From Karbonn Kamaal to Kamran Akmal in 5 days.

The ICC World T20 is much like the IPL's boring cousin. The one that sits in the corner of the room, studying every vacation, refuses to attend that new movie premiering at that theater near you and blinks in genuine confusion every time you bring the topic of Heavy Metal up. His only acquaintance with heavy metal is with that of the chapters in his JD Lee book, the one that he religiously carries around in that backpack of his while yours sits rotting on top of your "touch only once a year" study table.

Any person whose relationship with cricket extends beyond the asylum that is the IPL, knows that the ICC World T20 is for cricket watching ONLY. Firstly, no Lalit Modi (Wait, I think this applies to IPL as well now.). Instead, we get to watch Haroon Lorgat and his extremely unglamorous entourage comprising the ICC top brass look more bored than Sreesanth at a Rocket Physics lecture. This isn't necessarily bad as we can finally rest our eyes after having them exposed to the brighter than white pants of Shilpa Shetty and the whole Vijay Mallya clan.

Secondly, we will be rightly deprived of our daily dose of Citi Moments of Success. No more Strategic Timeouts, which back in the day were called the oh-so-drab Drinks Breaks and weren't sponsored by obscure mobile phone companies you and me hadn't heard of. No DLF Maximums. Only Sixes. It will be a delight to watch a clear sky, one devoid of a certain MRF balloon Blimp, and a complementary annoying commentator.

Indians will finally support India. Regionalism will (hopefully) cease to exist, and Harbhajan will be supported by Bangloreans and Kolkatans alike. Except me, of course.
The whole country(well, I'm being fairly optimistic here when I say whole) will celebrate Hamid Hassan's wicket and cry in agony at Yuvraj's nonexistent innings.

Afghanistan will keep Indians awake at night, and not for the obvious reasons. Once a team wallowing in the pools of obscurity, they have grabbed a flotation device and are now posing a threat to India's round 2 slot.
I'm borrowing a quote from Cricinfo here:
"When I last saw him, he asked me to explain the BMW rule. I said that the first thing he needed to know was that it was called LBW"
Kabir Khan, the Afghanistan coach, reveals what happened when he met the country's president Hamid Karzai
Talk about baby steps. David v. Goliath.

To add to the positives, the tournament also spans only 2 weeks, therefore eliminating the indescribable boredom usually reached somewhere through the IPL. While it may or may not throw up a violent scrap for semi's spots like that witnessed in the IPL, it will nevertheless hold our attention by its mere briefness. Watch out for a humdinger between Zimbabwe and New Zealand.

So while people are debating the whole Commercialism v. Cricket thing and conducting postmortems on "IPLGate"(what is WITH these people and adding -gate at the end of everything?!), the ICC World T20 will be the perfect medicine to cure our Modi OD. Throw off your Madurai Machas jersey, tune your ears to the monotone of Mike Atherton, and pray that Mandira Bedi does not host the preview show. The ICC World T20 is HERE whether we care or not, and Kabir Khan could not be more pleased.