The media scene is awash with off-the-pitch games played in the name of cricket. Meanwhile, technology and media have begun to further fast-track the game, producing abridged versions of bonsai cricket.
Off and on during past months, things got rather ugly with racial overtones and ethnic snide during matches with visiting Asian teams. If the recurrence is ugly, it isn't quite a surprise. Slurry soundbites are not an unseemly pastime among equals, whether it be in a pub or parliament, except when backslapping turns to back-stabbing.
The same is true of the playfield, especially when the sporting spirit is overtaken by greed. Commercialised sports and sponsorship, the glare of the media spotlight and advertising hype have reduced one-time level playing fields to a new gladiatorial amphitheatre. And the recent increase of abuse, on and off screen, has been perceived as part of the arsenal in an Australia-India duel for world supremacy in cricket.
Yet a new type of match-making in the name of cricket seemed to momentarily deflect attention from the slur-slinging. The Indian Premier League's 20 February Mumbai auction of the world's best cricketers for some $45 million brought together lions and lambs.
By design or accident, players who strode high in the snide game won the highest bids in the auction. Dozens of the elite players of world cricket were auctioned to the highest bidders in a new form of bonded labour.
While a letter in India's Hindustan Times said economists suggest the same system be adopted to select CEOs, an editorial in Sri Lanka's Daily News asked whether cricket would come to be regulated on the stock market of the world.
Most believe the IPL, which pools teams worldwide, will change the face of world cricket forever. Speculating on how eight franchises will battle for millions in prize money, an editorial in India's Asian Age swooned, predicting that the IPL will make India the cricket capital of the world. Not everyone was so optimistic. Pakistan's Dawn quoted coach Geoff Lawson asking where these leagues will be in two or three years' time.
As of now, millionairing has creamed world cricket in the gamble for bigger bucks. Of course, cricket has not always been altogether a gentleman's game. Scandals such as match fixing, doping, secret commissions and money laundering have plagued cricket just as the greed games swindled other sports including baseball, basketball, football, rugby, tennis or cycling