“The IPL shows it is time to liberalise cricket,” wrote my friend Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute in a recent email, and the thought is echoed by Neelakantan of Interim Thoughts, who draws a comparison between the IPL and what liberalisation did to the IT industry in the 1990s.
Needless to say, I agree with them—though I wish the extent of both liberalisations was greater. Just as the government retains a stranglehold over many areas of our lives, the BCCI retains its monopoly over representative cricket. Deeper change will be a long time coming—though I’m grateful for the little that has come so far.