The assumption now is that the interests of the brand and of the game overlap to the degree that cricket need hardly be mentioned.
Far from marking the end of nationalism, the IPL is the ultimate triumph of that principle: a global tournament in which the same nation always wins.
One keeps looking out for innovation in IPL, but of late it hasn't been all that obvious. Lionel Richie as an opening act? Johnny Mathis must have been busy. Matthew Hayden's Mongoose? Looks a bit lik...
The IPL, involving the socialist principle of a salary cap and the protectionist mechanism of quotas, is not perhaps the best example of a market left flourishingly to its own devices and dynamics.