It's not cricket

As a kid, when there was no television at my home, I remember how I use to watch the cricket matches from the neighbouring house. It was early 90s and all boys in our neighbourhood with great enthusiasm and passion watched every time when India played an international match. No fancy commentators, no glamorous analysts who move the viewer more with their receding dress line than with their knowledge of cricket, before and after the game, no statistical scrutiny; it was all about 11 men, three wickets on both the ends of a 22 yard pitch and the battle between a willow and a metal ball; we just counted runs, wickets, wins, loses, the surmounting ecstasy and tears.

Be it England, Australia or West Indies, as and when McDermott, Ambrose, Gooch or Azharuddin stepped into the ground the battle drums banged within our modest hearts, ‘The Oval’, ‘Lord’s’ and ‘Eden Gardens’ were all re-fabricated in my neighbour’s little drawing room, the game was happily close to each one of us, good old days, quite before we read the fairy tales of match fixing and betting and it was the game that was watched and followed with fervor.

Cricket as a business is not a novel idea, Kerry Packer the Australian media conglomerate did it way back by introducing the faster version of the game and assorted with his business interests and the budding world acknowledged it. As an ordinary Indian, cricket was there in my blood and during the college days, even after the match fixing episodes and confessions of cricketing Gods about their involvements, I bunked classes to watch Team India playing somewhere at a distant corner of the planet. Even there I could easily equate nationalism with cricket.

Today, when I go home from work, when I surf through the channels, I could see the big guns of the game charging under different banners, I just take a deep breath and switch my TV off, am I indifferent? No, I’m the same, still I love playing this game with friends in my courtyard. However, now in India, for the first time in the record of the gentlemen’s game, the teams are privately owned, and this business phenomenon is going to edge out this game as a public service and popular institution. As it happened in my case, I lost my interest in this melodrama called IPL, where cricketers are estimated like cost bulls, and are acquired up by the tremendous rich; a giddy merge of affluence and celebrity and a keenly watching flamboyant media who fêted the auction drama as the feat of new India of open market!

I just could not digest; apologies.

Culprit: BCCI, the open body sharing the privileges to the game in public reliance, has privatized this national asset. Justification: They are imitating the English Premier League, the most commercialized avenue of the most admired game ever introduced in the planet, the mesmerizing ball game. There teams are ballooned with international stars, and every team has its own fan following dating back to the early years of the twentieth century. It is an archetypal form of the pastime played at its most spirited and challenging character without diluting any custom of the game so as to suit the demands of the media or the public, and most notably without any added ‘hungama’.

Are we heading only to imitate the pits of European football? Extensive link with fraudulence on and off the ground, charges of enticement and fixing, trade offs amid team officials and agents, and most importantly the pathetic misbehaviours of twenty something over paid stars, who are always kept in the lime light by the far winged media papa racy right at the beginning of their careers from the teen; is it not a better thought, right before going into the obsession of the cricket edition for the league in India, to see the flip face of the English league?

The million plus bids of Dhonis and Symonds and Pontings are not because of their cricketing standards, but for their mass drawing clout. Cricketers are sheltering booty based on their apparent augmentation of the worth of their franchise, which is not the same as the augmentation of their respective cricket teams. The design of IPL has boosted the international reflection of the wealthiest cricket board, BCCI and they carefully premeditated whopping deals close to 2 Billion, from broadcasting and sponsorship, ruthless range of revenue assured regardless of the eminence of the product on offer.

Clear variations between the working IPL franchises and well acclaimed open market model in the supporting media can simply be seen; franchises themselves do not drive in an open market, since each one is assured a domination in its own city, but at the same time they enjoy the right to utilize an array of public resources at modest charge, state associations aid the IPL by providing the infrastructure including the grounds (as they just cannot fight the BCCI) and the players, but at the same time the customary rights of members and associations will not pertain to IPL games, this is a blunt disrespect. Proprietors will take the teams as throwaway possessions.

The English league got life when the first division clubs pulled out from the Football league, and this can take place in the case of IPL franchises as well. Some day they too can announce autonomy and start dictating a separate language for their players. It must always be remembered that business values are not always equated to the cricketing values.

For the so called ‘cricket fan’, (not sure how many of us really watch cricket now a days), Ranji trophy and domestic cricket will advance into yawning oblivion, and IPL is not really available as a popular game, it just targets a metro cluster with superfluous earnings, in their 20s and 30s (still just a minority). The established commercial addresses that hold the teams will undoubtedly strive to amalgamate their players and their already recognized brand values (which these players acquired through years of patient cricketing virtues) within their superior stratagem and use it where ever possible to improve the vending of their other products and to boost their corporate image in common, is this expected out of India’s most popular sport?

The franchises owe nothing to the game, the ultimate mission would be profit, it’s just the part of their business and the carefully chalked out plan of IPL is a new business model from their master drawing boards; when BCCI or any state cricket association craft profit, in theory at least it should be brought back to the game, but in IPL profits generated will continue with the team proprietor, so money will actually be taken out of the game. And about the talents in the game, is there genuine room in this faster version of the game to distinguish the genius of a Tendulkar or Dravid from any aggressive hitting, momentary, over paid, second rate player in the IPL T20 game? For most players, compensation for one IPL match will be countless times what they could take home from a complete five day test match; 3-4 hours spent under the beaming flood lights of a metro stadium, nerves kept in front of the roaring crowds and the ability to hit the ball to the distant corners of the ground, with little weight to skill and style, this indeed is an astonishing setting for easy wealth for a fortunate few, which in the long run will compel the real mettle of test cricket to the sad romantic sidelines of reminiscence.

In fact the IPL, akin to other privatizations is the blunder of the strategy and it is not all inevitable, as perpetually clarified by the endorsing media, and it reflects in our societal framework the authority of the ultra thin public branch that benefits from it. The startling figures paid for the star players are summoned as the testimony to the command of fresh Indian market, and it fits to the self image of India’s privileged and their middle class emulators. The big rewards here emphasize the aspirational individualism which the corporate media promotes and the only aspiration is to make extra riches.

Indian cricket is a cultural enterprise bent over numerous decades by cricketers and cricket lovers. It is just because of their sweat that currently the BCCI and the franchisees have it as an artifact and a market to abuse it. It is not about cheer leaders or product endorsement and it is not a venue for film fraternity to show off.