IPL - the grand success. Being repeated year after year. Whether you like the new game or not, anything that makes money rolling is 'good'. Even inferior product owners are going home rich riding on the IPL wave. So successful that other countries are following suit with their own Country Leagues. With the dawn of every IPL season - economy booms, share market bulls and not to mention rising spirits of the countrymen and women (at least they have something to talk about - hearty communication are so rare these days).
Now let’s analyse what went right. More importantly, can this success be repeated with something else. Think out of the box. Shed your inhibitions.
Presenting the Indian Goti League…
For the more 'cultured' population, 'Goti' is a game of marbles, typically played on the streets. Many consider it uncool, uneducated, LS. And thats ok. Its a free country, isn’t it?
What makes IGL worthwhile. For starters, it’s a great sport. People who have played it, would vouch for it. There is passion, there is stake, there is strategy, there is tragedy, there is vibrance, there is pain, there is allegiance, there is intensity – a game of Goti has all elements of a block buster.
Next, especially for the doyens of our society, the roots of this game are pretty close to us. Going by the historians, it likely started in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Yes sire! But then, could a game like IGL go global? Yes, that too! Goti was played by the Romans and Egyptians. Matter of fact, it is widely played in Canada, Australia, United States, Germany, Taiwan apart from the alleys of Urban India. Goti even has a world championship hosted in England every year since 1932.
Now that we have the teams and the players, the next is the audience. Lets see. If the daily soaps and reality bites have got our country men and women hooked, a ‘fierce’ game Goti can surely be a good bait. Give them something remotely interesting and challenging with a dash of ‘color’, they will make it their religion.
Next, ‘show me the money’! Going by the lines of IPL, advertisers are today willing to shell out dough like the end of the earth. They are ready to cough out any fees, just to get ‘your’ 5-second attention. Events, merchandise – money rolls everywhere. Are they really interested in the context (the game)? No. Their interest is only on your attention span. You, on the other hand, would be surely excited about your national game.
Sportswear companies would roll out finger bands, instead of wrist bands. New camera angles would be devised. On-Stump camera would be replaced by In-Hole camera. Fingers would now be insured instead of foots and arms. Possibilities are endless, limited only to imagination.
Now lets look at IGL from another angle. The ‘best’ players of the game are the so-called gundaas and mawalees (read, the dark alleys of our ‘gullies’). We are gonna give them to a chance to go ‘legit’. The younger generation would focus their attention towards ‘making it large’; and the elder generation could just as well be that ‘kick-@$$’ coach. Most of them would trade their gory professions for ‘the’ IGL and its associated glory. Imagine the ‘new society’ that would be born from this change. Mothers would not scream at their kids for playing Goti, instead fuel their ambition by providing long undisturbed practice sessions. IGL could one day fully cleanse the world of its grim. Now that’s what we call a ‘Catalyst of Social Change’.
