IPL. A monumental event of the nation. An organization spanning two months and featuring more than 7 dozen matches. Home, alley, shop, train, bus, office-the center of discussion everywhere.
Cricket and only cricket.
A national obsession in front of which the Iran-America conflict, the oil-gas crisis, NEET leaks, CBSE evaluation, CUET exams, vanishing jobs in the IT sector, cockroach parties, and the fire raining from the sky-all become secondary. All of this keeps happening anyway. All of these are pains. Pains so profound that even searching for their cure is a massive pain in itself. And to forget all of this, the heavy, evergreen cricket takes over. An addiction. A high feeling. A unique kick.
To put it correctly, cricket is opium. For the fans, for the viewers. Everything beyond it is pain. A horrific and chronic pain. And cricket, in the form of opium, is a perfectly suited medicine for that pain. We are a nation of 1.4 billion where those who actually play cricket can be counted on fingertips, but those intoxicated by the cricketing stupor are countless. Even among them, the majority are youth. Our leaders of tomorrow, who are supposed to take the nation forward. Who are our future.
And opium? Joblessness, unemployment, inflation, depression, failed romance-it makes you forget everything, puts you to sleep, and numbs the brain. It keeps you oblivious. Opium, too, has many forms. Right now it is cricket, at other times it is elections, sometimes religion and caste, and sometimes something else.
Anyway, the IPL 2026 season has just concluded. How beautifully it kept everyone oblivious. And the statistics of this season? They lay bare the entire ledger of this opium.
Mathematics is a truly astonishing thing.
Just ponder over this. IPL 2026 was watched for 220 billion minutes.
220 billion minutes means 3,666,666,666.67 hours.
Which translates to 152.8 million days!
Which means 418,000 years.
It makes the head spin.
It means entire epochs passed just by watching a single season of IPL. And such is the opium that nobody even realized it. Where did the world revolve, while we remained completely oblivious in the IPL. How many people were involved? 1.12 billion on television and digital platforms. 6.5 million in the stadiums.
There are still more statistics; pray look at them as well.
Not just billions of minutes. Billions of rupees were also turned over. This opium does not exist without reason. The game is a different thing altogether. Here, the bottom line is nothing else but purely and simply money.
When the earnings from advertisements have reached 7,500 crore rupees; when a total of 1,510 crore rupees has been spent on players across all ten teams combined; when each individual player has received a separate match fee of 7.5 lakh rupees per match-then why wouldn't this opium be dissolved into the very air we breathe?
There is another dimension to this opium-laced cricket as well. If stadiums, TV, digital platforms, and advertisements form the overworld, then betting is its underworld. Bets placed on every single match, every single ball. Even if the apps have been banned, where does the business ever stop? A business where thousands upon thousands of crores change hands, which is yet another facet of this opium.
Cricket is truly an opium. The addiction is so deeply entrenched that breaking free seems impossible. And who even cares to make anyone quit? After all, why should anyone make them quit? Where else will one find such an easy medicine for all kinds of grief?
One more thing.
The greatest marvel of opium is that it does not make a person a participant, but merely a spectator. We play less, we watch more. Even if we want to play, where are the grounds? The ones that exist are running a business of making people play. Where is the time left to play anyway? Even if there is time, anxieties are so overwhelming that the heart sinks at the thought of playing.
The truth is that sports is no longer a part of physical wellness but a component of consumption. A few people are becoming millionaires by playing, some are becoming billionaires by making others play, and hundreds of millions of people are spending their valuable time just watching the game happen. This is the real magic of opium.
And perhaps this is the greatest success of opium. We are not living the sport; we are living the spectacle of the sport. Millions of eyes are glued to the screen, while a completely different game is being played out on the ground. The question is not about cricket; the question is about the society that has started feeling more comfortable being a spectator rather than a participant. As long as we continue to find joy in watching a sport rather than playing it, and in forgetting life rather than changing it, this opium will keep selling, its intoxication will keep rising, and it will keep rendering us oblivious. And it won't even let us realize that it is we who are intoxicated, not cricket.
(The author is a journalist.)