With 100 hours left, IPL gets ready for trial by fire

Millions have already been spent. More will be spent in the next few days. But who gets to show the matches of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the world's most lucrative cricket event, or who gets to see them is still not clear.

The stand-off, with the IPL management on one side and media - both print and electronic - on the other, has not been resolved yet, though the IPL top brass says that all outstanding issues relating to the media have been sorted out.

The National Broadcasters Association (NBA), a group of broadcasters, is said to be holding meetings on how to deal with this issue and the dreaded word 'boycott' has figured often enough.

The championship has also raised security concerns in the cities the matches are being played as nothing has been heard about transport arrangements after the matches late in the night.

Security after the match is causing concern in Delhi and Mumbai as the police forces want a greater say in matters.

Then there is a lack of information on ticket sales and disputes on entertainment tax on tickets. All these things put together are making IPL's debut a trial by fire.

While many cities have started ticket sales, some franchises have not yet started them. In cities like Delhi (Daredevils), Kolkata (Knight Riders), Bangalore (Royal Challengers) and Mohali (Kings XI Punjab) sales have started, but the response is said to be lukewarm still.

In Kolkata, Shah Rukh Khan's team is said to be facing a lot of problems in trying to get exemption on entertainment tax. While the franchises are claiming it to be a sport, the state governments are said to be saying that it is also entertainment, as can be seen by the involvement of Bollywood stars and their performances. Other franchises are also likely to encounter the problem over next few days.

On entertainment tax, the West Bengal government is believed to have agreed to charge three percent on the entertainment component of 35 minutes of the 195 minutes' match duration.

And, finally, even as overseas players are joining their respective teams, there are questions on who will be available for how many matches as Pakistan, Australia, Bangladesh and West Indies are going to be engaged in international Test and ODI series.

Any major tournament on this massive scale will have issues that need to be sorted, till the last moment. But lets not forget that, over-all this has been a well organized event right from the start. I hope these issues get sorted soon and we can finally take the pleasure of watching some quality cricket. Dont forget to catch the post match analysis of IPL on NDTV 24x7 only on DirecTV here in the US.