When the likes of SRK, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty are minting money with their IPL teams, can our very own Southern superstars be left out? According to media reports Mohanlal is all set to enter the the bandwagon as well. Accompanying him will be best friend and ace director Priyadarshan. Lalettan and Priyan have apparently expressed interest in entering a Kerala based franchisee for the 2010 edition of the Indian Premier League.
However from the looks of it, it is easier said than done. First of all Kerala doesn’t have a proper stadium. Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at Kaloor, Kochi which has so far hosted international matches in the state doesn’t even have a roof to escape the scorching sun. The floodlights are hardly in any working condition. With all the corruption in the Kerala Cricket Association, even if a Tripura or Nagaland is ready to host an IPL match, our administrators in Dheivathinte Swantham Naadu will be still fighting among themselves for a seat next to the cheerleaders. And when cities like Ahmedabad and Kanpur which have better stadia are around, it is unlikely that money hungry BCCI will even consider Kerala.
Apart from Sreesanth, the only Kerala Ranji player in the IPL is Raiphi Gomez of the Rajasthan Royals. Even the Chennai Super Kings of which Kerala is a catchment state, doesn’t have a single mallu in the team. If Kerala’s Ranji recors are anything to go by, even the lowly Knightriders won’t have any problems dispatching them. Priyadarshan has said that he hopes to develop talented cricketers from the state. Hope he doesn’t mean players like Sreesanth. One Appam is more than enough to give us malayalis a ‘good’ name.
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