IPL 2009: What we know now

What has the second edition of the IPL told us? 

Firstly, most significantly, that it's transferrable. Say what you like about Lalit Modi, to move the tournament across continents at a couple of weeks' notice took decisiveness and the balls of a lion, the defining characteristics of entrepreneurs and con-men through history. 

Modi is the former, of course, a man whose psyche is perfectly attuned to his product. The IPL is now part of the landscape of the game. Two years ago, we'd never heard of it. The fact that a deus ex machina saw it move to South Africa will prove a strange case of luck coming from tragedy. Modi will have grasped its meaning: his is a format that can be applied across the world.

Second, and also significant, the capacity of the franchises to bond as genuine teams - at least internally - means that a dynamic is emerging. The fact that anyone can win is key. It's an American model rather than a European one, where, in football for example, the top teams use their money to ringfence success.

Thirdly, Modi has done a service to the game in India by offering a stage to its young players. That took vision.  Who will beat the Indian T20 side in five or ten years time?

Fourthly, the calendar is shaping to Modi's will. England's first two Tests simply surrendered in apathy and rain. It will make Test cricket stronger rather than weaker; it'll be less available, more treasured.

The other lesson concerns the format itself. It is being learned at an accelerated rate. If the 50-over game took forty years to exhaust its permutations, to be fully grasped by the players, T20 might be done in half that time. Then it will just be a question of strength, rather than innovation. There is some flexibility, though. A forty over game made up of two T20 innings each would offer a new set of variables - and more ad breaks.

'Don't bring me good generals, bring me lucky ones' runs the maxim, and Modi is lucky, too. Even his ludicrous commerciality has its upside. The world now knows what it means to be DLF-ed: it's funny rather than sinister.

Best of all though, the game retained its poetry. There was some in the semi-final on Saturday, when Rahul Dravid batted with Manish Pandey. Pandey sparked like a firework and then Ruler responded, taking one ball early off his legs and whipping it through midwicket like a tracer. They punched gloves and smiled. In twenty years, everyone will play like Manish Pandey. We were there when Dravid and Tendulkar and Warne and Gilchrist and Kumble played too, and you know what, it was really something.