Bernard Shaw
was wrong; no amount of money that the ICL pours in can seduce the cricket
fan into watching also-rans slug it out in artificial rivalry
 |
| Photo:Neelakash
Kshetarimayum |
There are few things
more dangerous than trying to fool all the people all the time. Politicians
know what to say when elections approach, and how to erase that from
the public’s memory when they are over. Administrators know how
to say enough to stick to those in power, but keep enough room to manoeuvre
to the other side when the balance shifts. Businessmen know when to
pour money into a venture and, more importantly, when to pull it out.
The Indian Cricket League (ICL), as of now, has displayed none of these
discretions, and dismayingly, has shouted from the rooftops with nothing
much to say.
The Board
of Control for Cricket in India does so many things wrong it is a sitting
target for anyone who wants to have a go. The Board can be attacked
for how much money i makes and how little it does to improve the experience
of the average cricket fan. It can be taken to task for how late it
has been in recognising critical stakeholders in the running of the
game — umpires, scorers groundsmen. Its media management is so
suspect it hasn’t appointed a press officer or hosted a website
that any hack could find fault.
But all this has
nothing to do with the formation of the ICL. The claim of some former
cricketers, led by Kapil Dev, about how they are with the ICL to promote
cricket in India, is so palpably false that it is an insult to the intelligence
of anyone who knows the first thing about how cricket is played and
administered in the country.
If Subhash Chandra,
the head of Zee Telefilms group, and Himanshu Mody, the project director
of the ICL, had not projected Kapil so publicly as the face of ICL,
it would have been possible to ignore the World Cup-winning captain.
But at the launch press conference of the ICL, Kapil dominated the proceedings,
even answering questions posed to Mody, that it’s only fair we
accept him as the face and public voice of the ICL. “This is the
cream of Indian cricket,” Kapil said, pointing to the group of
nearly 50 domestic cricketers who have signed with the ICL. But a proper
examination of the players gives an accurate account of the situation.
Bengal’s Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, young and talented, is a potential
loss to the BCCI. He’s 24, and has barely played two seasons of
Ranji Trophy cricket, and it’s stunning that he thinks he won’t
make it to the Indian team. Whether he believes he won’t make
it because Bengal players don’t get enough recognition —
and he only needs to look to Ranadeb Bose, who was picked for a Test
tour after nine seasons of first-class cricket, to know this is untrue
— or because he doesn’t believe in himself, is a moot point.
Either way, his leap to the other side means he took the decision out
of the hands of the national selectors. Dheeraj Jadhav, close to being
selected for India recently, is another who has found it impossible
to keep the faith.
But apart from
Jhunjhunwala and Jadhav, there isn’t a single player in the ICL
list who has a chance to make it to the Indian team in the near future.
There are some cricketers who played for India just long enough to be
recognised — Dinesh Mongia, Deep Dasgupta, JP Yadav — but
not long enough to achieve anything lasting. There are others who can’t
make their own state sides — R. Satish, J. Hariesh, Hemanth Kumar,
Kiran Powar — and who stay on the circuit hopping to weak teams
like Kerala, Goa and Assam. Then there are those who haven’t even
played firstclass cricket — Abhishek T, Raviraj Patil, Puskaraj
Mohan Joshi and have sneaked in for reasons best known to ICL talent
scouts. Irrespective of ability or status, every ICL player must reconcile
with the fact that Zee will pull the plug when the money dries up; the
BCCI cannot do so. It may seem as if the ICL has drawn a lot of cricketers
away from the mainstream but they have little to show for quality. They’ve
assembled a motley crew of havebeens, might-have-beens and wannabes.
Yet, Kapil will have us believe the nation will sit up and watch this
lot.
They have Brian
Lara, but the extent to which they’re downplaying his presence,
especially in the light of Laxmi Ratan Shukla’s volte face, you
wonder if Lara really is 100 percent on board. Then there are Mohammad
Yousuf and Lance Klusener, but where will they fit in? Randomly slotting
international cricketers into teams does not work, because cricket fans
have always been loyal to their teams. Whether it is India vs Pakistan,
Lancashire vs Yorkshire, Delhi vs Bombay, Dadar Union vs CCI, even Greater
Kailash II Main Road vs I Main Road, there’s something at stake
for the fan. When you create artificial rivalries you kill this sense
of identity. At the Afro-Asia Cup in Bangalore, members of the Karnataka
State Cricket Association could buy 1000-rupee tickets at 100 rupees
for an ODI, with entry to a Twenty20 match thrown in, and yet barely
hundreds of tickets were taken.
When there isn’t any demand for something, there’s only
so long it can be propped up from the outside. Sure, the ICL can put
a Twenty20 tournament together,and run it anyway, but they will only
be doing so to prove a bad point badly. Team India — the one Sachin
Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and co play for — host
Australia for seven one-dayers at home late September through to October
20, play Pakistan in Tests and ODIs all November and till December 12,
and then leave for Australia mid-December, only to return in March.
Just who will watch Shalabh Srivastava bowl to Shashank Nag when Ricky
Ponting is hooking Zaheer Khan or Yuvraj Singh is clobbering Mohammad
Asif?
But surely, the bean counters at Zee have thought of all this before
signing threeyear contracts with players at Rs 20 and 40 lakh a year.
Surely, those organising this Twenty20 tournament have a ground in place
where they will hold this tournament that will “break BCCI’s
monopoly over cricket”. Surely Zee Telefilms have advertisers
who are committed to putting money in to their show, when the real cricket
is on another channel. If the ICL has all this in place, why are they
keeping quiet about it? They’ve taken things to the judiciary
the last resort of any reasonable organisation seeking the Delhi High
Court to restrain the BCCI from “intimidating” players who
have joined, or seek to join, the ICL. Furthermore, the lawsuit has
sought a direction to the BCCI allowing the ICL to use any ground across
India. To top it all, the plea asks that the BCCI stop using the Indian
flag, as it is a private body. By the time you read this piece, the
court may have delivered its verdict. If leading sports lawyers are
to be believed, the ICL will have fresh hurdles to cross and some legal
bills to foot.
But let’s assume that all the hyperbole is true; that the courts
insist the BCCI which has spent Rs 190 crore on infrastructure development
in the last two years hand its grounds to the ICL. Let’s assume
the courts insist the BCCI which runs hundreds of lossmaking and television
unfriendly tournaments at different levels should not hold back any
financial benefits from players they have invested in, despite them
joining the ICL. Let’s, for a hypothetical moment, assume that
that the courts somehow hand the ICL everything they want on a platter.
There’s still one thing we can’t assume and no court in
India will do so that the people of India are fools. That’s what
the ICL is doing, and that’s why it must fail.
Vasu is assistant editor, Cricinfo.
