‘You haven’t even learnt how to bring the car up to the door properly, have you? You sicken me’ © AFP

Have you got yours yet?

What do you mean you don’t know what I’m talking about? It’s the new IPL must-have product that is set to become a summer bestseller. Pull Yourself Together. Fast is a motivational course for office and home, from former Indian captain and self-help guru Sourav Ganguly. For a reasonable price, you get a book, a DVD and a signed photo of the author looking disdainfully past you.

Pop the DVD into your player and you will be immediately confronted with a close-up shot of the Kolkata captain’s face as he tells you that you are pathetic, that he can’t do everything for you and that if you carry on like this, God help your career. Apparently ITV are playing it to all their guest panellists, and though it hasn’t yet noticeably upped their game, it has reduced Graeme Hick to tears.

The book, meanwhile, takes the form of a motivational diary. Each of the 365 pages bears a personalised insult from the Maharaj himself. For example, in my copy, the entry for April 14th reads, “You write like an imbecile. Sort yourself out. Do you expect me to write your articles for you? God, do I have to do everything around here? Of all the appalling writers on Cricinfo, you are the most awful. Now get out of my sight.”

Firm but fair, I think you’ll agree.

You see, Sourav may look down on all of us (even you, dear reader), he may regard himself as the only Indian batsman who has ever been any good, he may have his purpley-gold clad troops cowering in their mini Perspex pavilion, and he may in his imagination picture himself ruling Kolkata from the heavens, wearing a gold crown and sitting on a throne of clouds and diamonds, but still we love him. Apart, that is, from those of us who hate him.

Over the weekend these anti-Gangulyites puffed themselves up in mock outrage at Sourav’s little cri de coeur before the Indian press. How dare he criticise his own players? What catastrophic effects might this public castigation have on the poor dears? Please Sourav, keep it in the dressing room! Have mercy! Think of vulnerable little Brendon and delicate Chris! Think of the children! This is no way to run a railroad (and so on and so forth).

Well, Anderson to them. What do you or I care for the morale in the Kolkata dressing room? I’m not on their staff, I’m not their mother, and frankly, I couldn’t give two hoots about whether Sourav is being “professional” or not. Was Kolkata’s performance against Bangalore pathetic? Maybe not. He could just as easily have tried “dreadful”, “feeble” or “inept”. But how joyful to hear an insider breaking ranks, throwing off the omerta of the professional cricketer and admitting his colleagues had acquitted themselves in a manner some distance removed from adequate.

Ganguly is a delightful mix of Little Lord Fauntleroy and Machiavelli. If he was English, he would be a Yorkshireman. From the posh end of Yorkshire, no doubt, but unmistakably a cantankerous inhabitant of the north, prone to high-handed rudeness and plotting in corridors. But just as the Indian selectors kept coming back to him, we can’t be without him either. He is part of the furniture of Indian cricket, an awkwardly constructed and slightly rickety side table with angular edges on which people regularly bruise themselves. The place would feel a little empty without him.

	How would Ravi Shastri describe this move? © Associated Press

Recently, I’ve been looking more closely at cheerleading (no sniggering at the back, please). I don’t know about you, but I find it slightly uncomfortable watching these girls do their stuff. Even when I am alone in the house, I can feel the disproving gaze of generations of elderly aunts. IPL commentators have a similar problem. Given that stating the obvious is pretty much their job description and that they are under continual pressure to say something, anything, the restraint they exercise when their monitors are filled with nothing but gyrating young women in short skirts is noble.

Stop right there, I can hear the weary reader ask. We’ve done cheerleaders already! It’s old news. What possible excuse could you have, two and a half years after the first agitation of a pom pom at a cricket game, to witter on about it again? Well, I’m glad you asked me that. It just so happens that earlier this week, the state government of Rajasthan banned cheerleaders at all Jaipur’s IPL games. Thus cheerleading is topical and I have something to write about. Big thanks to Prabha Rau and friends.

So. Cheerleading. Just like a proper journalist, my first and indeed last stop on the research railway was Wikipedia. Therein, I learned that cheerleading began in America in the 1890s when some jumped-up little herbert decided that it wasn’t enough for a crowd to amuse themselves; they needed organising and their willy-nilly cheering channelling in a constructive fashion. There were lots of other paragraphs after that, though I forget the details. I’m not a proper journalist, after all.

But why has this alien tradition been transplanted to the great game of cricket, leading to the discomfiture of the sofa bound viewer and the discombobulation of the fine politicians of Rajasthan state? There are three possible explanations:

1. Let’s get vulgar for a moment. IPL cheerleaders are (by and large) attractive young women. They are therefore employed for the sole purpose of diverting half of the crowd. But diverting them from what? Presumably from the cricket. But isn’t that the very thing that they have paid good money and queued for three hours to see? That doesn’t make much sense. I mean, when you go to the ballet, do they present you with a selection of cricket magazines to distract you from the dancing?

2. They are necessary to organise the crowd’s jubilation. Hmm. Thing is, from what I have seen, Indian crowds are quite able to put together a cheer (not to mention a roar, a scream and a little dance) at very short notice and entirely without direction. Whose cheers are they leading, these cheerful women from various parts of the United States? The crowd know what is happening and have already been shouting about it long before the leaders of the cheer clamber onto their podium.

3. The most plausible of the three. Some poor chap in a suit found that his mind had gone blank right in the middle of an IPL blue sky thinking session. The room fell silent and the miscreant felt a little bead of perspiration on his forehead as Commissioner Modi prepared to press the ‘minion trapdoor’ button. Then suddenly, he remembered seeing girls in short skirts during the World Twenty20 in South Africa. “Cheerleaders!” he shouted. Modi didn’t immediately send the man plummeting into the tank of sharks below and so the idea slipped quietly into the minutes.

It looks then, as though cheerleaders are here to stay. Apart from in Jaipur, obviously. It is worth noting however, that while the government of Rajasthan have banned female cheerleaders, they have not banned cheerleading. If his Modiness is in a particularly cunning mood (and my bet is that at any given moment, he is feeling more cunning than a fox with a particularly devious chicken apprehending scheme) he could draft in some Rajasthan-friendly replacements.

But which of Modi’s cronies could be relied upon to do the job? You need someone who isn’t embarrassed about making a spectacle of themselves in public, who can dance to any tune and yet isn’t likely to excite the libidos of innocent viewers. I know what you’re thinking. The answer is staring us in the face. Yes, step forward Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar and Daniel Morrison. Give it up for the Mischief Boys! They’re scary, they’re unwary and their legs are rather hairy!

	Billy Bowden: relieving dullness and bringing people out of stupors since 1995 © Indian Premier League

Sunday afternoon’s game was not easy on the eye. Perhaps it had something to do with the venue. The Feroz Shah Kotla may be many things, but aesthetically pleasing it is not. This is mainly due to the looming edifice at the Tata End: a brooding construction that owes much to the Brutalist movement of the 1960s, giving the startling effect of a multi-storey car park where a pavilion should be.

Then again, perhaps it had more to do with the prominent role played by Paul Collingwood, who if he were to be represented in architectural form, would surely be a concrete bunker. And though a concrete bunker is a reassuring thing and of great value in an emergency, it is unlikely that tourists and casual pleasure seekers would queue to be given a guided tour of the Collingwood.

But a Collingwood innings is not without its pleasures, not least the resourcefulness with which he employs his favourite shot, which at first glance appears nothing more than a bottom-handed swish across the line, but on closer inspection turns out to be the Swiss army knife of cricket shots, adaptable to any circumstance. His modus operandi may appear vulgar, but that is our problem, not his. He is a natural cricketer.

As is his similarly understated captain. Gambhir doesn’t flail his arms about like a demented traffic policeman and is unlikely to be heard praising the “Delhi brand”. He is as straightforward as Sehwag, but not so otherwordly; an artisan, not a wandering guru. Interviewed by Ravi Shastri before the match, he looked like a car mechanic: slightly scruffy in his blue overalls, hands on hips, talking about the task that lay ahead as though giving an estimate on a tricky engine overhaul.

Then, on a day for wholehearted yeomen, there was big Jacques, putting in one more solid shift with bat and ball. Jacques the Ball spends much of his time looking ruefully into the middle distance, shaking his head or trudging back to his mark. Yet still he lumbers in and flings the ball hard into the earth as though he were issuing a challenge. When he was bowling to the equally pugnacious Warner, it reminded me of two cavemen settling a dispute over a mammoth carcass with a rock and a lump of wood.

But amidst all this testosterone and gruffness, as Warner, Collingwood and Kallis took care of business, there was a danger of a showbiz deficit. Luckily, Billy Bowden was in the house and the crowd loved him. I’ve been struggling for a way to describe his method of indicating a four. The best I can come up with is that it looks like a man cautiously petting a llama. He gave some other signals that, frankly, defied description. Perhaps Wisden should consider adding a Bowden appendix to their next edition, complete with diagrams, so that we can all appreciate his art.

	This can't be scripted, can it? © Indian Premier League

The Hugheses have long been cursed with sensitive stomachs but until Friday, I had assumed that only horror films or surgical documentaries could cause me to reach for the remote control or shield my eyes with a copy of Lily Livered Pansies Monthly. But I now must add a third genre of broadcasting to the list. Henceforth I shall be avoiding any game of cricket involving the Kings XI Punjab and have emailed His Modiness suggesting that he classify all such fixtures as 18 certificates.

It was all the more disturbing because most of the horror was packed into the last quarter of the game. Up until then, I had thought I was watching an entirely different production; a sentimental straight to DVD American movie about a bunch of misfit but likeable kids on a sports team that has never won a game, who finally discover that if they just believe in themselves, they can do it.

It all seemed to be going so well. The bookish boy who had reluctantly accepted the captaincy was threading elegant boundaries in all directions. There was the streetwise youngster Ravi, fighting back with a gutsy little innings. Later came clean-cut Brett, quirky but loveable Sreesanth and brave little Yuvi facing up to the big South African bully who had called him such horrible pie-related names. It was heart-warming stuff.

Then without warning, not even any sinister background music, the dropped catches began. To be strictly accurate, Sreesanth didn’t really drop his chance, since he didn’t at any point have hold of it. Dominic Cork, a new, strident recruit to the ranks of pontificators with microphones deemed it a schoolboy error. Those of us who can remember standing out in the long grass, experiencing that familiar feeling of rising terror as the ball soared inexorably towards us, felt instant affinity with Sreesanth.

The dropped catches continued to rain to earth. Bopara went down on both knees to spill his. Sangakkara, pursuing a high one clutched desperately at it, once, twice, bounced it off his left thigh, got another finger on it, then watched helpless as gravity dashed it from his reach and his left foot involuntarily booted it for four. Slips, slides, wides and mistimed dives diminished Bangalore’s target as Punjab spent their advantage with the recklessness of a millionaire frittering away his fortune.

And all the time, nasty Kevin Pietersen, he of the sinister stubble and evil grin, remained at large. He was joined, when Punjab finally contrived to take a catch, by Robin Uthappa and his newly inflated muscles. Robin has apparently been hitting the gym of late and this has given him new superhuman power. When he hit poor Lee’s best yorkers into the middle of next week, the game was up and the plot had taken a cruel and frankly unnecessary twist.

Even horror films and surgery shows have reasonably happy conclusions, with monsters slain and gaping wounds sewn up neatly. But there was no uplifting conclusion at the end of Friday’s carnage. Sangakkara did a passable impression in the last four overs of one of those minor characters in a Shakespeare bloodfest, wandering about the stage in bewildered fashion as the bodies pile up all around. Even Alfred Hitchcock might have baulked at inflicting such a level of psychological torment on his audience.

	The moon: thought it could get past the sharp men in the comm box, but failed © Getty Images

Sunday’s game in Navi Mumbai was loud. No, it was more than loud, it was cacophonous. It was noisier than a Boeing 747 full of angry dinosaurs taking off next to a Motorhead concert. Even via an outdated television set across a reasonable sized room four thousand miles away, I felt like I was sheltering in a shaky hut on the seafront whilst a force ten gale raged all around. The incessant roaring made my teeth ache and my head throb. Heaven knows what it did to the players. Adam Gilchrist had to use semaphore to talk to first slip.

Anyway, you get the idea. It was loud. So loud in fact that "Muttering" Mike Haysman was barely audible. For the entirety of his commentary stint, I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. I was dimly aware that he was talking, but the words were snatched up in the maelstrom of sound and whirled away into the ether. Fortunately, it made little difference, since I could already see what was happening via the pictures on my television screen. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned there.

Mumbai, whose shirts seem to have acquired extra silver stripes that make them look like disco tigers, are a clever team. They are clearly the best in the tournament, but are not provoking the IPL gods by peaking too early. For most of this game, they were losing. Enter Bhajji. His boundary-heavy innings was accrued with a stupefying nonchalance that made no sense at all. In my confusion I looked to the experts in the booth. Was it the bowling? Was it the pitch? Was Harbhajan using an enchanted bat? But as usual, yearning for technical insight from the commentary box is as futile as hoping that your pet hamster might one day sing an aria from Turandot.

The commentators had far more important things to talk about. The moon, for a start. Eagle-eyed professionals that they are, the big white shiny disc in the sky had not escaped their notice. Sunil Gavaskar spotted it first and recited for us Neil Armstrong’s "one small step for man" speech. Fair enough, it was technically moon-related, although to be honest, I had heard it before, from Neil Armstrong for a start. Then Robin Jackman wanted in. “Great knowledge Sunny,” he cooed, admiringly. Good grief, muttered a world-wide audience.

And vying with the moon for attention was the MRF blimp, an ominous beige contraption that looked as though it was the weekend transport of a medium-ranking Bond villain. Presumably there had been a memo passed among the microphone jockeys asking them to reference the bag of hot air in the sky more frequently and so it was MRF-blimp-this and MRF-blimp-that for most of the evening. My favourite blimp-related anecdote came from Gavaskar who informed us that MRF had always been at the forefront of technology and were the first to bring the blimp to India.

What a special day that must have been in the story of the Indian nation. Never mind Independence Day, the first Indian in space or the 1983 World Cup Triumph, I’m sure everyone in India remembers exactly where they were when the first ever blimp droned into view over Mumbai. Perhaps some time in the future, there will be a National Blimp Day when all Indians commemorate the moment when the nation lost its blimp virginity? Ironically, despite all this blimpery, I still haven’t the faintest idea who MRF are or what they have to do with a big balloon. I’m comfortable with that.

	The lottery-winning Samurai warrior with new-found mates © Indian Premier League

Given that the IPL is months in the planning and the franchises have at their disposal enormous piles of cash, it really is surprising that Chennai forgot to buy any bowlers. Perhaps it just got lost amid all the build-up. You know how it is, no matter how many lists you make there’s always something you forget. Gaudy shirts? Check. Cheerleaders? Check. Grinning man with a drum? Check. Batsmen? Got ‘em. Anything else? No, I don’t think so.

I exaggerate (but only slightly). There is Muttiah Muralitharan of course. But IPL Murali isn’t quite as compelling as normal everyday Murali. He whizzes through his overs smartly enough and there is plenty of smiling, but using the greatest offspinner of all time in this fashion is rather like asking Mozart to play an Abba song on a kazoo. Very nice and all that, but you can’t help feeling that you haven’t quite got your money’s worth.

Still they do have lots and lots of batsmen. Some say that Matthew ‘Matty’ Hayden is over the hill. Tell that to the poor little cricket ball he assaulted on Thursday. He remains, along with Yuvraj Singh, the most brutal leather abuser in the world. He hits the ball so hard you wince at the moment of impact. He was in awesome form against Zaheer Khan, chopping four boundaries with the anger of a mad axe man who had not received his invitation to the annual convention of psychotic wood choppers.

But at a crucial juncture, he called for The Mongoose (sadly not in the way that Tarzan used to summon up the beasts of the jungle) and departed soon after. Bhajji was the Hayden-slayer and celebrated in the traditional manner; that is haring off towards third man roaring like a Samurai warrior who’d just discovered he had the winning lottery ticket. The yellow-shirted Hayden meanwhile retired to a white plastic chair on the boundary, where he demurely sipped a cup of tea looking for all the world like a children’s entertainer taking a break at a village fete.

Cue Suresh Raina who started with a nonchalant cuff to score his first maximum (it was sponsored, but I forget the name of the company). But the most significant boundary of his charming innings came when Dwayne Bravo, around the wicket, aimed a stinging bouncer in the general direction of his nose. Raina leant back like a boxer evading a flailing upper cut and without flinching, merely touched the ball, sending it looping to third man. It was a vast improvement on the eyes-closed swishing technique he employed against the short ball last summer.

Not all the Chennai willow-wielders acquitted themselves quite so well. English viewers retain a soft spot for Parthiv Patel who came on the 2002 tour as a plucky teenager. Indian supporters haven’t always held him such high esteem, but he was doing nicely on Thursday, until he tried to emulate his more illustrious team-mates. Hopping outside the leg stump, he was horrified to find the ball following him. Ryan McClaren’s yorker demolished first Parthiv and then the stumps. In ten pin bowling terms, it was an excellent spare.

	Kumar Sangakkara reads emotively from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl © Cricinfo Ltd

The IPL is fun, but like any powerful stimulant, it can have side effects. Disorientation is common. We’re into week two now, and to be honest, I’m no longer sure whether the Kings XI Bangalore have already played their home game against Rajasthan Super Kings or whether that was last year. And that’s not all. Last week I felt a powerful urge to bang my head against the wall during a Morne Morkel over, and I find that the sight of a Chennai Super Kings shirt can induce nausea.

But on Sunday I experienced an entirely new IPL sensation: cold, naked fear.

It came during the 18th over of Chennai’s interminable, comic and ultimately futile run-chase. Piyush Chawla had outfoxed big Manpreet Gony with a sneaky googly. The grubby white ball thwacked into a canary yellow pad. And from his ideal vantage point behind Gony’s bottom, the Punjab keeper-captain produced a bloodcurdling wail. It went something like this:

“Aaaarghaaarghaaarghaaaarghaaargh!” (Pause) “Aaaarrghaaaarghaaaargh!”

I fell off my sofa. From the flat below I heard the tinkle of breaking porcelain as my elderly neighbour lost her first tea cups of IPL 2010. From the conifers outside my window, startled pigeons flew skywards in panic, and all across India wild animals lifted their heads at the strange cry. It wasn’t so much an appeal as an unnerving howl of existential despair. With a bit of jumping up and down thrown in for effect.

I am an Englishman and so naturally my first thought after I had picked myself up off the carpet was to write a stiff letter of complaint to someone. Addressing my missive to “K Sangakkara Esq, Captain, Kings XI Punjab, The IPL,” I pointed out that with his legal training, he should be fully aware of the implications of Law 27.4, which states that an appeal in the form, “How’s that?” shall suffice. Since the mangled collection of sounds he emitted on Sunday afternoon contained only one of the letters from “How’s that,” it did not constitute a legally satisfactory appeal. So the umpire could not have given Gony out, even if he was. Which, admittedly, he might have been.

The only good thing to come out of this moment of heart-stopping terror was that I now have a third IPL ringtone with which to annoy people on the train. At the sound of Sangakkara’s howl on Monday morning, several passengers ducked under their tables, whilst the ticket collector leapt from the carriage and was last seen rolling down a grassy embankment with his hands over his ears. I will alternate this ringtone with Danny Morrison declaring, “The Phone. Is Ringing!” (you need to do the accent) or possibly Ravi Shastri yelling “Can you hear me, Mumbai?”

Actually, Ravi had been in an informative mood on Sunday. He revealed that the Mongoose is called the Mongoose because, like a mongoose, it is small and ferocious. This puzzled me a little. The Mongoose is woody, lumpy, and no doubt it can give you a nasty bruise if you drop it on your foot. But to my knowledge wood lacks the capacity for ferocity, no matter how much you insult it. Even those talking trees in The Lord Of The Rings weren’t particularly ferocious. Disgruntled, certainly, but I’d put it no stronger than that.

Anyway, it would have been more entertaining, and possibly more effective, if the former Aussie biffer had got himself a real live mongoose and led it out to the wicket with him, presumably on a Chennai Super Kings official lead and collar. And it would have fitted with the strangeness of the game. Chennai seemed not to want to win, whilst Punjab once again only started playing when the odds were stacked against them. As a plot for a Bollywood film, it’s solid. As a gameplan, it has flaws.

	The Royal Challengers Bangalore practise their mateyness skills during the time-out © Associated Press

I have a question. What happens during the strategic time-out? I ask, because those of us watching in the UK are apparently not allowed to see. This secrecy is maddening and has led me to invent all kinds of fantasies about what might go down in those magical two minutes. Do the cheerleaders re-enact scenes from the Mahabharata? Do physicists wheel on a portable Hadron Collider and run through a few collisions? Is there dancing? Fireworks? Or is just a bunch of cricketers milling about aimlessly? I’d really like to know.

Sadly, for us Brits, this mystery interval is just another excuse to whisk the viewer away from the stadium where all the exciting things happen and drag them back to the place where conversations go to die. Yes, the ITV studio is the Bermuda Triangle for banter, a black hole for badinage. There they sit, Vikram and Alec and Graeme and the other Graham, like defendants in a courtroom, cagily reading extracts from the Sportman’s Manual of the Bleeding Obvious, whilst their hosts attempt to trick them into saying something, anything that might pass for interesting.

There was a marginal improvement on Thursday, because Mandira Bedi was trusted to run the show on her own and the second when that decision was made can be officially designated a Moment Of Success. Like a flower that has finally struggled into full sunlight, her personality spread out and she was able to do her thing. She takes the radical view that Twenty20 cricket is supposed to be showbiz. So does Danny Morrison, which is presumably why his every utterance is delivered in the style of a 1970s American chat show host going to a commercial break.

And speaking of commercials, I hope, like me, you’ve been playing Advertising Bingo. If you have, then you’ll have been delighted with the efforts of Russel Arnold on Thursday. In the space of a few overs, the eager Sri Lankan announced the IPL’s first Nearly DLF Maximum, when the ball fell just short of the rope; declared that a dropped catch by Dravid would have been a Karbonn Kamal catch; seized upon a Citi Moment of Success when Rajasthan finally managed to hit a six and then suggested that now might be a good moment to take a Max Mobile Time Out. A full set! Nice work, Russel, you’ve certainly stepped up to the corporate plate.

Although the game itself was, to be frank, a little one-sided, I was very impressed with the Bangalore Challengers (Royal). Despite the presence of a number of what are politely called veterans, they flung themselves about in the field like lambs frolicking in spring pastures. Well, not quite, but you get the idea. And Steyn and friends even found time to stage a recreation of cricket’s finest hour, with their tribute to the Bodyline series of 1932-33. It made an English heart glad to once more see the ball whistling around ears, smashing into helmets, bouncing off shoulders and so on.

Rajasthan’s interpretation, on the other hand, was rather less convincing. Indeed had Douglas Jardine had to rely on Munaf and Morkel to implement his plan, I’d suggest that Bradman, McCabe and chums might not have had anything to worry about. If all the fielders were clustered on the leg side, you can be sure that M&M would be offering up full bungers outside off stump. "Rajasthan thali for dinner", read one banner. Quite.

	Rajasthan: croissants that history has passed by © Associated Press

The IPL is like a bakery. How’s that, I hear you ask. How can a multinational cricket tournament be compared to a bread-making facility? Surely that is a simile too far.

Not so. Has reading this column over the last few weeks taught you nothing? No metaphor is too ridiculous, no literary device too outlandish to convey the wonders of the great game. So, here we go. The IPL is like a bakery.

What is the word you associate with bakeries? Apart from flour. And yeast. And eggs. No, I’m not talking about rolling pins, pastry cutters or ovens. I’m thinking of an abstract noun. The word is “fresh”. (Yes, it also works for greengrocers, but I don’t like vegetables, I like cakes, and besides, it’s my simile, not yours.) A bakery thrives on freshness. No one is interested in yesterday’s bread.

So it is with the IPL. The new, the fresh, the “now” is all that matters. Who hit the last six? Who won the last game? Who bowled the last wide? It is a carnival devoted to living in the moment, entirely devoid of context, history or regret. Like an out-of-control sports car driven by clowns, it crashes into your living room, drives round and round honking loudly and then departs whence it came.

And in the IPL bakery, the Rajasthan Royals are the stale bagels left in the back of the cupboard. They are yesterday’s treat. You can tart them up with gold icing all you like, but darling, they are so 2008. Back then, we were young, we were foolish, we thought fondly of Danny Morrison. Warne’s outlaws were quirky, inexpensive and they hopped about incessantly, like gaudy tree frogs on an electrified roof.

But we’ve seen that. We’ve heard enough about their captain’s wonderful powers of motivation, his innovative field settings and those catchy team nicknames (I’d love to know what Graeme Smith’s was: The Disappointer? The Blocker?) It was all charming in its way. But now it’s one big yawn. I knew it was over when I heard Jeremy Snape claiming that young players were part of The Rajasthan Brand.

I think of them as a group of hapless sales executives, forced to spend a seven-week team bonding exercise under the control of an over-eager Australian facilitator who specialises in motivational chats and festoons their meeting rooms with slogans and inspirational pie charts. I don’t know about you, but my experience of such things has been a burning desire to get the hell out of there at the first opportunity.

I suspect that the Rajasthan players feel the same, judging by the way they went about their batting against the Delhi Daredevils (or “The Double D’s” as Danny Morrison has taken to calling them). It was clearly a cry for help. Slog, consolidate, slog, consolidate, go for a crazy single, slog: if the Rajasthan Royals were a car, you’d be taking them to your local garage complaining of a misfire. And then you’d trade them in for something more interesting. With less gold trim.

Monday’s game also featured a new addition to the IPL programme: moths. They had a great time, smacking into the camera lens, flapping about inside Dogra’s helmet, flying into Sehwag’s ear and out of Sehwag’s other ear. They were also the only living creatures in the ground that were actually attracted to the electronic adverts on the sightscreens. Meanwhile Lalit Modi sat impassively in the posh seats. Surely the Commissioner could have sent a text to the Almighty and brought down a shower of moth-sucking toads?

Such extra-curricular developments are, of course, a knee-high full-toss to a top-quality commentator. Cue Harsha Bhogle:

“There are a number of moths around Maharoof. They must think he is covered in honey.”

Now I’m no moth expert, so I’m not sure, entomologically speaking, how accurate that is, but in any case, no viewer should be forced to contemplate a honey-slathered Maharoof whilst eating their tea. Please tone it down, Harsha, and remember there may be children watching.

	The manic version of Owais Shah took over halfway into his innings © Getty Images (file photo)

Wing Commander Strauss is not the only English chap to be AWOL for the Bangladeshi campaign. Some of the SKY stalwarts have stayed at home, recharging their batteries after an arduous tour of South African vineyards. So it is something of a B Team of microphone botherers who have travelled to Chittagong. When I turned on today, Bob Willis was grumbling that England had not selected Tredwell and I’ve no doubt, in a parallel universe, another Bob was grumbling that they had selected Tredwell.

I left him to it, because, much as I love a good old English moan today was not the day for negative vibes of any kind. Our clocks have now been reset to IPL Time and as we all know, Emperor Modi permits no frowns in his kingdom. The IPL hype, emitted by hundreds of media outlets, has been building into a kind of barely suppressed scream of anticipation, only audible to bats and accountants, that today reached a crescendo amid fireworks, sequins and the distant sound of Lionel Ritchie.

Now as you may remember, last time round we Britishers were forced to sit through Mr Modi’s circus in the company of Ronnie Irani. That was bad enough. But for a while this year it looked like we would have to spend seven weeks hunched over our computer screens peering at Youtube. Then at the last minute, ITV4 secured the rights and we all breathed a sigh of relief. At last, a proper television channel who could do justice to the biggest cricket tournament on the planet.

Hmmmm. ITV4’s IPL effort is fronted by one of those multi-purpose presenters who appears to have been parachuted into the studio with a copy of “The Dummies Guide To Cricket”. He has Mandira Bedi to help him but she was trying a little too hard. For instance, at one point, with the Knight Riders in trouble, she suggested that Shah Rukh Khan’s decision to change the team colours to purple and gold wasn’t working. I’ll admit that purple doesn’t really bring out the colour of Ganguly’s eyes, but it’s surely too early to write off the new uniforms just yet.

Meanwhile, out on the pitch, Owais Shah appeared determined to bring a touch of the County Championship to the IPL with a sleepy 17 in 27 balls. But rather like the mighty Shiv, the former Delhi Daredevils bench-warmer has a split personality. After marking time for a while, the mild-mannered Dr Owais transformed into wild Mr Shah and promptly went berserk in an un-Middlesex fashion to smash a match-winning half-century that should secure his place in the team for a few more days.

The game itself was a thoroughly entertaining thrash, complete with regulation tight finish and a number of early entries for “Silliest Shot Of The Tournament” as the Deccan Chargers took it turns to see who could get out in the limpest fashion. Watching VVS Laxman play Twenty20 is like asking a Michelin Star chef to prepare cheeseburger and fries. But at least he had a go. The IPL is like a karaoke night. Yes you can look a bit silly, but you have to get into the spirit of the thing.

Finally, I should mention the sterling work done by horticultural expert Mike Haysman. He was very concerned about the possibility of dew and so spent a great deal of time on his knees fondling the turf. Would there be dew? Would there not be dew? Might it already be dewy but we just don’t know it? The viewer was on tenterhooks. He had, on our behalf, been speaking to Murali Kartik, so was able to tell us what happens to a cricket ball when the dew gets involved. Apparently, it gets wet. You see, the IPL doesn’t only entertain; it informs as well.

	Swann: wot, no pink Ferrari talk this time? © Getty Images

Like many of the ugly sisters at the IPL ball, Graeme Swann failed to catch the eye of a Prince Charming or even a Chief Executive Charming and remained unpurchased. Many of the English debutantes were rendered even less attractive than usual because they will not be around for much of IPL 2010 due to a prior engagement in Bangladesh. This contractual requirement to play Test cricket is frustrating for the poor dears, as Graeme Swann explained this week:

“…I think if we are going to develop, then in an ideal world, we would be made more available for the IPL…”

Indeed, Graeme. I had been hoping that success in last Friday’s Euro Lottery would have enabled me to develop in all manner of directions. I had intended to develop a taste for expensive cigars, powerful cars and fine wines for a start. A holiday mansion in Tuscany, a string of sordid affairs and a swimming pool in the shape of the Ashes urn were amongst other developments I could foresee.

Like Graeme, I was to be disappointed.

But why this coyness from England’s Twitterer-in-chief about the desirability of making large amounts of cash? Is it in order to spare our feelings? Is it out of solidarity for all those cricketers of generations past who didn’t get the chance to cash in? Pre-Packer, national cricket boards paid their stars a pittance and in return expected unquestioning loyalty and silence.

But no one wants those days back (well, apart from the silence) and no fair-minded person should quibble when talented human beings secure their rewards. So, since we’re all grown-ups, can’t we drop this stuff about the IPL being a great opportunity and a chance to develop? We all know that translates as “a great opportunity to develop a large bank balance”. Far from sparing us the pangs of jealousy, it makes young talented men sound like dissembling politicians.

This stuff is particularly disappointing coming from Swann. During the Stanford “tournament”, when his colleagues were muttering sheepishly about “investments” and “school fees”, should they scoop the Stanford cash, Swann stated that he was intending to purchase a pink Ferrari with his share of the loot.

That’s more like it. Modern cricketers should remember that they are entertainers, not accountants clocking on for their nine to five. Extravagance, copious consumption and possibly diamond-studded pyjamas, are all part of the package. If they are going to be paid like superstars, they need to throw off any lingering distaste they feel about the accrual of lots of noughts on their bank balance. And if they are in any doubt about how to handle the money and the fame, they should puff out their chests, take a long hard look at themselves in the dressing room mirror and ask, what would Elton John do?

	The IPL will go where no Twenty20 cricket has gone before: into the British consciousness © AFP

So the IPL will be available to British viewers on YouTube. Like a Sreesanth celebration jig, this is both cheering and yet at the same time a little unsettling. Last year, I watched the IPL on Setanta, that yellow-hued disaster zone masquerading as a sports channel. Sadly, Setanta, with its plastic studio, nervous presenters and no-thrills approach is no longer with us. So that’s a step forward.

But YouTube? YouTube is fine if you want to watch homemade videos on how to eat crisps, trailers for films you aren’t interested in and grainy, wobbly footage of computer games playing on someone else’s television, but is this really the setting for live sport? If several million people access it once, will it cope? Will IPL watchers be forced to put up with five minute buffering pauses between the delivery of Munaf’s slower ball and its arrival?

Still, you can’t fault the logic behind this attempt to ensure that everyone on the planet gets to see a little bit of the IPL. I don’t often quote Lalit Modi and I may never have cause to do it again, but this sentence is worth repeating.

“It is about broadening the fan base, after that, everything follows.”

Now read that again, slowly and let the full wisdom sink in. Pay particularly close attention if you work for the ECB and you spend most of your time trying to persuade people of the absolute necessity of keeping English cricket hidden away where most people can’t see it. Fan base. Broadening. Get it? Perhaps this is why the IPL is a global television event, whereas the Friends Provident T20 (stop chuckling, please, there really is such a thing) isn’t.

Of course, this cutting out of the studio-based middle man will not go down well in some quarters. One of the features of YouTube is the opportunity for free and largely uncensored expression that exists beneath each uploaded video. Perhaps we might start to see unsolicited cyber outbursts from disgruntled SKY microphone jockeys who had hoped to land the IPL presenting gig:

DGowerOBE: LOL, did u see that shot? ROTFL! If that shot was a wine, it‘d B like a really ordinary Chateauneuf de Pap. MayB a 1997 or a 1986!

Athers185notout: No it wouldn’t

DGowerOBE: Ur jus disagreeing 4 the sake of it

Athers185notout: No I’m not

Nass1999: Leave it guys

DGowerOBE: It’s got nuthin to do wit U, big nose

TheBumble: This IPL is Gr8!

Athers185notout: No it’s not

DGowerOBE: It’s pants. Isn’t it, Bob

MrBobWillis: Since all human endeavour is essentially pointless, I would have to say that this entire tournament has been an utter disaster from start to finish and I’ve hated every minute of it, quite frankly.

But whether it is on YouTube, Sky, The Shopping Channel, or even beamed directly through our dental fillings via Lalit Modi’s personal satellite, the IPL has become as essential to the British springtime as the smell of ripe manure, the Cheltenham Festival, scattered snow showers, the optimistic deployment of three-quarter length shorts and coming up with plausible reasons why the lawn cannot be mowed. Roll on March 12th.