Things IPL has to improve on

From a fan experience, these are things that IPL has to improve on:

Over rate: The finals started at 8.15pm and went on till midnight. Nearly 4 hours long. Warne took so long bowling the death overs that I am sure next year SetMax will contemplate putting advertisements in between balls (they could have easily shown 2 ads for each ball). If the match is on a weekday, and it takes so long, by the time you get back home, especially if you have difficulties, you will probably get back around 2.00am. – which makes it very hard for working next day. Even for TV viewing, IPL needs to ensure that over-rates don’t get out of hand. The penalty has to be really stiff (dock the number of overs for the team in the next innings they bat or atleast 50% of the match fee for each member of the entire team so that there is a collective responsibility).

Website: Their expensive official website needs a lot of work. In the first couple of weeks, the only time you could access it was in the early morning hours as it kept crashing. There was a delay of several days before information is updated. I just checked to see if they have added any new/interesting features and frankly it is still too slow to navigate that it is probably the last site I will check for any news pertaining to the IPL.

CSK Website: I have not checked any other team website – but CSK’s loads at a decent pace and they have kept it simple. I am usually not one to register at fanzones, but I had to do that to buy e-tickets, and the fan zone has no features. The e-tickets have to be picked up at the stadium atleast one day prior to the match – so you have to make 2 trips… Also the shirt/cap has read sold out from virtually day one and I have not seen its sale at the stadium when I was there. The electronic scoreboard did not work in the second innings of 2 matches I was there for – so it was hard to keep track of things. There is a lot more they can do to make the spectator experience better.

TV Coverage: Breaking for ads in mid-sentence, before replay is shown, etc. Commentary could be much better.

Mid-season trade: That will add a lot of drama to the league?

What else would you like to see?

Home Advantage in the Semis

After watching the first semi-final in part (rather one-sided), I think having the semi-finals and finals in Mumbai is not such a great idea. I am sure if you were a neutral supporter,  those watching the game at the stadium would have felt robbed. Whereas if they had played in Rajasthan, the crowd would have enjoyed it much more.

This also bodes the question: Do one off semi-finals after a long regular league make sense? If you don’t declare the winner by points, won’t you be better off having a best of 3 semi-finals (playoffs) with home and away games? Maybe that will make the tournament longer by another 10 days, so there should be a way to reduce the regular season to accommodate this – but atleast games like these won’t feel like an anti-climax.

Getting to and from Chepauk

This Saturday, I am planning to go to the Royals match at Chennai. This would be my third IPL match having skipped most of the late weekday matches. So far, getting to and from the stadium has not been easy.

For the first one, we left about a couple of hours before the match and took a cab as there were 5 of us. We did not know the closest point to get off and managed to get caught in all the U-turns and diversions on Marina and the Anna salai and ultimately managed to get dropped off some distance away, walked it and reached the ground about 5 mins before the start with awful seats behind the pillars. After the game, we decided to meet up the cab at a specific point, but again he got caught in various jams, u-turns and we waited a good one hour before leaving the stadium.

To compensate for this, we left about 2.5 hours earlier for the next match and reached the stadium without issues – but this meant that we had to wait nearly 2 hours before the match listening to a less than scintillating musical performance. As one person was unwell, and Delhi had all but sealed the match, we left in the last couple of overs to beat the traffic. However our strategy failed, as the parking lot resembled a “Chakravyuha” – for those of you familiar with the Mahabharata :-) There was no way to get off, we were blocked off not only in the 4 main directions but also on NW, NE, SW, SE areas. Basically we sat in the vehicle for a good 45 mins till several rows of cars could eventually move out and a vague path to the exit emerged.

What has your experience been getting to/from the stadium?

Slapaholics

First Harbajjan, now Praveen Kumar – who or what is next?

http://ipl.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Praveen_Kumar_lands_up_in_trouble/articleshow/3045412.cms