Indian Premier League’s popularity has reached such a level that London Mayor Sadiq Khan is trying to use it as his re-election pitch. He said that he would try and get IPL to London as he believes that Londoners are ‘hungry’ to watch Indian cricketers like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
Speaking at a cricket club in South London, he said, "Surrey are speaking to teams in India and colleagues in the BCCI and IPL.”
Giving a detailed plan of how he would make the sports fraternity of one of the most diverse metropolitans (culturally), more diverse, Khan said, "The first step will be friendlies and exhibition matches. We want to get them going, maybe even this year if we make progress as we are doing with the pandemic. It has to be Covid-safe, of course. We have to bang the drum for our city, and sport is one way to do this."
Previously, there has been just one instance of an IPL team playing in England when Rajasthan Royals played Middlesex in the British Asian Cup in 2009. BCCI, the governing body of cricket in India, hasn’t shown much interest in taking the league out of the country.
Stating that bringing IPL to UK and London is a ‘part of his plan to build a better London after the pandemic’, Khan said, “I know Londoners are hungry to see more of the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant and, with two of the world's greatest cricket grounds in Lord's and The Kia Oval, London is ideally placed to host IPL matches. I know we can see our capital confirmed as the undisputed sporting capital of the world."
London already hosts a variety of games including matches of the National Football League, National Basketball League and WWE. All these are popular sports in the US. Thus it would be interesting to see if cricket could see Sadiq Khan, a British Asian of Pakistani descent, get re-elected as Mayor of the British Capital.