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Former India all-rounder Ravi Shastri relived the olden days of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and said that moving the cash-rich league to South Africa was what made it a global sensation.
The biggest T20 league in the world was inaugurated in 2008, which was won by the late Shane Warne's Rajasthan Royals (RR) but due to the assembly elections in 2009, the tournament was moved to the country of South Africa, the first time it was held abroad.
Shastri is of the opinion that hosting the tournament in South Africa was a big achievement for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). "If you look at all the players who played a part in this, the quality of cricket was so good that it took off. But the final stamp on the IPL came when we went to South Africa. To go there and to see that South Africa saw the IPL with the same interest as India, that shocked the world," Shastri said during an interaction with Star Sports.
Adding to this, he said, "Because, by that time, people around the world had started picking teams. What you see in football now, that had happened in the IPL from the second season itself. The EPL has been going on for years, teams like Arsenal and Manchester United, but here in two years fans in IPL had their teams — Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings or Royal Challengers Bangalore."
Shastri reminisced about the first day of the IPL when he was still with the IPL governing council, "I remember that day very well, I was backstage, I was with the governing council, I knew what is happening behind the scenes. How are players being signed, and how much interest was there.
"India won the World Cup in 2007, so because of that, the amount of interest that was created was unbelievable. And the one thing that I saw that never happened in other formats of the game, the kind of people that came to support it, it looked like the entire nation was united to come there and watch the match.
"Advertising industry, cricket fans, Bollywood, Kollywood, Tollywood, you name it, everyone was there. And the quality of cricket that was seen from the first game itself, there was no substitute for that," he concluded.
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