I have to say I agree with this one. The game of cricket is in itself so rich and layered that we don't need to resort to such gimmicks and blindly follow the American way of commercializing sport. Selling the game as B-Grade entertainment is certainly not the way. The following blog post was posted originally on Cricinfo's surfer.
The IPL's reliance on foreign cheerleaders reinforces unsavoury Indian stereotypes about sex and women, writes Kanishk Tharoor in the Guardian.
I'm not offended by cheerleading, more bored by it. In any grown-up context, it offers a dispiriting definition of both leadership and cheer. Many cricket fans, including myself, would be happy to see the (metaphorical) back of these cheerleaders. Their twists and pumps add nothing to what is, in truth, a wonderful sporting spectacle. They are a reminder of the ocean of inanities that commercial modernity promises our lives, drowning all occasions in froth. First the fall from grace, then the flood. (Source : The Guardian)
If cheerleaders were banned, i wud not have had their company in my flight from Blr to Mumbai
On the contrary, Infinity, it was your company that they had and not the other way round and an unwanted one at that. :P
I agree with the "why foreigners" bit, but frankly, when I watched the game in the stadium in IPL 1, the cheerleaders added some lovely color and cheerfulness to the atmosphere between every over... and after every boundary and wicket. In the stadium, they are too far away to really appear anything like vulgar or cheap!