The overhyped, oversexed Indian Premier League is far from over, with 30-odd matches still to play.
Cricket's enfant terrible, Shoaib Akhtar, is expected to make his IPL debut for the Kolkata Knight Riders on Thursday. Akhtar has had the five-year ban imposed by the Pakistan Cricket Board suspended for one month, until the tribunal hearing his appeal reconvenes in June.
The inclusion of the mercurial Pakistani is welcome news for the IPL, which is suffering from losing stars like New Zealand's Brendon McCullum and Australians Andrew Symonds, Brett Lee and Ricky Ponting, who have all been called up for national duty.
The IPL has seen much criticism from the print media in India, but not from the most well known voices. One look around the league tells you why. The most prominent critics, be they broadcasters like Harsha Bhogle and Charu Sharma or former players like Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, are all in some manner connected to the IPL.
The quintessential cricket nerd, the slightly-built, bespectacled Bhogle is a well-respected cricket commentator and an "advisor" for Bombay's IPL team, while Sharma is the CEO for the Bangalore franchise. Rare is the pie in Indian cricket that doesn't have Shastri or Gavaskar's finger in it – both are members of the IPL governing council and yet are also in the broadcast booth.
The silence is not dissimilar to what has happened in the Caribbean, where the billionaire American Allen Stanford has his own Twenty20 tournament. Any criticism of Stanford's tournament, his methods or motivations have been muted because many of the most respected names in West Indies cricket are also on the tournament's board of directors.
Stanford's deep pockets have made him a direct challenger to the West Indies Cricket Board, so much so that Stanford deals directly with other national cricket boards, pitching big money matches between teams like England and South Africa and his own Stanford West Indies all-stars. And there has barely been a murmur of protest out of the West Indies.
The Twenty20 format is a powerful force in cricket. It can do a lot of good in places like Canada, but it can destroy the game elsewhere. The battle continues in India.
