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.

Cool Ruler, orange cap

Davis Miller once wrote a tremendous magazine story called My Dinner With Ali, in which he called on the champ at his mother's house in Louisville. Ali was retired, slowing down physically but not yet ill. Miller was an Ali obsessive who'd become a champion kickboxer in homage to his hero.

Ali let Miller spar with him on the front lawn, and Miller was embarrassed by how easily he could tag the Greatest. Then later, after they'd eaten dinner and handfuls of biscuits and sat up watching fight films, Miller went to use the bathroom. Ali had fallen asleep. When Miller returned, he found Ali not just awake again but shadowboxing in the light of his old fights playing on the television screen. For a few seconds, he seemed to float and glow as his fists flashed out.

'Don't tell anyone,' he said to Miller, 'but I'm making a comeback. Four times champion of the world... Imagine that...' 

And for a moment, Miller believed him, so convincing had the shadowboxing been. Then he remembered that the heavyweight champion at the time was Mike Tyson.

'Ha, tricked you...' Ali said, and sat slowly back down on the sofa, looking like an old man again.

I thought of My Dinner With Ali yesterday after Rahul Dravid batted with Kevin Pietersen. While KP flapped, Dravid unleashed. They were proper shots too, stiletto thrusts through and over cover and cover point. 

The cool Ruler is playing in a world of Mike Tysons out there but the orange cap sits atop his head. Old school beats no school, anyday.

NB: Thanks to Brit for this.