The Commonfan’s IPL Polls – Awarding the Icons, commentators and brand ambassadors in the IPL

I recently put up three IPL-related polls on the blog. The IPL is over, the polls are closed and its time to analyze the results.

Two points before we start

Point no 1 – I have myself abstained from voting to prevent any kind of human bias while analyzing the results.

Point no 2 – I am a trained but hopeless statistician. Still I remember enough to say with more than 95% confidence that the sample size is not statistically relevant. But how can we have large sample sizes when the popular forums refrain from popular polls. They cannot go beyond the ‘who will win the match’, ‘who will hit maximum sixes’ and ‘who will win man of the series’ type of polls. These Polls test your clairvoyance and don’t ask for your opinion. And if they do ask for opinion they don’t dare touch the gods of Indian sport. A hard nosed poll which puts the greats in the dock is pure sacrilege. Therefore I will throw the statistical relevance out of the window when I analyze the poll results

Poll 1 – Who is the worst commentator in the IPL?
Results Aamir Sohail – 37%
Ranjit Fernando – 20%
Rameez Raja – 12 %
I watch matches with the volume turned off – 12%

The overall standard of the commentary in the IPL was shambolic. Amit Verma has written a delightful piece on state of commentating in the IPL and I suggest you please read it. Krishnamachari Srikanth escapes this list as he was classified as a brand ambassador. I hope all the commentators find great jobs elsewhere and spare the poor fans.

Aamir Sohail - incorrigible

Aamir Sohail takes the cake and a word of advice for him – stay away from India. You always end up making an a** of yourself. You did it as a player (against Venkatesh Prasad in the 96 WC) and have now won the Razzies of the cricket commentating world. You will do a better job modelling for hair cream.

Ranjit Fernando’s eloquence has also been well-documented. A piece of advice for Set Max – cricket telecasts don’t need the lone representative from each participating country. Foreign fans watch the telecast to watch their cricket team and not to cheer their native son doing commentary. I would give an arm and a leg to hear Ian Chappell and Richie Benaud but would rather turn deaf when Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Ravi Shastri come on air.

Poll 2 – Which Icon was the biggest dud in the IPL?
Results Sachin Tendulkar – 36%
Rahul Dravid – 22%
VVS Laxman for being a chicken and backing out – 22 %
Sourav Ganguly -12%
The biggest dud was the concept itself – 12%

There was a lot of criticism of the concept and the last option should have been the most preferred option. However as Shane Warne and MS Dhoni showed, there is definitely a need for iconic players in the League. But rather than the IPL committee anointing ICONS it should be left to the franchisees to decide their Icon or franchise player. Even the US Leagues have franchise players. The concept is ok but its modalities need serious tweaking.

It was a tournament to forget for the big 4 of Indian cricket. Sachin Tendulkar escaped the criticism but did little justice to his icon status in the IPL or his mega-iconic status in Indian cricket. Rahul was disowned by his owner and Laxman benched for mystifying reasons. Sourav Ganguly’s last few efforts and especially his last innings did a lot of damage control for his icon status.

The new brigade made another claim to replace the old icons. The likes of Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and Gautam Gambhir cannot be denied for long.

Poll 3 – Which team had the best set of brand ambassadors/mascots in the IPL?
Results KXP with Preity Zinta - 38%
DC were smartest for not wasting any money on it– 33%
KKR with Shahrukh– 16%
DD with Akshay Kumar – 11%

Based on poll results the possible line-up of brand ambassadors for next season’s IPL -Sherlyn Chopra, Mallika Sherawat, Rakhi Sawant, Pamela Anderson(for Mallya’s team as he doesn’t believe in the desi babes), Bipasha Basu, Shilpa Shetty and Deepika Padukone. Their agenda – to beat Preity Zinta at her game of hugging and kissing, no holds barred. Don’t be surprised if you see much better performances from the other teams next season.

Preity has set the bar for future brand ambassadors

Other than that nothing else will work. So if you can’t get a hot babe to be your brand ambassador and shower her love on the players, then you might as well drop the idea of having a brand representative.

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