Why should fans care what happens off-field?

It’s a worrying time for the Indian cricket fan. Just when we thought we had this great thing going, with money and talent pouring into the game, everything threatens to unravel.

The last time the credibility of the game came under such pressure was the match-fixing scandal in the late nineties. Once it became apparent that extraneous factors were influencing the game, it became hard for fans to get excited about what went on in the field, and every run-out or dropped catch was viewed with
suspicion.

It’s the same now, with the Tharoor-Modi row drawing attention to a whole slew of questionable practices in the running of the Indian Premier League.

But why should that matter to the fan?

Conflict of interest
Let’s take one example of just why it does matter a great deal how the game is run. The owner of IPL’s Chennai franchise is N Srinivasan, who is also the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which in turn is the governing body for the IPL. So here’s a situation where the franchisee is also playing the role of regulator — a clear conflict of interest.

It doesn’t stop there. Chairman of selectors Krishnamachari Srikkanth is the brand ambassador for the Chennai franchise. So when Murali Vijay and S Badrinath from Chennai get into the Test side ahead of others with internationally proven credentials, like Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina, we’re naturally going to look askance at it — just like we did at that run-out or dropped catch in the heyday of match-fixing.

For all you know, Srikkanth is way above any such partiality, but it’s equally important to be seen to be impartial so that the Indian team has the credibility to continue to attract its huge fan following. Because ultimately it is that obsession with cricket in India that pulls in the TV eyeballs, the sponsors, and all the moolah.
For decades, except for a brief hiatus in one-day cricket, there was precious little to show for the massive fan base and pool of talent in the country. And this certainly had a lot to do with the way Indian cricket was managed.

Infrastructure was pathetic in spite of the board’s riches, selection was brazenly biased, and young talent was thwarted at one level after another. It’s little wonder that India was easily bullied both on and off the field.

For years, Indian players went to the English county circuit to make a few bucks, because they earned peanuts from the game back home. Nobody ever paid much heed to marketing India as a base for a cricket circuit.

Wake-up calls
It’s T20 that finally brought the BCCI out of its slumber. The first wake-up call was the inaugural T20 World Cup which most people looked at as no more than an aside, a tamasha. You can gauge this from the fact that all the experienced Indian players, including Sachin Tendulkar, were given a rest. And, until the World Cup, India had played just one T20 international, unlike countries such as South Africa and England which had already cottoned on to it.

As it happened, the absence of experienced players proved a blessing for a rash of new talent who had got little exposure until then. When India cut a sorry figure at the one-day world cup, the then chairman of selectors had trotted out the excuse that hardly any new talent of any worth was emerging. That soon became a bit of a joke, as one new player after another pulled off amazing feats at the T20 World Cup and after: Rohit Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, Robin Uthappa, and Gautam Gambhir, not to mention the leadership skills of MS Dhoni.

Even then, it’s likely that Indian cricket might have meandered along at a ‘Hindu rate’ if not for another wake-up call which jolted BCCI in its most sensitive spots: money and power.

It was really the launch of the Indian Cricket League independently of the BCCI that made Pawar and co. dust off their old files of proposals and come up with the Indian Premier League.

It was an idea whose time had in fact become overdue. And with top-notch international talent on view, complemented by exciting new local talent whom we otherwise hardly ever get to view or assess, it was a sure-shot winner.

Not just entertainment
The three-hour format was perfect for TV entertainment, and whatever misgivings franchisees had last year in the midst of a global recession quickly evaporated when Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra paid $15.4 million for an 11.7 per cent stake in Rajasthan Royals — twice the initial valuation of the franchise. The whopping $703 million bid for the two new franchises this year settled the argument for good — business sees cricketainment in India as sustainable and highly profitable.

Even though we hear of this franchise or that still being in the red, and of how many years it will take for the new franchises to break even and start making profits, all that is notional. It’s clear from the value of the bids for the new franchises, as well as the sale of the Rajasthan stake, that in terms of valuation, the franchises stand to double and treble in value in a matter of two or three years — and that’s in addition to all the income from their share of TV ad revenue, gate collections, and other sponsorship and advertising deals.

But what does all this do for the game itself, and the fan? T20 cricket is often dismissed as being ‘mostly entertainment’. Firstly, there’s nothing wrong in its being entertaining — all professional sports have that as a key goal.

Secondly, the exploits of Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals, with less than half the strength of teams like Bangalore, makes it obvious that this format of the game is no less intriguing in its tactical and strategic aspects. In fact, in Tests and one-dayers, captains, coaches and players can get away with periods of lazy thinking, but T20 forces them to think about each one of the 120 balls in an innings. Besides, the absence of nationalist jingoism allows fans to relax and truly appreciate the talents of a Hayden or a Symonds, not just Sachin and Sehwag.

Of course there are a lot of things wrong with the IPL, like the ridiculous 470 runs scored in 40 overs on a dead Chennai pitch, or the sight of first Tendulkar, and then Gambhir struggling to breathe in the heat and humidity of a midsummer night, but those are details that will probably get sorted out as we go along.
showcase for talent

For Indian cricket, the best thing — apart from the entertainment — is the great incentive it provides for new talent. Even though arbitrary caps have been placed on players’ earnings, which claimed a victim in Ravindra Jadeja, the fact remains that no cricket player had ever dreamed of making so much money from the sport — except perhaps a Sachin Tendulkar. Now the moolah is getting spread around much more widely and that can only drive more youngsters to work hard at their game. You can see it in the desperation to make it to the semi-finals next week.

Apart from the money, this showcase for talent is going to make it harder and harder to keep the good players out. Although the second highest wicket-taker in the current season, Amit Mishra, finds himself inexplicably dropped from the Indian team for the T20 World Cup, and the exploits of Robin Uthappa have been ignored, the team still mostly reflects current form and there are no obvious bad choices.

Indian cricket fans and players have really never had it so good. That’s why it is imperative that the greed and lust of a few should not be allowed to play spoilsport for the millions. For that, we require basic management and regulation that ensures transparency, no conflicts of interest and rules that are seen to be fair.

The way that the IPL has taken off makes it a stretch to claim that it needs any marketing genius to sell the game to Indian fans and sponsors. It’s not just cricket - every sport with any following in India is targeting the audience here, from Formula 1 to football.
What you do need, more than a few individuals with extraordinary powers, is a credible framework in which the game can flourish. Is that important, in a country where we’re dealing with such serious issues as terrorism, Naxalism and poverty? Well, it’s easy to underestimate what ports can do to uplift the mood of the people as well as Brand India.