With a tournament the size of the IPL, we can all certainly expect many things to be going wrong, but in this particular case, a LOT of things seem  to be going wrong with the IPL and the BCCI. For starters, there’s STILL no news of the IPL tickets - where to buy them, how much they cost - for most of the venues. Then there’s this impending boycott of the coverage of the IPL by the newspapers and online media of India. Some of the international players themselves are not entirely sure they’ll be allowed to play in the IPL (think Shoaib, several Aussies and Englishmen). And all this is besides the BCCI being the most hated cricket board in the world for trampling over the other cricket boards. And Oh, their $50 million website is still not online.

So why are so many things going wrong for the stakeholders? A lot of it can be attributed to the BCCI’s inexperience in handling such a large scale event. But that argument wears thin on me - The BCCI has organized world cups and champions trophies in the past, and this definitely falls in that domain. I think a large part of it is because of the BCCI’s stone-age thinking, and its un-understandable need to control everything.

For example, why can’t the BCCI just hire an event management agency (like DNA or somebody) to take care of all the stadium-and-ticket related events? DNA would sold out all IPL tickets weeks ago! Then why try to force all the netizens to go to their official website? Allow cricInfo, rediff etc… to build up the hype for the IPL, who have been more than happy in the past to do it! And hire a PR agency for God’s sake instead of just keeping quite and giving absolutely no reactios to the other cricket boards nervousness around the IPL.

Yet, this may change. Lalit Modi has shown many times in the past that his business accumen is very accurate and he can change strategies very quickly. Now is the time!

For most people however, all this stuff doesn’t matter at all. As long as they get to see the matches and their stars hit sixes, they’ll all be happy to show their loyalty to their teams and dutifylly buy their merchandise. But the BCCI needs to ensure that at least all of this happens smoothly. They will not get a second chance if the IPL flops the first season.