The drama of IPL T20 cricket

When the concept of IPL was announced, there was cynicism about whether this was a concept that would gain public attention (even after the success of the T20 cricket world cup); after all so many matches in so short a time would maybe cause exhaustion, and people would loose attention after some matches.
However, there is enough to show that IPL has been a success to a fair amount of degree. The stadiums have been full, TV sponsorships of the events (including commercials) has been expensive, and in the biggest acknowledgment of the success in weaning after the young and middle aged crowd, there have been so few movie releases during the time of the tournament, that it seems quite clear that most movie makers don't want to risk a sharply reduced period of ticket collection.
The coverage of IPL T20 cricket on SET Max has been a mixed one, with a lot of use of technology. So, there are a lot of statistics called real time, including the wagon wheel, a steady show of the current run rate and asking rate, plenty of replays and so. One cannot say the same about the people called onto the sets, with many of my friends and colleagues making fun of the quality of people being called upon to give expert comments. On the whole, these are matches to be watched without caring too much about the commentary.
Now, with just one semi-final and the final left, there is a big expectation that the viewership will peak, and it is the good fortune of most of the regular evening and nightime weekday serials that these 2 final games are happening on the weekend. One other feeling I have about watching this one vs. the normal one day matches is that the TV coverage has been slightly more nuanced: So, in the normal one-day coverage, many times you are not able to see the replays of the big shots and wickets since the Ads come on immediately, while here, the ads are somewhat more controlled. I seem to feel that I have watched more TV replays now that in the regular coverage of one-day cricket.

2 websites for catching the T20 cricket:
The official website
Lots of statistics

Video highlights of the first semi-final between Jaipur and Delhi (Jaipur won)

The IPL circus on SET Max

Well the IPL T20 circus has started. After the first show on April 18th on SET Max, people started getting an idea of what the show will entail. You had the match between the Kolkata team and the Deccan team, or you could call it a contest between Shahrukh's team and Vijay Mallaya's team. The show was everything you thought it would be - lots of glitz, glamour - Shahrukh Khan has been getting the film star community to show up for cheering, and he himself was dancing and screaming the whole time. There were massive ceremonies such as fireworks displays, full stands, imported cheer leaders and the likes
The show otherwise has been a slug-fest, as expected. The bowlers are now used to being ravaged and hit for so many sixes and fours that would have caused them to hit the batsmen during normal test or one-day matches. Hitting 15 runs in an over was not a surprise.
So things have moved okay so far, except for the matches on the 20th of April. First, during the second innings of the first match, the lights went out and the match was delayed for quite some time till they figured out the possible outcomes (Duckworth Lewis was no solution since the match was exactly where Duckworth Lewis said that it should be) and then the game resumed; and then during the second match, the start of the game was delayed since there was a lot of debris from the spectacular fireworks display and they had to wait for the debris to be cleared.
There are many many matches yet to happen, so let's see whether the fever catches on; so far from office conversation, a good benchmark, things are not exactly very hot.

Videos of matches of the IPL T20 from Youtube (click link)

Highlights of the 1st match between Kolkata and Bangalore: