The IPL might be bigger but the PSL has all the major drama

With the IPL in full flow, it might feel a little "off Broadway" to be extolling the virtues of the PSL - but bear with us. Since they are now being played in a roughly similar window, it's impossible to avoid comparison; and rather like in the soap-opera heyday of Eastenders (BBC) versus Coronation Street (ITV), it's usually a case of picking one or the other. (Unless you wound up being a household that watched Emmerdale, but let's not go there.) Of course, the IPL has the money, the eyeballs, and the lion's share of international talent (not to mention their 15-year-old wunderkind). We know what we are getting here. The scores will be high, the games will be close. The tamasha will swirl on and off the field for what feels like months. Faf du Plessis will whisper sweet commentary nothings into your ear. And there is little or no chance of the sets falling apart on camera, Crossroads-style.

But the PSL has drama of a different kind. The sort of cannot-be-scripted madness that saw white balls turn pink after being rubbed on the players' kit (which resulted in a hilariously overblown "takedown" of the PSL by Indian website First Post). The basic chicanery of Fakhar Zaman's attempt at ball-tampering. The bizarre storyline of Karachi Kings captain David Warner being allowed to fly home mid-tournament and getting done for drink-driving (then coming back to the PSL and immediately making a golden duck). The bans for players who break contracts - something copied from the IPL, but which the PSL engages in with far greater gusto.

Even the twee promotional images featuring players reading from mocked-up books about the competition - "Defending The Crown" or "Sultanat 101, Crash Course" - are somehow kind of endearing. This is a content-rich environment. Who really cares where Babar Azam is batting and what his strike rate is, anyway?

And, as Adam Zampa has astutely pointed out, the length of the PSL (five-and-a-bit weeks) is right in the sweet spot for franchise T20 leagues. Plus, they don't waste time reviewing wides. In a format that is increasingly bland, wallpapered with the same team names, logos and liveries, the PSL is the soap-sudsy entertainment we need. Dive in.

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Time to check in on English Test cricket, which was last seen slurring its words and looking for a way back to the team hotel in the small hours of the southern summer. We're at that point in the cycle where England try to work out a) why they always get dumped on in Australia, and b) how to stop it happening again. Having tried sacking the captain and coach (2006-07), sacking the coach but not the captain (2013-14), and sacking the entire management (2021-22), this time the ECB opted for the revolutionary approach of not sacking anyone at all. Which is sort of what they did in 2002-03 and 2017-18, too. "Moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do," said ECB chief executive Richard Gould, after taking the easy (and cheap) option of doing nothing. We might not have to wait four years to see how successful the approach is.

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The Light Roller can sympathise with Beyers Swanepoel. When we're done scribbling, we hit send on the email, shut the laptop and leave someone else to clean up the mess. Likewise, Beyers clearly thought he'd done his bit with a few overs left in the South Africa domestic one-day cup final: batting, tick; bowling, tick. Fielding? That's what subs are for… A few weeks on, Swanepoel's decision to get an early flight to the UK for his county stint with Worcestershire has resulted in losing his Lions contract, being disciplined by CSA, and missing the first two rounds of the County Championship while awaiting the NOC that he, erm, forgot to get signed before bunking off early. They say there's only two kinds of leave in cricket - and this one has to go in the file marked "bad".

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