IPL has overshadowed cricket: Tom Alter

Veteran actor Tom Alter hates stereotypes, and he hates the fact that people still remember his negative roles on screen. “Those negative roles constitute only about 5% of the films I’ve done. I’ve been in about 350 films and I’ve played all types of characters in films,” he asserts. One would expect him to talk some more about films and theatre, but that again, would be stereotypical. So instead, the actor picks up a very unlikely subject – the Indian Premiere League.The IPL is all about greed and revenge“I cannot stand the IPL. It’s my personal opinion, but it’s all about greed and revenge, I feel – revenge against Kapil Dev, because he started the ICL, and greed, because they wanted more and more money. It represents what has gone wrong with cricket. Something very beautiful, like cricket, has become very crass. Some people who are needy have become greedy, and now, we have things in cricket that we don’t need. We have gone way beyond cricket. The IPL is nothing about need, it’s plain greed,” says the actor.Dhoni’s got a `700 crore contract; why does he need to play IPL?“You’ve got people like Dhoni saying, ‘this time the TRPs will be better’. Is he talking about a TV show or cricket? Someone like Dhoni has obviously been told to say such a thing. There were four coloured pages in the newspaper dedicated to the IPL recently, and one small corner had this brilliant test match between the West Indies and Australia, but no one knew about it. Such a small space dedicated to a tremendous effort by the West Indian team... They almost beat Australia and it marks their comeback as a great side. IPL has overshadowed cricket. A great man like Dhoni saying stuff about TRPs is amazing... Woh kya koi journalist hai TV ka? Kya woh reporter hai koi? He’s got a 700 crore contract, why does he need to play in the IPL? The young players coming up, they get paid well even in the Ranji trophy, whereas the money in the IPL is all concocted PR money. Whether you win or lose, you get the money; in the Ranji, you get the money when you win. So it’s all about greed and no one wants to really work,” Alter says.I still want to be like Rajesh KhannaAlter cuts the conversation short (“Don’t get me started on this, I can really go on”), so we then veer to, well, acting. He had said long ago that he would like to be Rajesh Khanna. “I would still like to be Rajesh Khanna. For me he was the hero. He was the ultimate superstar and no one has gotten close to that charm and magnetism. It didn’t last for too long – only five years – but those five years were incredible. Amitabh Bachchan is a great actor, he is supreme and his is a long innings, but his first two successful films had Khanna in them. Even Amitabh admits he owes much of his success to this man.”