
Knight Riders owner SRK is easily Bollywood's biggest star. You would have seen him gyrating throughout his team's matches. He reportedly commands a quarter of a million dollars per television advertisement and seems to be in every second ad on the box. Consequently the singing dancing poster boy has no shortage of money or fanbase and Andrew reckons the Knight Riders are already one of the ten biggest brands in India.
The Times of India reports that Bollywood box office sales are down 35% since the start of the tournament. The obvious next step is for cinema theatres to show screenings of IPL matches. But while some cinemas have successfully negotiated rights from Sony Setmax (the televison channel who owns the IPL rights in India) the greedy BCCI is demanding one lakh rupees (about US$2500) per game per screen. This would result in theatre tickets at ten to twenty times their normal price.
Another big mover and shaker in India is Vijay Mallya, the owner of Kingfisher beer, Kingfisher Airlines, a Formula One racing team and hundreds of racehorses. This racy stable seemed incomplete without an IPL team and the Bangalore Royal Challengers are Mallya's latest plaything. By the way, Royal Challenge (same logo and colours and song as the cricket team) is the name of a whiskey brand that is also owned by Mallya - an outrageous example of surrogate advertising. India's answer to Richard Branson is an eccentric character and is known as the "King of Good Times".
A court case was yesterday heard to determine whether Mallya was using sport to promote an alcohol brand. But the court found that there was no evidence in this claim. In India, as in Africa, the benefits of belonging to the right club are astonishing.
Mark Boucher, who is taking a nap on the sofa next to me in the Bangalore Airport (which will move a further 35 kilometres from town next week) while a dozen or so waiters and airline staff take photos of him with their high-tech mobile phones, took strong exception to Mallya giving the Challengers a thorough bollocking in the dressing room after losing the inaugural IPL match.
Thanks to McCullum's blistering 158 not out the winning team on that day was SRK's Knight Riders. I am told that Boucher, who has never been shy to stand up for himself, barked right back at Mallya, telling him that yelling at the team won't do any good at all.
Comments