Fever pitch

The motto of Indian Premier League's third edition: play hard, party harder

It's the ultimate cliché that every visitor to India is told—cricket and Bollywood are the country's two biggest religions. Like all other clichés, it has a habit of being true. Nowhere else in the world will you see the mass adulation that propels visitors from villages to pose for pictures in front of Mannat or Jalsa. Neither will you see the crowds that gather outside restaurants and TV showrooms when a big ticket cricket match is on. So throw the two national obsessions together and what do you have? The IPL T20 as a humongous carnival— 'cricketainment' as we're beginning to call it.

From celebrity team owners like Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh Khan and Shilpa Shetty, to high profile team mascots like Katrina Kaif and guests like Deepika Padukone, there's a deluge of glamour. If scantily-clad cheerleaders attracted gawkers in the first season, in the latest one, it's the stars in the stands who're attracting maximum face time. And with team owners like Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya willing to share the wealth in order to ensure everyone has a good time, there's no shortage of pre-match and post-match parties. "The marriage of cricket and entertainment took place sometime back; you're attending the reception now," jokes former model Angad Bedi, who's one of the hosts of Extraaa Innings on Set Max. "When you have two high-octane professions like this, the mix is bound to be larger than life."

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Fever-pitch/593791