Imbalance in the IPL

It would have been a good news for all the cricket lovers across the world when two new teams were added to the Indian Premier League which will make it there the coming year in 2011. The teams, namely the Kochi team and the Pune team is expected to kick the stadiums from the coming year which would, needless to be said take the number of teams featuring to 10. But, one thing that is expected to be given a closer look is the imbalance in the IPL wherein teams are concentrated in some corners while the remaining states are almost ignored.

When the Kochi team was introduced, it was another team from the South India with the Chennai team, Bangalore team and the Hyderabad team having its presence since the IPL was launched a couple of years ago. In the entire India, there is no other corner where all the states have their IPL teams. Only from South India, all four states have IPL teams. And, when the discussion is regarding the other team in Pune, it would be another team from the state of Maharashtra after we have Mumbai Indians who have been a part of the campaign since 2008.

Thus, Maharashtra becomes the first and the only state to have two IPL teams and hence would be a tough choice for any Maharashtrian to decide which team to support especially when there would be a clash between the Mumbai team and the Pune team. I can hardly recall any player making it to the international scene from either Kerala or Pune (though Maharashtra state has its share to a greater extent). At present, Sreesanth is the only player from Kerala who at times is making his presence felt in international cricket. If one can take opains to travel towards the East of India, if not for Kolkata, there is no other state that has an IPL team.

There is no team in Madhya Pradesh when we have players like Rahul Dravid who hails from Indore. And, the state which has been at the receiving end of a lot of injustice in this regard would be the Gujarat state. There are top players like the Pathan brothers - namely Yousuf Pathan and Irfan who hail from Baroda. And then there is Parthiv Patel who also come from Gujarat. But, unfortunately, we don't have an Ahmadabad or a Gandhinagar team in the IPL. And, there could have been a team from UP as well which has given players like R P Singh, Praveen Kumar and Suresh Raina to international cricket.

At present, the teams are spread as 4 from the South, 1 from the East, 1 from the West and 3 from the North. Had there been some decent calculation, the teams should have been spread symmetrically which would have seen 2 states from the East, 2 from the West and as usual 3 each from South(leaving Kerala) and North.