The Indian Cricket League is surely dead in the water before a ball has even been bowled
AS THE fledgling Indian Cricket League (ICL) prepares for the first of what it hopes will be many seasons, the eyes of the world are elsewhere, on the upcoming Test series between India and Pakistan. Worse than that, having incurred the displeasure of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the venture by the Zee media empire is bereft of stars, with the six squads comprising international has-beens and domestic no-names.
When Subhash Chandra and his team envisioned the project, they must have imagined being able to rope in more than a few marquee names. But when the India board struck back with two Twenty20 projects of its own with the Indian Premier League (IPL) and Champions League (due to take place next April and October respectively) every big name in the game realised which route they should take.
Already, the IPL has signed up India’s biggest names and Australia’s superstars. Others will follow, leaving the ICL with Brian Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Chris Cairns, Lance Klusener and pretty much nobody else. The only star from the current firmament to have signed a contract was Pakistan’s Mohammad Yousuf, who broke the record for the most Test runs in a calendar year in 2006. But when he back-tracked and returned to the Pakistan fold last month, it illustrated just how far the ICL stock had plummeted. When cricket’s biggest names assemble for the IPL next April, Yousuf will be in one of the squads.
The lack of clarity in the ICL’s plans hasn’t helped. Until this week, nobody was sure when the matches would be played, or who would turn up. By scheduling when they have, all they have ensured is that most people in India couldn’t care less. A Pakistan series is always top priority, and within a week of finishing that, India leave for Australia to resume a rivalry that captivates more people than any other bar India-Pakistan.
The project has also been irreparably damaged by the absence of India’s finest. Most of the names drafted into the ICL weren’t even regulars for their state sides. Pay packets ranging from £37,500 to £112,500 were enticing, but it was a lot to shell out for a surfeit of mediocrity. It’s safe to assume that the likes of Lara couldn’t have been lured across the world without an investment of at least £200,000.
The ICL intended to breathe life into the game at the level just beneath international cricket. Quite how it planned to achieve that by hosting matches in Panchkula – a nondescript suburb of Chandigarh that has never hosted a one-day international – is a mystery. The teams represent Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chandigarh, but there are no home-and-away fixtures. How you can expect a cricket aficionado in Mumbai to get excited about a team playing at a venue 1,000 miles away? The ICL did explore the idea of using other venues, but with the project not having the Indian board’s blessing, no stadium worth the name was going to risk being denied the international fixtures that are golden-goose eggs.
The crux of the problem is the relationship between Zee and the Indian board. It suffered its first blow in 2004 when there was a TV rights bidding war between the Rupert Murdoch-owned ESPN-Star group and the Zee network. Even though Zee had bid a higher amount, their lack of experience in cricket production was cited as the reason not to award them the rights. Zee sources hinted darkly at Jagmohan Dalmiya, then the board chief, influencing the decision.
But when Dalmiya was overthrown by Sharad Pawar and a new dispensation two years ago, Zee scented another opportunity. They coughed up more than $200m for rights to India’s overseas matches. The numbers didn’t add up, though.
Zee’s deal was for a minimum of 25 offshore matches over a five-year period, meaning they were staking close to $9m on each game. But try as they might, they couldn’t recoup the money. Even India-Australia games couldn’t recoup much more than $4m. With the network haemorrhaging close to $5m every match, something had to give. Source: timesonline
