The Date: April 18th, 2008
The Venue: Eden Gardens, Calcutta.
Well its not common that you see a total of 1,00,000 or more Bengali’s packed at a single place especially when the Indian Cricket Team is not playing….surely there’s some valid reason to it. Well it’s not the Indian Cricket Team but should we say the Calcutta team that’s playing a match today….
The day has finally dawned…a day many people have eagerly awaited. While some people have looked up to this day when they’re so called fortunes would change (as if they had not yet had the better of it).
April 18th brought with it a new dimension to a sport everyone looks up to in a country where everyone looks up to it as a religion. From now onwards till June 1st cricket will just mean hard hitting & pacy bowling. Exquisite timing & precise placement with a lot of self – control & perseverance have gone on a holiday for now. The BCCI created IPL – Indian Premier League kicked off form the historic Eden Gardens, Calcutta with much fanfare attached to it. After all you’re not talking about just another league. In my words it’s a public gamble where the two parties have money (a lot of it) at stake.
From the lines above I’m sure that you must have felt that I’m against this League. Well its not so. I’m not against it, but I do have some reservations.
Firstly cricket in India is of national stature. Nobody looks up to the cricket team as more of this region & less of that. When we speak of the cricket team we mean the whole country & not a part of it. Cricket has never been thought of as a regional game. By having regional representations in this league, we are not only fueling regionalism (leaving aside casteism, religion) but giving birth to alienation. For eg. If I am a person from say Gujrat then whom should I support, the team to my north The Rajasthan Royals or the team to my south The Mumbai Indians?
Secondly even after deciding on which team to support, I’m still in a dilemma…more that half of my team doesn’t come from the place they play for. It’s not that I have any thing against these people but if you look at it the way I do, it’s a bit funny.
Well an easy solution to the above problems would be is instead of naming the teams on basis of region, why not have club names? Like how we have in football, Dempo, Salgaoncar, etc….i guess that would be much easier to relate to & not cause any identity problems…
Another bone of contention is that was it required to have so much money invested in a game that is already brewing with cash inflows? A slight summary of the money invested per team is as follows in the following order:
Franchise
Owner(s)
Price (USD)
Mumbai Indians
Mukesh Ambani and Reliance Industries Limited
$111.9 million
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Vijay Mallya and UB group
$111.6 million
Hyderabad Deccan Chargers
Deccan Chronicle
$107 million
Chennai Super Kings
India Cements and N Srinivasan
$91 million
Delhi Daredevils
GMR Holdings
$84 million
Kings XI Punjab
Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Karan Paul (Apeejay Surendera Group) and Mohit Burman (Dabur)
$76 million
Kolkata Knight Riders
Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla Mehta and Jai Mehta (Red Chillies Entertainment)
$75.09 million
Rajasthan Royals
Emerging Media: (Manoj Badale, Lachlan Murdoch, Suresh Chellaram)
$67 million
Just imagine (should I say can you imagine). I guess that looking at the figures it would be better if some of our cricketers who are at the end of their stint to just retire from all sorts of the game. Look forward to the League which lasts for some 40 – odd days, play 14 matches & earn what u haven’t earned in your lifetime. What’s more if you’re Sachin then you can earn just by sitting in the dug-out.
If you thought that money has been spent only on the players then there is some shocking news for you. The broadcasting allocation (or should I say fiasco) has been questionable.
On 15 January 2008 it was announced that a consortium consisting of India's Sony Entertainment Television network and Singapore-based World Sport Group secured the global broadcasting rights of the Indian Premier League. The record deal has a duration of ten years at a cost of US$1.026 billion. As part of the deal, the consortium will pay the BCCI US$918 million for the television broadcast rights and US$108 million for the promotion of the tournament.
20% of these proceeds would go to IPL, 8% as prize money and 72% would be distributed to the franchisees. The money would be distributed in these proportions until 2012 after which the share of IPL would go up.
Sony-WSG then re-sold parts of the broadcasting rights geographically to other companies. Below is a summary of the broadcasting rights around the world in the following order.
Winning Bidder
Regional Broadcast Rights
Terms of Deal
Sony/World Sport Group
Global Rights, India
10 years at USD 1.026 Billion
Network Ten
Free-to-air television in Australia
5 years at AUD 10-15 Million.
Setanta Sports
United Kingdom and Ireland on a subscription basis
5 years, terms not disclosed.
Arab Digital Distribution
Middle East broadcast rights on ADD's ART Prime Sport channel. Will broadcast to United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan and Libya.
10 Years, terms not released.
Willow TV
Rights to distribute on television, radio, broadband and Internet, for the IPL in North America.
5 years, terms not released.
SuperSport
South Africa broadcast rights
Terms not released
GEO Super
Pakistan broadcast rights
Terms not released
Asian Television Network
Canadian broadcast rights. Aired on ATN's CBN & ATN Cricket Plus channels on a subscription basis. Aired on XM Radio's ATN-Asian Radio as well.
5 years, terms not released.
The IPL negotiated a contract with the Canadian company Live Current Media Inc. to run and operate its portals and the minimum guarantee has been negotiated at USD 50 million over the next 10 years.
Initially the IPL enforced strict guidelines to media covering Premier League matches, consistent with their desire to use the same model sports leagues in North America use in regards to media coverage. Notable guidelines imposed included the restriction to use images taken during the event unless purchased from Cricket.com, owned by Live Current Media Inc (who won the rights to such images) and the prohibition of live coverage from the cricket grounds. Media agencies also had to agree to upload all images taken at IPL matches to the official website. This was deemed unacceptable by print media around the world. Upon the threat of boycott, the IPL eased up on several of the restrictions. On April 15th, 2008 a revised set of guidelines was issued by the IPL offering major concessions to the print media and agencies.
Even with the amended restrictions, specialist cricket websites such as cricinfo and cricket365 continued to be banned from providing live coverage from the grounds and from purchasing match images from press agencies. As a result, on April 18th major international agencies including Reuters and AFP announced their decision to provide no coverage of the IPL.
Overall the IPL, is nothing but a money-making racquet where cricket has been the canvassing agent. Its like I’m giving u a game to enjoy (with no guarantee that it will be competitive) but in return I am gaining a few million dollars. Honestly I pity Vijay Mallya. He got a team that everyone looked up to(as of late not himself----wonder if he had said that if his team was doing well) but yet that team lands up being the top team(in reverse) in the points table. Wonder if Mr.Mallya had invested that money in some social building activity, we would see a new face of India. Well if he is concerned about the returns then why not invest that money into some other sports like football, hockey where it is much required.
What more…the league seems bland with the absence of Brendon McCullum, Hayden, Hussey & co. I guess that people to whom attck comes naturally are being missed. Even the bigges (most of them being icons) are a total flop for eg. Afridi, Dimitri, etc. Thus this league has lost its competitive edge…there seems no more competition amongst the teams. The only fight is now for the 4th place in the standings table so as to qualify for the Semi – finals.
The only good that has come out from this tournament is that players who were not know are getting noticed. For eg. Swapnil Asnodkar, Shikhar Dhawan, etc. These people are what the selectors should keep they’re eyes on. After all, a competitive team is not measured by its playing eleven but by its bench strength. The future of Indian cricket depends on people like these – performers & not people who have made it by influence.
Looking at the approach of the sponsors towards this league, I guess having it next year would be doubtful. The owners have much more to lose that they stand to gain. Plus with individual boards planning a league of they’re own on the same lines, the availability of players would be scarce.
What I would suggest is that there should be T20 tournament but only for our domestic players & for those players who have not been contracted by the BCCI & various other boards. This would make sure that everyone is given an equal opportunity with the emphasis totally on cricket & not with the money associated with it.
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