Ignoring NE

Though it aims to make Cricket popular, IPL has ignored the North-East.

With the Indian Premier league (IPL) completely catching the fancy of the people, cricket mania is at its pick in the country. Long before the matches start, even the busiest of roads look deserted. Popular entertainment joints become empty. TRP rating of popular TV shows is on the decline. Cricket, Cricket and only Cricket is dominating the Indian evenings and major part of weekly and public holidays.

But it’s a pity that North-East region is completely missing from this cricket extravaganza. Not a single player from North-East is featuring in any of the eight participating teams. Not a single match is being played in the region.

It is not that Cricket is not popular in that part of the country. People of the region love the game very much. Assam and Tripura regularly feature in all important national events. States like Nagaland has already made appeal to BCCI to help the State in constructing a Cricket stadium. Love for Cricket is on the rise in the region. And if this love continues to grow, which everyone feels will only increase, in next couple of years there will certainly be some representation in the national squad from the North-Eastern region, as it is in the case of football.

It may be mentioned here that though football is perhaps the most popular game in the region, there was not much representation in the national squad from the region. Couple of players managed to make their marks. But the national football team was largely dominated by players from bigger states like Bengal, Goa, Punjab, Karnataka, etc. But the scenario changes after Baichung Bhutia arrived. Experts then started looking towards the region for budding talents and discovered that not only Baichung, the region has much more to offer. Soon, famous football clubs started hiring footballers from the North-East. And today, North-Eastern footballers are the most sought after players after the foreign players. Every team, these days, prefer to strength itself with few foreign players and handful of North-Eastern footballers.

Considering the talent available in the region, same thing may happen in Cricket also provided it gets useful support and encouragement as it was in the case of football. But by ignoring the North-East in IPL, BCCI has made a mockery of its claim that it wants to popularize the game.

It is hard to understand why there will be no team from the North-Eastern region when smaller cities like Mohali having one. As a team can have four foreign players, the talk of an uneven contest bears no logic. Lack of infrastructure is also not a problem. Firstly, Guwahati has staged many international matches. Secondly, IPL managing committee has made it mandatory for team owners to provide funds for infrastructure development. So, if anything was lacking, that could be rectified with the help of the sponsors. And after what happened in Kolkata and Mohali, the talk of better infrastructure has certainly lost some of its weight. In Kolkata, during a match floodlights went off for 25 minutes and the match had to be stopped. There is no five-star hotel in Mohali. The nearest one is in Chandigarh and it does not have enough rooms to accommodate both the teams.