The men behind the Indian Premier League insisted yesterday that the international game has nothing to fear from the fledgling Twenty20 competition. Having banked $1.8bn before a ball has been bowled, and seen yesterday’s remarkable player auction enrich the world’s best cricketers to the tune of a further $42m, they can afford to be diplomatic.
The reality of the IPL’s impact on the game is likely to be very different. Watching yesterday’s auction in Mumbai, an unprecedented experiment in which the open market decided selection rather than captains or committees, one fancied cricket will never be the same again.
Shortly before 11am yesterday the owners of the eight franchises filed into the basement of the Hilton Towers for the most significant moment yet in the IPL’s short life. Nine hours of frenetic haggling and outrageous spending later, they emerged having enriched 78 of the game’s elite cricketers beyond their wildest expectations. The world’s most lucrative sporting start-up had put its money where its mouth is.
Presented with the chance to play fantasy cricket with real money the owners, a blend of entrepreneurs, media conglomerates, Bollywood stars and India’s leading corporations, spent like the billionaires many are. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India’s one-day captain and its most bankable star alongside Sachin Tendulkar, was signed for $1.5m for six weeks of Twenty20 cricket this spring. Andrew Symonds, the Australian all-rounder who may not even be available this year, fetched $1.35m. Jacques Kallis, Brett Lee and Sanath Jayasuriya will all receive in excess of $900,000 as will Ishant Sharma, the fast bowler and emerging star of the Indian team whose $950,000 equates to $14,845 for each over he can expect to bowl should Kolkata make it to the final.
Theatrical, wildly hyped and hugely lucrative, the auction was a watershed moment for the IPL and the international game. In the last month, before a ball has been bowled, the league has raised $1.8bn, more than the ICC will receive for its next two World Cups. It has exposed the ICC’s commercial limitations, strained relations between member states, underlined the deficiencies of the overcrowded international calendar and, by offering staggering annual salaries for six weeks’ cricket, threatened the bond between players and national sides.
And it will not stop there. With a billion fans in one of the world’s fastest growing economies the IPL has its eyes on the Premier League and the NFL and aims to challenge for eyeballs and allegiances. In the next month the IPL, backed by an Indian board hugely enriched by the project, will challenge the ICC to create a window in the calendar to accommodate the new competition in future seasons. A key objective will be to enable English players, unavailable this year because of the start of the county championship, to take part.
The IPL will also place the future of the Champions Trophy in doubt by seeking to stage an international club Twenty20 tournament at the same time as the unloved ICC one-day tournament.
As IPL owners were busy changing the face of the game, the ICC member nations were in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the IPL. The ICC’s chief executive, Malcolm Speed, emerged to say the Indian board remained committed to the current structure of international cricket. In the face of the tide of cash washing out of Mumbai his words seemed worthy of Canute.
Lalat Modi, a BCCI vice-president and architect of the IPL, said the international game had nothing to fear. It is clear, however, that it will have to adjust. “If we can co-ordinate the calendar, then there is no reason why we cannot co-exist happily,” he said. “We have already asked the ICC to consider creating a window.”
Modi is confident that his fledgling tournament will one day challenge the world’s biggest sports. “In the short time we have been going we have raised almost $2bn in revenue. I see no reason why, with a billion people in India alone who are cricket crazy, that this should not become a challenge to other sports around the world, not to mention reviving interest in cricket.”
Given the IPL’s attributes, it is hard to challenge his logic. It has the world’s best players, the know-how of owners including Vijay Mallya, owner of the Force India formula one team, and an invaluable sprinkling of Bollywood glamour. Nobody yet knows how good the cricket will be but the hype will be world-class. Yesterday’s auction gripped the country.
Manoj Badale, the British-based owner of the Jaipur franchise who made Shane Warne his highest-profile signing, is convinced it will be a success. “If you take the long view over five to 10 years, then there is no question that this can be established as one of the major sporting competitions in the world,” he said. Few who watched the competition take its formative steps in Mumbai this week will doubt it.
sport.guardian.co.uk
Tags: cricket,
ipl