God's Own Country may not get bowled over. Lord of the Indian Premier League, Lalit Modi has deigned that from 2011, Kerala will also be part of the IPL, with the Kochi IPL team. Someone please ask if Modi knew Onam is round the corner and he thought padding up the Malayalees would be the best Onam gift to give.

Say Kochi to any cricket fan outside Kerala and he is likely to say Sreesanth, since the temperamental speedster has been the only cricketer from Kerala to be some kind of a success story among the men in blue. Though Sree before he went to play country cricket, was seen more at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore than in the backwaters of Kochi, making him also an expatriate, just like most Malayalees.

But what Modi has done in one stroke is score a winning goal against the game of football, which is like religion in Kerala. This is one state, where at virtually every ground, you will find young boys playing football instead of cricket. Travel to the northern part of Kerala, to the Malabar region and you would know what fanatacism for a sport is all about. Men become little boys as they passionately follow the fortunes of a Manchester United to Real Madrid to our own East Bengal and Mohan Bagan.

To call a Malayalee crazy about football would be an understatement. At World Cup time, he puts up flags of all soccer playing nations in his locality and towns and villages get converted into Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy, England camps. The Malayalee is bothered about every little intricacy of the world's most popular sport. "Why do they call it soccer? It should be called only football,'' one of them told me in Malappuram, where I was travelling during the last Soccer World Cup. Oops, football.

Much before India and Modi embraced 20-20, the Malayalee had figured out a shorter version of football. Keralites play the 7-a-side football in every little green patch they can find. There are clubs that train their boys to go all out to win the Sunday matches and pay them well too. By football's standards, I mean. Not Modi's.

The passion and love for the game is so much that Kerala's most famous footballer, I.M.Vijayan prefers to play on the maidan in Thrissur rather than act in Tamil films in Chennai, where his rugged looks and athletic body make him a favourite for playing the villain. But Vijayan prefers to be a hero back home, even if it means sacrificing some zeros in his bank balance. Truly the `black pearl of Indian football'.

In IPL and in Modi's dream and vision to see major cities owning a T20 cricket team, I see the deathknell of football.

The glimmer of hope may be a star, the biggest of them all in Kerala, Mohanlal. The versatile actor at one time, used to play both football and cricket. Lal used to play for a local cricket team called `City Cricketers' along with director Priyadarshan. The actor-director duo reportedly want the Kerala IPL team to sport the same name and apparently want to own it as well.

That could put them in direct competition with Salman Khan who may pitch for Kochi if his hope to own the Nagpur 'Orange' team turns sour.

But while every Malayalee would love to see a great contest between bat and ball, he would not want it to be a case of 'football's loss is cricket's gain'. His heart would bleed if the clubs promoting football which abound in every town of Kerala, find fewer boys turning up on the ground. The Kochi IPL franchisee, whether it is a Lal or a Salman, should ideally promote both cricket and football. Make it all-inclusive.

That would be really hitting a sixer, instead of scoring a self-goal.