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Circus Maximus Circus & IPL Circus: Closely related?

So you think that Indian Premier League (IPL) was conceived by BCCI in response to challenge thrown at it by Subhash Chandra in the form of ICL? Think again. According to the latest conspiracy theory that has been floated by a prominent writer and author, there is a deeper and sinister reason behind the origin of world's premier club-cricket tournament. According to Dilip Raote, a freelance writer, who writes regularly for several newspapers like Times of India, Mid-Day and Hindustan Times, there is a link between rising food prices and IPL.

To understand this link, we need to go back in time to the era of ancient Roman. In the later years of the Roman empire, roman economy was in complete mess due to food shortage and rising food prices resulting in food riots all over the city of Rome. During that period of time, Egypt was considered to be the grain basket of Rome. When the grain wagons stopped rolling down the Via Apia or when the warehouses were empty due to frequent wars, interrupted supply, bad weather, famine or whatever, there used to be frequent riots. In order to quell such rioting, Roman emperors used to employ the "Bread and Circuses" way to distract people from their problems.

At one such time of food riots, the shipping boss of the city told his chief that there were empty ships waiting in Egypt. Should he load them with food for the starving roman people or load them with sand needed to build stadiums. His political boss was furious and shouted "For gods sake, load them with sand. We have to get people's mind off their troubles. So sand was imported and a big sports event was announced. Admission to the rear entrance of Circus Maximus stadium was kept free to encourage people to participate enthusiastically in the fun & frolic. The games went on for two weeks. The people had a good time and forgot about their troubles.

Dilip Raote also points out another ominous link that has strengthened his belief that rising food prices and IPL are related. The common link between them is Union minister of Agriculture, Sharad Pawar who also happens to be BCCI chief! As agriculture minister, did Pawar foresaw the emerging global food crisis and decided that the best way to distract the Indian population from his failure to combat inflation in agricultural commodities would be distract them with IPL circus?

But what about ICL which commenced much before IPL, we asked Raote.

According to him, ICL can also be explained when we take into account the fact that the BCCI chief and Subhash Chandra, founder of ICL are both close friends since many years. It is an open secret that ICL was originally conceived with Pawar's knowledge. Quite possibly, Pawar had requested Subhash Chandra to initiate the tournament, since inefficient and lazy BCCI office-bearers were dragging their feet and were unwilling to move forward on the matter.

So in case you have been wondering why rising food prices and inflation which were hot issues for some weeks have suddenly dropped off media's radar and replaced by IPL tamasha, you have your answer.

Comments (1)

ragamuffin said:

	That explains the presence of the Cheer leaders !! To add to the Tamasha !! :cheer:
	report abuse vote down vote up

May 01, 2008
Votes: +0

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