FORGIVE me if I’ve sounded a little confused in commentary lately, you see I’ve been living in three places at once.

My weekends have been in Melbourne calling footy as usual, but my weekdays have been spent in a Sydney hotel sleeping off my nights ‘in India’.

Yes, I’ve been hosting the Channel Ten cricket coverage of the inaugural Indian Premier League, which finished in thrilling fashion early on Monday morning with another Shane Warne-inspired triumph.

While the hours of play may have meant the IPL had little impact in Australia, it was a massive success in India and turned out to be a fascinating exercise to witness.

It was big business meets Bollywood, with a bit of cricket thrown in. But the contest turned out to be surprisingly fierce, and it was interesting to see pure cricket elements prevail as the tournament progressed.

There is no doubt Warne took an AFL approach as he captain-coached the Rajasthan Royals to a surprise victory.

Pre-tournament expectations were low for the Royals, but drawing partly on his own football experiences as a junior player and high-profile associate at St Kilda, Warne turned a group of largely unknown and relatively low-paid players into the competition champions.

In the final Warne delayed the start of the match slightly by holding the Royals back in the rooms for a final pep talk, and when they came running onto the field I almost expected them to break through a banner.

The spirit he engendered into the group in such a short period of time was inspirational to see.

While the Royals were definitely more skilful than had been anticipated, they also had the most intensity and desire. These attributes are almost an obsession of former St Kilda coach, and now SEN commentator Grant Thomas.

Who could forget his coaching mantra of "100 per cent effort, 100 per cent of the time".

On Saturday we chatted on radio with Adelaide coach Neil Craig, who believes the intensity levels have jumped significantly in the AFL in the past month. This has manifested in the enormous increase in tackling. It is amazing that something that has been around as long as the tackle suddenly seems so crucial to victory.

The pace of the evolution of our game is astounding.

With this in mind it was interesting to analyse the IPL, where bat dominated ball in the early matches as players threw caution to the wind and simply swung at everything.

But as the tournament progressed the bowlers delivered more variation with bouncers and slower balls, and the batsmen suddenly became more conscious of the need for success of themselves and the team. The scores plummeted.

This scoring dip reminded me of the prevalence of defence in recent years in the AFL.

Thanks to the rule changes and Geelong’s success, it is now so much more about attack – even the Swans are kicking big bags of goals. I expect this attitude to also return to the IPL in the future.

There were other interesting parallels for the footy fan to see in the running of the IPL.

Recruiting and list management were crucial, with the teams who were the smartest at auction prevailing over those who threw the big bucks at the obvious.

Good administration is vital to running a successful club. The IPL has already seen the axing of one club chief executive and there will no doubt be more to follow.

The IPL also reiterated the joy of watching rising young talent – and the ability of some to perform immediately.

As our AFL clubs continue to pursue youth, it was great to watch the performance of many of the young Indian players who benefited from the opportunity of playing with some of the world’s greats.

This will give the Indian national team an enormous advantage in the future.

It also made me think that with the massive emphasis on player development now in the AFL, maybe we can cope with the influx of two more teams without the playing standard diminishing too much.

The last six weeks have been tough with my body-clock struggling to cope with the change in sleeping hours, and my brain struggling to adjust to the change in sports.

I spent some time in Sydney with some current and former test players who taught me a little bit about the culture in India.

They have promised to take me to a game over there and see sporting passion like no where else in the world. Of course I would love to take them up on the offer, but then I can just stay at home and go to a Collingwood match.

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL