Well, Jio Cinema never fails to stand on anticipation. Seeing their track record of live sports streaming from last year itself, we can be clear that improvements are temporary. This happened in FIFA, and WPL and is now repeating in the IPL as well.
You must already know that Disney+Hotstar used to stream IPL up until last year. Also, Hotstar is fairly habituated to streaming sports. In fact, the USP which helped them dominate in the initial days of the OTT boom is IPL and other cricket streaming rights. Now that the streaming rights have gone to Viacom 18, Jio Cinema is not showing itself capable enough to stream IPL properly.
Regardless, unlike Hotstar, Jio Cinema is free to use. So naturally many more people will watch the IPL than usual. And Jio Cinema must have estimated the crowd, it is not as if the crowd came out of the blue.
Jio Cinema was crashing badly during the streaming of the first match itself. Constant buffering and poor resolution were also a big force to reckon with.
Regardless, we hope that Jio Cinema works on service and not just purchasing rights. That way they can remain relevant amongst the audience.