In the early years of the Indian Premier League, besides the scrutiny by cricket purists and connoisseurs of the long form, social scientists turned their gaze to the league too. One of them was sceptical about the chances of franchise teams building local identity bonds with the cities or regions whose names they bore.
This was a reasonable doubt – something that didn’t question the popularity of the event, but which noted that the local branding was attuned to a pan-India following, even a global one. One way in which teams addressed this challenge was the home-and-away format, meaning teams had a “home city” as their base and venue for a certain number of matches. Through this, teams tried to strike a local connect beyond the tokenism of merely using the names of certain places.
