A salesman at the company in which I work nearly flattened the poor secretary in his rush to spread the gospel.
"The IPL's coming here! We've got the IPL!" he gushed. True enough, a switch to Sky was met by the breaking news. You'd thought we were back in 1969 and man was landing on the moon.
A press conference was hastily convened in Johannesburg and broadcast live on SuperSport. While England had started the day as "70% likely" to be given the Twenty20 event to stage, we saw a fresh-looking IPL commissioner, Lalit Modi, staring into the cameras. "I arrived here this morning," he said, and in an instant you knew the media were already around 24 hours behind the news.
For he would have known before boarding the plane to South Africa that the deal had been struck.
A mail from a trusted colleague in London later that day said, "no surprise it's gone to South Africa, the place is going to be a magnet for sports competitions and last-minute conferences and rescheduling for the next 18 months, owing to the 2010 World Cup".
Actually, news of the IPL moving came as some welcome relief. There was pretty much nothing of interest the whole week, very little in the way of live sport until Friday's Hong Kong Sevens, and then the next round of Super 14, and the Australian Grand Prix qualifying to spice things up.
So, what can we expect from the IPL? In a word, Bollywood. Lots of fireworks, noise, activity, cash and frenetic action.
The appetite was whet with last year's inaugural competition and it's now an unashamed walking cash-cow. And who can blame the cricketers themselves for wanting a piece of the action?
But the money extends beyond the players and the huge entourages. It's said that a typical franchise numbers some 200 people, once all the players, sponsors, owners, hangers-on and beautiful women have been added.
The big payouts and the obscene amounts of money bandied about don't stop there though. Even the TV commentators are set to hit the jackpot and, also this past week, I had one such individual, who shall remain nameless email to say he had "unfortunately not cracked the nod for the commentary teams".
The hand-picked IPL commentary team includes three South Africans, though not one "100 percent South African".
Pommie Mbangwa played cricket for Zimbabwe before becoming a fixture as a SuperSport anchor, Kepler Wessels played for Australia and South Africa, while Robin Jackman represented England at Test level before settling in Cape Town.
They are the three "home products", but spare a thought for someone like Daryll Cullinan who has come on strongly.
Elsewhere, there is an understandably Asian feel considering most of the money and the audience is from India, in Ravi Shastri, L Sivaramakrishnan, Sunil Gavaskar, Arun Lal, Ramiz Raja, Ranjit Fernando and Abbas Ali Baig.
Zimbabwean Alastair Campbell, New Zealanders Danny Morrison, Simon Doull and Jeremey Coney and Australia's Greg Blewett make up the numbers.
As the IPL shows, money talks in sport. And it's no different with the best golfer we have ever seen.
Tiger Woods is asking for an appearance fee of $3-million for making a year-end trip to Australia.
He has defended the amount by saying that all the top professionals are paid to tee up. It's a huge gamble by the organisers of November's Australian Masters, who now need to talk to TV executives and sponsors to recoup their outlay. Woods went on to say, "I've always wanted to get down there and play more in the Aussie sandbelt because that is my favourite area to play." Of course it is, Tiger.
You could have seen from a mile out that Benni McCarthy wasn't going to be available for Bafana Bafana's friendlies against Norway and Portugal as coach Joel Santana starts finetuning his plans for the run-in to the 2010 World Cup.
McCarthy might have played for South Africa at every level and claims to be the innocent one in the never-ending soap opera that he inspires, but his "injury" this past week seemed only too predictable.
With Blackburn fighting to stave of relegation, Sam Allardyce needs his players fresh for the big matches coming up. It's that whole club-versus-country debate. But, the international fixtures have been approved by Fifa and the World Cup is also a Fifa-organised event.
The time has now come for Santana to tell McCarthy enough is enough. The player has experienced the atmosphere of a World Cup and now's the time to invest in a younger player at his expense. South Africa aren't going to win the World Cup; in fact they will do well to survive the first round, which is why it would be best now if the coach was planning for 2010 with 2014 also in his sights.
"The IPL's coming here! We've got the IPL!" he gushed. True enough, a switch to Sky was met by the breaking news. You'd thought we were back in 1969 and man was landing on the moon.
A press conference was hastily convened in Johannesburg and broadcast live on SuperSport. While England had started the day as "70% likely" to be given the Twenty20 event to stage, we saw a fresh-looking IPL commissioner, Lalit Modi, staring into the cameras. "I arrived here this morning," he said, and in an instant you knew the media were already around 24 hours behind the news.
For he would have known before boarding the plane to South Africa that the deal had been struck.
A mail from a trusted colleague in London later that day said, "no surprise it's gone to South Africa, the place is going to be a magnet for sports competitions and last-minute conferences and rescheduling for the next 18 months, owing to the 2010 World Cup".
Actually, news of the IPL moving came as some welcome relief. There was pretty much nothing of interest the whole week, very little in the way of live sport until Friday's Hong Kong Sevens, and then the next round of Super 14, and the Australian Grand Prix qualifying to spice things up.
So, what can we expect from the IPL? In a word, Bollywood. Lots of fireworks, noise, activity, cash and frenetic action.
The appetite was whet with last year's inaugural competition and it's now an unashamed walking cash-cow. And who can blame the cricketers themselves for wanting a piece of the action?
But the money extends beyond the players and the huge entourages. It's said that a typical franchise numbers some 200 people, once all the players, sponsors, owners, hangers-on and beautiful women have been added.
The big payouts and the obscene amounts of money bandied about don't stop there though. Even the TV commentators are set to hit the jackpot and, also this past week, I had one such individual, who shall remain nameless email to say he had "unfortunately not cracked the nod for the commentary teams".
The hand-picked IPL commentary team includes three South Africans, though not one "100 percent South African".
Pommie Mbangwa played cricket for Zimbabwe before becoming a fixture as a SuperSport anchor, Kepler Wessels played for Australia and South Africa, while Robin Jackman represented England at Test level before settling in Cape Town.
They are the three "home products", but spare a thought for someone like Daryll Cullinan who has come on strongly.
Elsewhere, there is an understandably Asian feel considering most of the money and the audience is from India, in Ravi Shastri, L Sivaramakrishnan, Sunil Gavaskar, Arun Lal, Ramiz Raja, Ranjit Fernando and Abbas Ali Baig.
Zimbabwean Alastair Campbell, New Zealanders Danny Morrison, Simon Doull and Jeremey Coney and Australia's Greg Blewett make up the numbers.
As the IPL shows, money talks in sport. And it's no different with the best golfer we have ever seen.
Tiger Woods is asking for an appearance fee of $3-million for making a year-end trip to Australia.
He has defended the amount by saying that all the top professionals are paid to tee up. It's a huge gamble by the organisers of November's Australian Masters, who now need to talk to TV executives and sponsors to recoup their outlay. Woods went on to say, "I've always wanted to get down there and play more in the Aussie sandbelt because that is my favourite area to play." Of course it is, Tiger.
You could have seen from a mile out that Benni McCarthy wasn't going to be available for Bafana Bafana's friendlies against Norway and Portugal as coach Joel Santana starts finetuning his plans for the run-in to the 2010 World Cup.
McCarthy might have played for South Africa at every level and claims to be the innocent one in the never-ending soap opera that he inspires, but his "injury" this past week seemed only too predictable.
With Blackburn fighting to stave of relegation, Sam Allardyce needs his players fresh for the big matches coming up. It's that whole club-versus-country debate. But, the international fixtures have been approved by Fifa and the World Cup is also a Fifa-organised event.
The time has now come for Santana to tell McCarthy enough is enough. The player has experienced the atmosphere of a World Cup and now's the time to invest in a younger player at his expense. South Africa aren't going to win the World Cup; in fact they will do well to survive the first round, which is why it would be best now if the coach was planning for 2010 with 2014 also in his sights.
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