Kings, royals and supers: IPL’s regal delusion in scorching summer

When Banda district in UP is making a distinctive record of the hottest city in the world since last three days and the India Meteorological Department is screaming its heatwave advisory at the top — with red alerts, “stay indoors after 11 am,” “hydrate or perish”—something miraculous happens. Not only boys are playing cricket but millions of Indians are ignoring the warning, smear sunscreen, and sprinting towards stadiums where the mercury is flirting dangerously at 45° with centigrade.

Why? Because the Indian Premier League of cricket, and like all these years, the teams are not merely playing cricket. They are reigning.

Embracing the most expensive soap opera on grass, where the cast includes Chennai Super Kings, Rajasthan Royals, Punjab Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kolkata Knight Riders, Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans, crowds go mad.

Gone are the modest, almost self-effacing names of yesteryear’s global clubs. No more “Real” Madrid (as in royal but pretending to be real), no Manchester United, Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayern Munich or FC Barcelona—clubs that wore their cities or simple adjectives like badges of honour. American basketball gave us the Atlanta hawks, Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks—teams named after socks, animals and 19th-century Dutch settlers. Even the Los Angeles Lakers once referred to the lakes that no longer exist in LA. Humble, rooted, occasionally ridiculous, but never delusional about their own grandeur.

IPL, bless its billionaire heart, went full monarchy. We have Kings who are not royal, Royals who are not kings, Supers who are definitely not modest, Knights who ride (presumably Mercedes in traffic), Giants who are super, and Challengers who are royal. It is as if the franchise owners sat in a boardroom and asked, “How do we make eleven men in coloured jerseys sound like they descended from the Mughal courts, while getting auctioned for crores.” The answer — slap a crown on it and call it strategy.

The money, of course, explains everything. The IPL’s valuation now hovers near $19 Billion. That is not a league; that is a small nation’s GDP wearing pads. When you auction players like vintage wine and broadcast rights like prime real estate, modesty feels like false advertising. “United” sounds too socialist. “City” too municipal. “Super Kings” and “Royals,” however, scream ROI. As one anonymous franchise owner reportedly quipped in the auction room, “We are not selling cricket. We are selling the fantasy of owning a kingdom for three hours.”

Yet the real punchline arrives with the calendar. The league is deliberately scheduled when the rest of India is debating whether to melt or evaporate. Labourers on construction sites are fainting under tin roofs; firefighters are racing from one blaze to another; traffic policemen are standing on melting asphalt. Meanwhile, millionaires in helmets are batting in what feels like a preheated tandoor, cheered on by 50,000 fans who have paid premium prices to sit in the same furnace.

The irony is thicker than Mumbai humidity. While the common man is told to avoid the sun, the common man is also the one filling stadiums and TRPs, happily paying to watch millionaires sweat for his entertainment. It is the ultimate 21st-century trade-off; the poor man’s escape from heat is watching the rich man endure it on high-definition television. Air-conditioners stay off at home because the electricity bill can wait, but the stadium lights must stay on. The labourer who cannot afford a day off still finds joy in Vaibhav Suryavanshi pulling a short ball for six while the sun tries to cook everyone equally.

This is not mere sport; it is modern India’s favourite contradiction. We celebrate excess while preaching restraint. We romanticise “spirit of the game” while auctioning human beings like polo ponies. We warn against heat stress and then organise the world’s richest T20 league in the middle of it. The stadiums become cathedrals of controlled madness—where heat strokes are measured in sixes and the only acceptable casualty is a dropped catch; or if Dhoni getting dropped out from CSK.

And yet, for all the regal arrogance and climatic insanity, something strangely beautiful happens. For two months, caste, creed, language and politics dissolve into one collective roar. The chaiwallah in Kanpur and the software engineer in Bengaluru chant the same team’s name. The labourer who spent the day dodging sunstroke finds solace in the fact that even kings must bat on a sticky wicket. As the great cricket romantic Neville Cardus might have said if he had lived to see the IPL: “Cricket was once a game. Now it is a fever—and we are all delirious.”

So here we are, in the summer of 2026, watching Super Kings defend their throne while the real kings—the ordinary Indians—sit glued to screens, praying the power doesn’t fail. It is craziness, yes. It is arrogance, perhaps. But it is also the new norm: entertainment as defiance, sport as spectacle, and cricket as the only thing hotter than the Indian summer itself.

In the end, the names say it all. Once upon a time, teams united. Now they reign and regale, with the princess like Prity, Nita and Juhi watching games. And we, the loyal subjects, wouldn’t have it any other way—even if it means watching the coronation in oval shape ovens.