T20 mayhem…What a rush?

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<i>The IPL finale was a cracker
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Gilly’s men rocked
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Royal Challengers got going and what a treat it was
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KKR flopped…again
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Big Matt can still smash
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Mumbai Indians, so near yet so far</i>
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Phew, what a rush. The second coming of the Indian Premier League was bigger and classier (I missed the slaps though!). It was a great safari of thirty seven amazing evenings of my kinda cricket. There’s one thing I must admit though, it did become a bit more of a routine rather than pleasure (a good, recently recession-kicked friend disagrees though - says it helped him ‘therapeutically’ in curing the post-unemployment blues! Not to mention his happy beer belly).
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The entire tournament was a roller coaster ride wherein some failures from last season made an almost filmi comeback while others relinquished (I so wanted Viru to lift the trophy). All in all, the T20 season was a fantabulous one…But wait, it’s just the beginning and this, my dear friend, is what gives me the shudders.
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We’ve got the mother of all T20 battles, the World Cup, coming up and it definitely will be a hit (we’re the champs dude!!). The scene will shift from the majestic Wanderers at night to the pristine Lords, what will follow is the frenzy of fast paced matches that will see the likes of Yuvraj, Gayle, Freddie, KP, Yusuf, Murali and Co (didn’t we just see that…by the way).
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Ah, the joys of having more action (this time we’ll have a resurgent Pakistan to watch out for too, and add to it the patriotic feel). This was the time when it dawned upon me; we are headed for a T20 overkill. Not to mention the poverty-stricken phase from constant payment of the bills of the sports bars all over the city! No, seriously, it might be OK till we are placed decently, but what when we lose?
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It is often said that too much of anything takes away its charm and the forthcoming World Cup might just manage to do that if we don’t colour the town red in our team’s favour. After all, many (hopefully) would agree that we do miss the ODI and the odd Test encounters. The World Cup that lasts for a little over a fortnight is just the tip of the iceberg though.
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The mega-event will be followed up by the Champions League in October where we’d have a still ‘newer’ flavour in the form of players from domestic T20 leagues the world over. And that’s not all, let’s throw in a few T20 internationals in every ICC tournament, its more of an unspoken law nowadays.
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I know that it is tough to match the pace and thrills (yay-yay cheerleaders) of a T20 encounter, but there are shivers down my spine when I think of Lalit Modi’s not-so-subtle plans of hosting another version of IPL in the same year.
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It most certainly is a time when we must not get carried away with the flow and saturate ourselves with a T20 overkill. A samosa might be a great snack, but one can’t make a staple diet out of it. Any attempt to do so will merely result in the loss of appetite at its very sight.
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Being the optimist that I am, there surely is hope that the high and mighty of cricket take this humble musing in consideration (Fat Chance!!) and prevent an international catastrophe from happening!