The year was 2007. India had made an early exit from the 50 over world cup. The angst had given birth to a rebel league called the Indian Cricket League (ICL) led by Kapil Dev and a few others, after a quarrel with the BCCI for its totalitarian methods of running cricket in India. Cricket in India was in the middle of a crisis. The members of the ICL were expelled from being part of any official cricketing activities conducted by the BCCI. BCCI wouldn't in any way give room for a parallel power centre in the sport. BCCI hadn't permitted them to use any of its grounds, had barred the players participating in the league to play any competitive cricket in India's cricketing circuit. The ICL had to contend with a few senior players who were on the cusp of retirement who wanted to make some quick money. The ICL was always a sinking ship. But the ICL was the first sign of frustration from an anti-establishment's perspective about the lack of results from its national team.
BCCI had to come up with something to keep the fans interested and stay invested in cricket. 2007 was also the year, when the T20 format was first being tried and tested in an international tournament. India hadn't seen the merit of the format yet. They hardly believed it would be successful and popular, so much so that the BCCI held back its senior players for the tournament after a long tour to England. BCCI wasn't going to spend its most popular and senior resources for a start-up tournament which had hardly gathered the public's eye.
BCCI had selected and sent a national side whose average age was in the mid 20s for the inaugural world cup in South Africa. A rookie captain had the responsibility to help make the Indian public forget the nightmare that the 50 over world cup was a few months ago. The Indian team, as a reflection of their age and experience, played carefree cricket, which as a blessing in disguise happened to be what the format needed. They ended up landing a trophy in their hands for their exuberance at the end of it all. Another team which was knocked out of the 50 over world cup in the first round, had come within just a hit away from the trophy. These two countries happened to contribute to over 50% of the cricketing fan base of the world. The popularity of T20 rocketed with the success of the two of biggest countries playing the sport. T20 cricket wasn't going anywhere for a while. It was here to stay; even at times coming close to eliminating one of the other two formats.
T20 was quick; a 3-4 hour game-time format which had all the emotions, the highs, the lows happening in a rush; a perfect recipe for this impatient generation. With T20 format, the cricket administrators had an equivalent and alternate product to offer to woo back the younger audience from the fast paced football/soccer games. The stage was set to commercialise and juice out this money-spinning format.
The BCCI, after the ICL debacle, couldn't stay blind-folded to this format anymore. It just had to use the ICL idea and do a better packaging of what the ICL had done. The time was right; Getting richer, using the gaining popularity of the format and the recent success its players had with it, was a no-brainer.
The IPL was born. BCCI had the money with the investors and the fan base to go big. 8 teams were auctioned out for a few billion dollars each for a period of 10 years. The franchises had to comply with the IPL governing council and its rules. The franchises had to pay a franchise fee, auction for players with a purse cap. 14 games each for a team in a season with 7 home and 7 away games. They would keep 50% of the revenues from the tickets sales in the home ground, use their recruited players to make big sponsorship deals and also get a huge prize money even by making it just to the play offs. Even with all this, an average franchise team had to wait for a good five to six seasons to break even and then go on to become profitable; such was the high bid they had to make to get an IPL team. Popular film and business personalities would buy teams and add to the star value of the league. Teams brought in the who's-who of the movie industry to grab eye-balls during each match. Cricket had never been more commercialised before. IPL had created the perfect match between two of India's most popular industries - Cricket and Bollywood.
The players were a happy bunch. What somebody would have got by playing a test match for 5 days together was made to seem like peanuts as compared to their paycheques in the IPL. Statistics say that the salary for a few high priced players ended up working to be a few crores for each run they scores or each wicket they took. Add to these remunerative perks, the players were given an environment to hob-nob with the best players for the foreign countries, learning and practising with them. The learning the newcomers got out of the playing experience in front of packed houses was immense.
Indian Cricket, with IPL, was talking numbers and salaries in terms of millions already. An odd word or two spread in the air comparing the league's salaries to the lucrative leagues in America with Baseball and England with Football. It soon became among the top 10 followed sporting events in a calendar year in the world.
Every minute of the league was turned into bucks. Into the second season, two strategic timeouts of two and half minutes each was introduced during each innings more to squeeze in advertising revenue more than for the teams to discuss strategy. The advertising space was hot-selling; as early as the 4th season, every 10 seconds of ad-time in TV was sold for four hundred thousand Indian Rupees. The TV rights of the matches were tendered out to media houses for huge sums of money across satellite all across the world and internet. IPL made cricket, first a business and then a sport.
A player would play for his nation team the previous night and fly out the same day, travel 24 hours from the caribbean to India to reach in time for his IPL team's match the following day. The IPL team owner could afford all this cost of transporting a player up and down just for the player to play that crucial IPL match for his team and still make up for it in terms of revenue. IPL had definitely by then changed cricket forever. IPL made India and cricket to dream bigger and bigger.
By the time IPL entered into its 5th season, almost all the other test-cricket playing nations had a IPL-like T20 league tournament of their own. There was a need to not be left behind in this rapid metamorphosis of cricket. This has now made it possible for players to make more than just a living by playing for different clubs from different nations across the calendar year and be fully engaged, thus, bringing up the country versus club debate.
From a purely sporting point of view, these leagues have nevertheless contributed to the advancements in the quality of cricket played and the skill-level of the players.
With increased popularity and money every year, there grew the possibility of corruption and money laundering in the league. IPL has seen it all in this spectrum too. From betting, to spot-fixing, to arrests to conflict of interests, there has been a dampener every now and then. Where there is money and fame to be had, there sure is trouble as well. The average cricket fan who loves the sport has to be promised more transparency and accountability than there is now in the IPL to keep him interested in the brand. That is the only way that the brand image can continue to prosper and not go down-hill.
As we come to end of the 10 seasons of IPL, not all team owners have made money and prospered, yet I reckon they have all achieved their purpose. A few owners have sold out with good valuations to new-owners; some others understand the long gestation time it takes for the invested money to reap its benefits and continue to run on losses. However, all are happy to promote their corporate company/group's brand and leverage it in their company/group's sales/services while at it. The BCCI, is the one, who is just milking the money; making them the most powerful sport body in the cricketing world. Cricket only wishes BCCI shouldn't use its might to bully but to grow the sport.
All things said and done, fan's perspective/outlook to the IPL is the most important of all. The team owners drive a sense of pride about the team to that city's citizens. They do it through their star players with team anthems, flags and merchandise products. Some other fans, don't necessarily fall for city loyalties; they choose their favourite player's team to follow. As a fan myself, I cherish IPL and the other leagues for one primary reason: Cricket, unlike football, is not a global sport; it is hardly played by 10 teams on the international scene on a regular competitive basis. There seems to be a huge gap in competitiveness between the top 8 teams and the world that follows them. As a fan, it is inevitable to get used to only 8 teams playing against each other all the time and start feeling the want of a different culture to the game; a spell of fresh air amongst the style of cricket that is on offer. Cricket still has China and France only as Chinaman and French-cuts in the game. With IPL, we get new teams with a mixed culture of players coming up with different intrinsic spirit and attitude to the way the game is played which is scintillating.
The IPL will be popular for a long time, if it can manage to keep its issues out of the playing arena and be transparent at it. All that the cricket lover wants is a sport which he/she can trust is being played in the right spirit. Having ensured that, if the players can take the field to showcase their best effort, the millions of cricket fans are waiting for a 100 more years of the IPL.
Vignesh Nagappan Annamalai
(A write-up for the cricket website - www.cricingif.com)
