It has not taken much time for the Indian cricketers, upon returning from New Zealand, to quickly don the garbs of their respective IPL team sponsors and rush through the sponsor oriented events and jet set for South Africa. This kind of Twenty20 extension is truly testing the role of the cricketer, beyond the field.
indian cricketers
The modern day demands on the cricketer have grown enormously. On the field, he is expected to be proficient in at least two of the three departments and nothing less than consistent performances would be good enough to keep him in the line up.
Off the field, at least the Indian cricketer, has to appease both, fans and sponsors. It means staying cool even when being mobbed by the very people who are there at the airport expected to protect you from the crowds. It means showing up at sponsor organized parties, being forced to shake a leg and say a good word about the company that’s paying the millions as well as feed the media with a few news bytes. To increase their visibility for the sponsors, they must then cater to the whims of their PR agencies and appear before news channels that set up interviews, never mind the board’s gag. It also means being linked, for reasons true or false, with every Bollywood starlet seen at these joint sponsor events.
The team has barely landed in India to accolades for winning their first Test series in New Zealand in forty-one years and the only thing that people have been interested in is in packing off these players for one sponsor event after another necessitated by the IPL moving out India in a desperate bid for teams to connect with their fans before leaving Indian shores.
There is little time before the first match of the IPL 2 begins. And while it may all appear like fun and frolic, the seriousness of the game will be telling on the heads that will be on the chopping line as the pretenders as sifted from the contenders.
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