Posted by IPL Organiser, Our guest author.

The very second day after we sent a mail calling for the nominations to participate in IPL, we knew instantly we are onto something big. Getting around 150 replies from all corners of the students fraternity within the first two days was exciting as well as exceptional. And a bunch of cricket lovers were on their way to bring ‘desi-tennis ball sport’ to home.

The idea came back to me way back in summers. I often used to discuss college cricket with friends Gaurank and Karan in those days. We used to think of all sorts of teams, biggest hitter, most valuable bowler, quickest fielder, etc. At the same time, I had an image in my mind of zealous guys playing tennis ball cricket day-in and day-out on the Felicity ground, though most of them were not regulars in their batch and house teams. It was then when a gut was invoked within me to organize something big, something which would be popular and involve a greater number of players.

On coming back to college, I knew who the right person was to contact regarding this – Mahaveer. We discussed a few basic details and decided to hold a meeting amongst the organizers. The first meet though ended up in a treat at Dominos with cheese burst’ all over the place

Anyways, the rules and the format of the game was decided soon. Now the big question was – how to select the teams ???

We thought since we were planning the tournament on the lines of Indian Premiere League, why not adopt their team selection procedure. And so it was. Each of the captains were allotted a 100 points and the onus was on the captains to bring out the best players on to the field. Now, I understand that such a selection procedure’s capability to bring out the best can be questionable at times, but it was practically impossible to conduct trials for all the nominees, especially at such a short notice. Having said this, it did manage to bring out many latent names on the block who were equally good on merit, though had little recognition.

From then on it was more or less a smooth ride apart from a few delays. Once the formal ground work was done, the only thing left was to go out and set the ball rolling. The first day was a super hit with new faces emerging, sixes being hit, wickets being taken in a flurry and free hits ofcous

I would like to thank all the organizers here for carrying out the activities in a systematic manner and keeping a check on things from time to time. A special mention for Mahaveer here who played a pivotal role in organizing and for putting up a great website for maintaining the IPL stats. You can check them here – http://web.iiit.ac.in/~mahaveer/IPL/

So, has the tournament been a success? From an organizer’s point of view I am more than happy for the course of events. A lot of positives have come out of it – greater participation in sports, more people on the field, more opportunities for many, and on a slightly different note – it managed to create an environment where all the players played together as a unit with house-no-bar, batch-no-bar. For the negatives, number of people watching the matches and following the tournament stats was dismal at times. But that was understandable to certain extent as this was the first edition of IPL.

So, what next? The future plans include conducting the next edition on a bigger scale involving more players. The teams would have a sense of recognition with team jerseys, team slogans, logo, managers etc. Infact the PDI was quite fascinated with the concept as well and even dropped a hint of conducting a night tournament. We are also thinking of taking the event at inter college level by inviting teams from other colleges. Also, this has been such an initiative that a sports-lover alumnus would be more than happy to contribute their bit for this. So we would definitely be eying to get a couple of sponsors for the next edition.

As of now, I am eagerly waiting for the outcome of the tournament. Three matches still to go. My money is on the Fantastics. Lets see what happens!

Thank you

IPL Organizer