What pattern do you often see in a league? There are around 16-20 teams which compete against each other. The top 8 go to the quarterfinals, then half of them go to semi-finals, and then the last 2 go to the finals. Here, however, there are 8 teams present in total. So basically this entire league is a quarterfinal! Have some shame, even Pakistan Super League has 6 teams even though Pakistan has only 5 states (or provinces, as they call it) while India has 28 states and 8 union territories, out of which not even all big demographics get covered.
The maximum population of the Hindi-speaking India lives in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. And none of these states has any team. Heck, many states like Kerala and Gujarat USED to have a team, but they all got removed because apparently this league is too poor to have 10 teams. There have been two teams from Pune (Pune Warriors India and Rising Pune Supergiants), so in total Maharashtra gets 3 teams but the entire Northeast combined? None. Even ISL has more diversity, and that's saying something because there isn't even a Delhi team in it (Delhi Dynamos has been changed to Odisha FC).
That was just the diversity for the states. Now let's talk about the colours. How many teams in IPL have red in their jersey? Delhi Capitals, Punjab Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore. How many teams have blue? Delhi Capitals, Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals, Kolkata Knight Riders and previously Deccan Chargers. Now, how many teams have green in their jersey? None (I have seen an RCB jersey but I don't know why it isn't used; it looks way better). How many teams have pink in their jersey? None (it would have been correct for Rajasthan Royals to have a pink jersey because Pink City, but whatever).
Many teams used to have such good looking jerseys but they ruined it. Deccan Chargers in pure black looked so classy. Kolkata Knight Riders was my favourite team when it had the cool black and gold jersey (sure they came last in Season 2, but at least they looked good while doing so). Pune Warriors India also had such a cool black and white jersey but they changed it to and ugly blue. KKR changed gold to blue because...reasons? Mumbai Indians' jersey used to look like India's jersey until they decided not to let it anymore.
And finally the rankings. Every single time the winner is always CSK or MI. Why can't we let Delhi or Bangalore win for once? Since there are only 8 teams it is so repetitive to see only two teams winning that I finally gave up watching a few years back. Now IPL is all about the Jio and White Hat Jr ads, so I'm not interested in seeing anything which doesn't have any diversity in it. I don't even have a favourite team at this point, although I still support Delhi Capitals since I'm from Delhi. But I do have a bête-noir team: Punjab Kings. The only reason why I'm giving this an above average rating is because that ugly red team has still not won. The day it wins, I will completely give up on IPL.
IPL was fun to watch back when it began, because back then we didn't have any league in our country, and just seeing 8 teams play for our respective cities/states was really refreshing. You know like how we think Simpsons Hit and Run is the perfect open world game until we see GTA? Similarly now we have much bigger leagues like PKL and ISL, which show us more teams and give us more time to cheer for our favourite teams. It is time IPL should also expand. There is no point trying to make a league if the opening match begins from a quarterfinal.
