IPL: Indian Problem League

The IPL in its fourth year has become a young Frankenstein. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will not admit this, but the IPL is playing havoc with the international programmes of smaller boards like those of the West Indies and Sri Lanka, to take a couple of examples.

First there was the Lasith Malinga kerfuffle. The Sri Lankan fast bowler was virtually abandoned by his national board and denied a contract when he was injured. Who can begrudge him the dollars that will buy him and his family security? His knee is injured, he is not getting any younger, and despite the media’s attempts to reduce his case to a club versus country debate, it is much bigger than that. It is a ‘security for self and family’ versus ‘an uncertain future’ debate. Put like that, the choice becomes easy.

It is wonderful to play for the country (although technically, you are playing for the country’s cricket board, which in Sri Lanka’s case is not even a properly elected body). But such forced patriotism does not pay the bills, and why should cricketers not go where the money is? We have no complaints when lawyers and accountants and bank clerks do that.

In the initial years, Malinga’s contract with Mumbai Indians was worth $ 700,000, which is ten times what his second-grade national contract was worth. In the second round, Mumbai retained him, and he had the gratitude to say, “After the injury, nobody looked after me and I was not offered a contract. But thanks to the IPL I didn’t lose anything.”

Thanks  to the Sri Lankan board speaking in different voices at different times, its team makes a tour of England with the leading players getting no time to acclimatise. Despite knowing the dates, it initially gave the players permission to stay on for the IPL till May 22, which would have meant missing the two games in preparation for the first Test commencing on May 26.

Although the spin doctors put out the story that the IPL is ideal preparation for the tour, they have found it difficult to convince anybody that playing 20-over matches under lights in the peak of summer in India with a white ball is all the practice that is needed to play a five-day Test in daylight with a red ball in a country that is emerging from winter.

The boards are still talking dates. When will new skipper Dilshan be released? He wants to go by May 10, but might be asked to stay till May 18.

The question that many ask at this point is: Should the BCCI be concerned so much about world cricket when its brief is Indian cricket? So long as Indian cricket is served, why worry? Countries construct their diplomacy and economic policies on the foundation of self-interest, so why should sport be different?

The answer is simple. As the world champions, the No 1 Test-playing country and with the power and influence that comes with having the richest cricket board in the world with the potential to make themselves and everybody else richer, the BCCI must give up their narrow-minded domestic concerns and focus on cricket the world game. Whatever the compulsions of political entities in the United Nations, sport must follow the beat of a different drum. For that is the reason for its existence — it is artificial and should strive to be idealistic. Also, what goes round will come around as boards that ruled in the past have discovered. India will not be on the top forever, and countries at the top have a responsibility to the game beyond concerns for their own backyard. A parochial attitude is bound to boomerang.

Malinga has retired from Test cricket; Chris Gayle, another leading player, has for some time now expressed the desire to play in the IPL to the exclusion of everything else. The West Indies Cricket Board is in a bigger mess than the Sri Lankan one.

West Indies are playing Pakistan now, but Kieron Pollard, potentially their finest one-day player is playing in the IPL for Mumbai Indians. “It was mutually determined that Pollard would be best served by being allowed to hone his T20 skills in the Indian Premier League which will bring future benefit to West Indies cricket,” his board has declared. Dwayne Bravo, the vice captain in the one-day series where his team is currently trailing 0-3, has been allowed to skip the Test series that follows to play for the Chennai Super Kings.

Cricket boards are paid ten percent of their players’ wages by the IPL so it is profitable for those struggling financially to keep players active in India. For the moment, the Indian board is happy to get No Objection certificates from other boards, but how long before players are allowed to become free agents and make their own choices?

If the IPL, a purely domestic Indian tournament, is not to tread on toes and still retain its uniqueness, two things must be recognised. One, that what is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the game (and vice versa), and two, the time has come to build in a six-week window into the international calendar where no other cricket is played.

The reluctance to have such a window stems from the feeling that if other countries also demand it for their own T20 tournaments, then the ICC will not be able to deny them. But the ICC is a collection of cricket-playing countries, and if the countries can arrive at an informal understanding that they will not confirm any tours in that specific period, then there cannot be a problem.

There is something inherently abhorrent about an international community being held to ransom by a domestic tournament, but in this case it might be wiser to be pragmatic rather than moralistic. Perhaps the IPL might have to increase the pay out, giving the other boards 20 or 25 per cent of the salaries as silence money!

For most players, a six-week romp through the inanities of the IPL will earn them more money than they would make in two or three years otherwise. Already the original spin given to the IPL — that it brought people and nations together, that it fostered a bond between the team and its city, that it was a vehicle for youngsters to rub shoulders and learn from the veterans, that it would be a nursery to discover new talent — has  been overtaken by the truth.

That it is a huge money-making exercise with the bonus that it gives the owners and hangers-on a chance for ego-display. The danger, of course, was always that businessmen and Bollywood actors would act as a super-BCCI, deciding when to release players for international tournaments.

The board’s decision to reduce the matches from 94 to 74 — a sensible move — is a good example of how the IPL has turned into a Frankenstein. It might involve them in court cases involving the two new teams, Pune and Kochi, who now have a reduced opportunity to make money and preen on television. Lack of transparency and accountability has long been the IPL’s problem.

Already, if news reports are to be believed, there is a fall in the television audiences for the IPL. There is a sameness about the matches, and worse, a sameness about the breathless commentary that is turning people off. Cricket needs its variety.

The boards with dollar signs in their eyes must recognise this. The one board, which can make the difference cannot abdicate its responsibility and say ‘let the markets decide.’