IPL First Match Shifted To Mumbai

So it looks like the CII Partnership Summit 3 weeks back was just the calm before the storm - and today, there was the first indication of what the storm might really look like.

Cricket's richest event, the prestigious IPL, has shifted its opening ceremony and game from Hyderabad. The opening game is typically held at the home town of the last edition's winning team between the winning and the last-placed teams of the last year's edition, which would make the venue Hyderabad since the Deccan Chargers are the reigning IPL champions. The game, scheduled for March 12, however, has now been shifted to Mumbai, due to the Telangana fracas creating a perception of Hyderabad as an unsafe place for anything important.

Several international- and national-level conferences and events routinely happen in Hyderabad ever since Chandrababu Naidu originally put the city on the international map. For most these, now, security in Hyderabad is a key factor in deciding whether to schedule activities here or look at other options. While the prestigious CII Partnership Summit that happens each year in Hyderabad got shifted to Chennai this year, academic institutes of repute like IIIT Hyderabad and the University of Hyderabad, that regularly have conferences with delegates from across the world, have in recent times had to put up notifications on the conference websites that the city and institutes are secure.

The decision of the IPL mandarins could have been influenced by the act yesterday, uniformly condemned and roundly considered tactless, of T protestors who chose to barge into the Rajiv Gandhi stadium at Uppal and disrupt a T20 match between the Hyderabad and Andhra teams. Sports and arts/culture are kept out of all mature political struggles, and even at the level of inter-country conflicts. It's one thing to protest outside a match or event venue, and another to forcibly hustle participants, usually accomplished and peaceful people, out of there.

Fortunately (using the word loosely) in the case of IPL, it is only the opening match that has been shifted, and as of now, the other matches scheduled in Hyderabad will stay in Hyderabad. Unless, of course, desperados seeking high-profile avenues for mileage chose to put personal glory above universal values once again.