I loved playing book cricket in the fourth standard. A hefty book (ideally 200 pages or more) would be flipped to any random page and the last digit of the page would be your score. You could only select pages ending with even numbers and, if you got zero, you would be out.
Sometime in the autumn of 2008, a friend and I found a way to spice up book cricket. Each of us would be in charge of a team packed with the finest talents in the world. Each of us would get a total of 50 flips with the singular aim of outscoring the other. Who played for whom would be decided through chits, which led us to squabble over the fairness of it all, since both of us were desperate to land Kevin Pietersen.
A few months later, the Indian Premier League (IPL) began. Fantasy cricket had shifted from the page to the screen. Brendon McCullum required a little more than 50 balls to smash the first century of the tournament and set the IPL ablaze. Fast forward to 2025, and the IPL has just entered adulthood. I don’t play book cricket anymore, but the story of my life from 10 to 27 can be told through the IPL. So much so that whichever page I flip has some thread tied to cricket’s greatest festival.
Early excitement and despair
Sachin Tendulkar struggles to complete a run for MI against CSK in IPL 2009 Getty Images
Excited as I was about the inaugural season of the IPL, I didn’t actually watch a lot of it. Partly because the highlights (on Set Max) were notoriously difficult to find. I remember being obsessed with the Deccan Chargers theme song even though it seemed to have just two words. As a Sachin Tendulkar fanatic, I was naturally supporting the Mumbai Indians (MI), who had a yo-yo season. My first game in person saw the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) host the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the Eden Gardens, which I found to be grand and grimy in equal measure. When rain suspended play in the second innings, my mother could not fathom why Eden did not have a retractable roof. Having skipped cricket practice, where I was hailed as Mitchell Johnson with a paunch (I was a not-so-fast left arm pacer), my outing proved worthwhile after I had bought an “original” KKR jersey.
The 2009 IPL in South Africa was a peculiar beast. There was Shane Warne borrowing beer from a fan in between overs. There was umpire Rudi Koertzen being mic’d up. There was Rahul Dravid getting bowled while trying to paddle sweep Harmeet Singh. There I was munching on choco pie, switching between the IPL and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and wondering what all the hype was about Rohit Sharma.
A year later, the IPL came back home, and I discovered that I actually liked the pre-shows more. Gaurav Kapoor’s charm on Extraaa Innings made even Navjot Singh Sidhu tolerable. In the final, Mahendra Singh Dhoni had the freakish idea to place Matthew Hayden right behind the bowler to faze Kieron Pollard, who took all of one ball to prove Dhoni right. I went to school the next day jittery at the prospect of my friends teasing me no end about “Sachin and MI losing again”. Nobody said a word about the final.
Come 2014, the IPL took on new significance in my life
By the time the 2011 instalment came around, I was engrossed in club football. A few hours after watching CSK outclass RCB to win their second championship, I relished Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona outplaying Manchester United in even more convincing fashion in the UEFA Champions League final. But CSK’s fort would be breached the following year, when the Knights unseated them in Chennai and Shah Rukh Khan almost jumped off the second floor of the MA Chidambaram Stadium.
As a KKR sceptic, I was bemused at how seriously Kolkata took being IPL champions. The celebration parade, complete with gold chains and sandesh cake, lasted longer than the final. For me, the happiest part of KKR’s triumph was Eden hosting next year’s showpiece showdown. Despite my mother’s brother’s junior’s husband’s best efforts, I could not secure a ticket to witness MI lift their first IPL trophy in a campaign that had kick-started at a friend’s place — with him shouting “out” seconds before Brett Lee castled Unmukt Chand.
Come 2014, the IPL took on new significance in my life. A disappointing score in my class X board exams had left me shattered. But the IPL was there every evening to prevent me from lying flat on my stomach. When MI thumped the Rajasthan Royals (RR) at the Wankhede, with Adtiya Tare hitting the shot of his life, I was so taken by the comeback narrative that I submitted my marks for review (and got a 0.40 per cent hike). By 2015, the demands of teenage life stopped me from consuming the IPL as if my eyes were glued to my TV. I had more pressing concerns, such as finding a way to glimpse my crush at school fests. The IPL had transitioned from my daily dose of dopamine to a comforting background noise.
My loyalties were drifting south, from a team of serial winners to one that only won hearts
Virat Kohli is one of four players to play in every single IPL season till date and the only one to do so for a single franchise Getty Images
Virat Kohli batted like a man possessed in 2016, but I enjoyed the effortlessness of AB de Villiers much more. My loyalties were drifting south, from a team of serial winners to one that only won hearts. While having lunch at my college canteen in 2017, I heard that an Afghan leg-spinner was to make his IPL debut. I felt embarrassed on learning that he was younger than me. In between debate trips, jamming sessions (where my solitary sonic contribution was unrhythmic clapping) and politely begging small companies to bankroll our college society events, I caught snippets of the IPL action.
When Barcelona were playing on a late May evening in 2017, I had no qualms in watching Lionel Messi zigzag his way through the pitch at the expense of missing arguably the greatest IPL final of all-time. But, as before with the IPL, the pull of its drama brought me back when, in 2018, CSK returned from their two-year ban to clinch gold. They followed it up by doing something even more in character, losing the next final to MI.
With my master’s degree unfolding on Skype in Brighton, my IPL fandom found a new lease of life in 2020. I had impetuously spent a third of my monthly budget on a Sky Sports subscription to stream the IPL. The investment felt much wiser when swallowing typically British rejection emails with the familiar sight of boundaries and the unfamiliar sensation of artificial cheers. By the time the 2021 IPL got underway, I was back in Kolkata, writing sporadically about the IPL. In the pandemic-enforced pause that year, my dad and uncle had passed. Life felt surreal before the second half of the longest season was bookmarked by a lively chat with Joy Bhattacharjya about KKR’s chances in the final. KKR lost.
I lost even more badly in 2022 in an attempt to boost my bank account through Dream11. I wasn’t particularly thrilled at the prospect of two fresh franchises, but the Gujarat Titans (GT) gradually won my admiration, not least because Ashish Nehra made IPL coaching look cool again.
You exist largely for your own sake, for your increasingly expanding ecosystem
The last few IPLs have felt like an extended farewell tour for MS Dhoni Getty Images
The last two IPL seasons were an extended farewell tour for MS Dhoni. Arranging client calls, writing sessions and grocery shopping as per Dhoni’s potential batting cameos was oddly stressful, oddly fun. I thought MSD had his fairytale ending when CSK equalled MI with five titles in 2023, but some fairy tales have a habit of stretching. In 2024, I was in Dubai, speaking at a debate on a ship-turned-hotel, when KKR brought the sun down on Hyderabad. I just about got to see KKR’s twin Iyers cross the finish line, but devoured replays of a sizzling Mitchell Starc.
Over the years, I have grown slightly weary of the IPL. I spend more time listening to analysts on Cricbuzz than seeing the ball flying off to all quarters of all stadiums. I keep checking scores at every traffic signal when I’m Uber-ing between home and work. Sometimes I open Dream11 before getting overwhelmed by the number of contests I need to play to increase my odds of winning Rs 100. On weekends, I’m more interested in observing Kylian Mbappe in full flight or copiously noting stock market tips from fin-fluencers whose names I can’t recollect. Occasionally, I wonder what happened to Swapnil Asnodkar or Paul Valthaty. Or the countless boys like me who took to writing about the IPL because they could not play in it.
Meanwhile, the IPL goes on, flipping one page after another. That, I suppose, is the thing about entering adulthood. On some days, you thrill people. On some days, you frustrate them. But, on most days, you are taken for granted. You exist largely for your own sake, for your increasingly expanding ecosystem. You are all grown up now. You are too big to stop.
