God’s Own IPL team is an eye-popping moment in Indian cricket

By John Cheeran
So finally, after Tinu Yohannan and S Sreesanth, Kerala gets its own IPL team, for an astounding amount of $333 million.
Of course this is great news for Indian cricket and sport in Kerala. The audacity of the Rendezvous Consortium to dream big and bid for an IPL team, believed to be under the tweeting leadership of minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor, need to be celebrated.
Well, the Kerala Cricket Association does not have its own cricket stadium, and the consortium itself has the presence of outsiders in it, but such things should not take away from Kerala’s Own IPL team.
Many would point out that Kerala does not have enough quality cricketers in the small state. But, then, again, many of the existing IPL teams too have a similar situation to tackle with. Look at Chennai Super Kings. It basically runs on the power of Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Matthew Hayden and many other skillful practitioners of the game quite outside of Chennai and Tamil Nadu. So is the case with Rajasthan Royals.
But, make no mistake, the formation of Kochi IPL team will unearth more gritty cricketers from the state. Now that the bidding is over, it’s time for a suitable name for the Kochi IPL team. Kerala Cobras, Kerala Tuskers, whatever it is eventually going to be, this is a great leap into the whirlpool of sport and high finance.
It is also important to notice that unlike the backers of of Deccan Chargers (Deccan Chronicle) and Mumbai Indians (Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries), Rendezvous Consortium has ventured into a field where traditional moneybags in Kerala have shied. It was, no doubt, the biggest business opportunity of the new decade in Kerala and the very fact that the Rendezvous is a coming together for the love of money and cricket in equal measure is a eye-popping moment in the history of Indian cricket.