The circus begins...

Written by Sreeram Ramachandran

Wednesday, 28 November 2007

The ICL and the other T20 leagues have been hovering on the horizon for a while. They have had a kind of a surreal feel about them, like a giant meteor that has been rumoured to be about to come down and change everything in the cricketing world, for good or for bad. After all the surface hype and drum-beating, we will finally be getting down to having a glimpse of what the fuss is all about.

What has been promoted as, quite presumptuously, the 'future of Indian' cricket, the ICL, is set to roll out on the 30th of November. The future of Indian cricket it almost certainly is not, but it does mark the first on-field glimpse of a what is reckoned to be the new second tier of international cricket, which would certainly make it a part of the future of the game.

That makes this a good time to let some thoughts stray along the lines of exploring the a few things that need to kept in mind to make this whole jamboree worth the while, and think about what this holds for the future of the game.

The ICL background

It doesn't take too long for a newly shifted well-to-do and rich resident of a locality to have his neighbours hover around his house, looking to make friends, and possibly touch him for some money. Twenty20 is the newest cash cow in cricket, and it was never going to be long before it had vultures hovering over it.

To provide a bit of a flashback for those in the dark, the ICL, and its rival siblings such as the IPL (Indian Premier League), are born out of the authorities' attempts at milking T20 by applying the sucessful template that club football in Europe and professional sporting leagues in the US. The ICL basically consists of six teams- duly bestowed with gimmicky names such as Mumbai Champs, Delhi Jets, Chennai blah blah and Hyderabad yada yada - with regional bases competing against each other in a league format, before going on to play the semi-finals and a final. Each team is led by one former international player, and comes with an entourage of a coach, fitness experts, dieticians and such like.

The ICL has plans to expand the league to include 16 teams by the third year of operation, at which point it also intends to include a 50-over match league, which sounds quite a bit like trying to get people to watch Boycott block the last day of a test match out after watching Afridi hit a 40 ball 100...

The ICL's headstart

With the launch of the IPL with its precious 'official' status and pantheon of international stars, the ICL isn't big ticket anymore, and starts off surrounded by sceptism rather than expectations and anticipation. The BCCI and their brothers-in-arms, the cricket boards from Australia, South Africa and England, came along like an insecure Goliath looking to stamp out the impudence of the ICL as it tries to go against the official might and try and grab a piece of their green pie. The decorated, velvet-wrapped Indian Premier League with its starpower and glamour has ensured that the ICL looks very small indeed, and has managed to whisk away some of the ICL's prize potential stars and sponsors.

The ICL, however, is not without some selling points of its own. Alongside Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Chris Cairns, its biggest strength is the fact it has kicked off a good 5 months ahead of any other competition of its nature, and therefore has, to flaunt a jargon, the 'first movers advantage'. There will always be some amount of novelty and curiousity associated with this new format. And while the bigger leagues will come when they do, the audience has some broad, general interest in, for the first time, watching Lara, Cairns, Astle, Inzamam and the likes compete in Twenty20 format.

Driving loyalty

A basic model the second tier of world cricket is loosely looking to emulate is that of club football, the most popular brand of which are the European football leagues. But one very important thing that needs to be remembered is that the European clubs came before their football league did.

A recent survey showed that 82% of all those who followed European league football did so primarily because they followed and supported a specific team, with a general interest in the performance of the other teams. No, there was no such survey, but it isn't very difficult to believe, is it ? The chief driver of popularity for any competition are the fans of the teams participating in the competition. If you cannot relate to any of the participants on show, it is quite unlikely that you will be inspired to follow the competiton for too long. At any rate, you will be passive rather than active and passionate about it.

At the time of its origin, the English football league consisted of 12 clubs. But the key point is that the league was only introduced as an organized and common platform for each of these pre-existing teams to play each other on. So basically, each team brought its own pre-existing fans and followers, and helped popularize the league. The difference with the cricketing model is that it has worked the other way round - the teams are just a (presumably) money-based arrangement of a set of players, and therefore do not come with a readymade fan base. The viewers will have to find reasons to follow and support a particular team. This has a few implications worth considering. . .

For the leagues to work...

The first of these implications is that for the leagues to succeed, each team will have to find its identity, certain traits that define their game, and polarize people towards either liking or disliking them (for both can be very powerful drivers of interest, the latter sometimes more so than the former).

Each country playing international cricket has, loosely speaking, something to identify them with - Australia and South Africa are the big, physical players, perfectionists, disciplined & methodical; India and Pakistan are the flair players, the flamboyant teams that revel in their own inconsistencies, the West Indians are the party animals, the 'fun guys' and so on. For viewers to want to support and follow the teams playing in the league, they will need a hook, something to connect to.

The second important implication is that organizers, investors, players and basically everyone associated with the leagues will do well to avoid knee jerk reactions to initial responses to the leagues. To form an association with and get passionately involved with a sporting entity takes time, and it will take a few seasons for audiences to get used to the different teams playing, their style of playing, their general competence levels, and feel the urge to support or turn their backs the team.

Rome may or may not have been built in a day, but AS Roma certainly wasn't. It could be necessary to let viewers watch the Mumbai Champs play for a couple of seasons, observe their game, get over their atrocious name before they begin to invest time, energy and passion on a regular basis.

The point of the whole affair....

There is a certain section of the global population who are not a part of the vast plethora of individuals making money (or looking to do so) off the T20 leagues, who are actually interested in only the cricketing aspect of the whole shindig. Yes, we are a neglected lot that everyone is looking to fool, but they do exist.

The most attractive part of such a second tier of the game is that it paints dream-like pictures of a future where cricket is played across the world, that the natives of the 100+ associate countries that the ICC has on its roster actually start being as involved with the game as those in the commonwealth are. To do that, a country will need to be in the loop with all the excitement and the hoopla, and the most profitable way to do that is get the odd ultra-talented player from there to play in the league.

It is far easier to spread a game in a particular country by establishing a particular citizen of the country as a successful, well-to-do, reknowned player in that particular game. A set of young Kenyan, Irish, Bermudan boys will be far more motivated to play the game of cricket if he sees someone from his country playing the game abroad for a privately owned team, and making a fair bit of cash and a good living while at it, rather than when they watch their national team being trampled all over by a cartwheeling Brett Lee. And it would be worth the while - a Zimbabwean Brandon Taylor, or an Irish Boyd Rankin (a 24 year old with a half decent ODI average of 29 and a 6 feet 8 inch structure that can extract useful pace and bounce) will come cheap, with less than half the political and legal wrangles with the country's cricket boards - picture the Irish cricket board being as snooty and touchy about this whole business as their bigger brothers in the cricketing world!, and could be far more effective than maybe some former Indian paceman who has had his time in the sun, and is now just making up the numbers.

A unidimensional and lopsided competition with only one team having all the big names, or a league from India having all the money and stars and the English and South African leagues playing side roles will severely hurt the game's quest to establish itself on the global platform.

And finally....

At the end of the day, however, you cannot sell a cheap watch enclosed in a Rolex case for too long. Everything ultimately boils down to the standard of cricket on show. Audiences will be interested in watching only if the players themselves are playing seriously, with real passion to win, and if there is something worth supporting. Whether the ICL survives or not, whether this much vaunted 'second tier' of the game grows as big as it can or not will all depend on whether the cricket on offer is top grade or not. It is easy to forget in all the hoopla that at the end of the day it is a cricket competition.

So here's hoping that through all the festoons and fireworks, there emerges some good, quality cricket.

On an aside, Delhi 'Jets'? What is that all about?!

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