Friday, June 6, 2008

The extraordinary leagues

"Cricket is officially played in whites…" Not any more. It’s not just the colors that have invaded the gentleman’s game but cute girls too in teeny-weeny clothes and stylish pom-poms have found a place in the field. IPL has changed every thing. Or at least the myths surrounding the format of the game have definitely got shattered. A whirlwind romance which started on the weekending April 18th ended on a high with the least expected team lifting the trophy!
IPL started more as a necessity than as an invention on its own. The rival ICL needs to be given some credit for its brave foray that brought the BCCI in a huddle to spawn the IPL. It is interesting to note here that the man credited to have spun the magic of IPL, Lalit Modi, had in fact mooted the idea of a city based league almost a decade ago. But as it happened, nothing came out of it. Call it vindication or luck, IPL in all its Eastman colors has catapulted Modi to never before stardom. And Modi’s efforts too have not gone unnoticed. In almost every match Modi could be spotted near the player’s dugout. Even during the presentation ceremony of the final match he acted almost like an attendant handing out the medals and mementos to the BCCI chief who did the formalities of congratulating the players and the officials.
Coming back to ICL, the one factor which made the difference for IPL vis-à-vis ICL was that it was not a rebel. IPL was very much within the system of BCCI and thus had the all important official sanction to convince other cricket boards to allow their players to join the league. The financial might of the board was another factor on which the IPL rode to success. Modi and his team did not just hijack the initial roll of ICL but outdid it in every scope and manner. Whereas the ICL was just happy in offering the novelty of T20 cricket in a city based league format, IPL joined hands with Bollywood to present the ‘manoranjan ka baap’. Two biggest entertainers of the country were synergizing together to dole out 45 days of unrelenting thrill and drama. ICL naturally had to bow out even before the action had started. Subash Chandra might have indeed wished more but ICL failed to dish any, other than the fact that the person so often seen quipping these lines is the owner of one of the most profitable IPL teams.
IPL has created such an aura about itself that to create a space beside it would take a lot from the ICL. Again, since IPL in its success has made the ICL appear such a failed cousin, Bollywood stars might shy away from lending their glamour as also the corporate which would do a lot of thinking before putting its money in the beleaguered league. Also, with the ICC making it difficult for a contracted player to join the rebel league; any possibility, even if remote, of players joining ICL has been further weakened by the lucre on offer from the IPL.
So is this the end of ICL? I don’t think so. Prior to IPL, ICL had two tournaments of T20 cricket and the second tournament was quite a success after the inclusion of Lahore Badshahs in its portfolio of teams. The inclusion of an all-Pakistani outfit in ICL brought back the flavor of an Indo-Pak rivalry to the cricket field. This is something which is missing in the IPL. ICL should look to leverage more form this ‘extra’ and take the competition to a different level. Another idea which has come up is that of the ICL champions playing against the IPL winners. This won’t happen unless ICL gains in stature and repute on a par with IPL, else the only beneficiary in such an arrangement would be ICL, and IPL won’t like to see ICL get attention by riding on the former’s fame. So what should Subash Chandra do? Take the ICL to Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and extend the idea of Lahore Badshahs by having similar Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi outfits. Getting the playing fields could be a problem but just as in India where not all cricket fields are under BCCI, fields in these countries which are not under the control of their respective boards could be used for ICL matches. If required, ICL could even try getting couple of fields from the cricket boards by buying them on lease. Corporate of these countries might also take interest in this venture after having seen the success of IPL. Local celebrities can be pulled into to add color.
ICL should pull out all stops to stand up as tall as IPL otherwise the Darwinian truth might not take long to consume it.

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