The logical step forward...

Written by Sreeram Ramachandran

Sunday, 16 September 2007

It is a widely accepted belief that for a hardcore, true-blue businessman, the lure of a profitable business opportunity waiting to be milked is more difficult to resist than any of your regular sinful temptations. The arrival of the Pakistan Premier League following on the footsteps of the launch of cricket's soon-to-be big beast, the Champions Twenty20 League is testimony to this. World cricket today is run by businessmen, and there is little doubt about the profit making potential of Twenty20 cricket.

To begin on an aside, it is intriguing to see the way set pieces are moving across the world of cricket, and the direction in which the game is headed. Cricket is far from being as widely followed and popular as Football - almost every sport is - but the announcement of the launch of the Champions Twenty20 league is a reasonably clear indication that the sport is ready to operate in the space as Football, that is in a position to reach into a format and business model adopted by arguably the world's most popular sport.

The least that the Champions Twenty20 league would do, if successful , is to introduce a paradigm change in cricket's structure around the world. A change which although isn't overdue, is something that would have been needed at some point in the future. Introducing private sponsorships, privately owned and managed teams, creating a complete new structure would give intra-country cricket a useful shaking and sprucing up. And pitting well managed, high standard teams from similarly built teams from other countries could add an extra dimension to international, inter-country cricket.

Most interestingly, it will bring into cricket something to test an aspect that hasn't ever been fully tested yet - the skill involved in actually managing a team. Building the squad, buying, selling, grooming the right players, managing finances alongside,determining a right mix of players, actually having the liberty to develop strategies and then get the players to execute them as against having to build your strategies based on whoever is available....all of this constitutes a completely different art in itself.

Success for this template of international leagues with private ownerships, whether it comes through the Champions Twenty20 league, or the ICL, or through Alan Stanford's ventures is one that is likely to have an extraordinary number of levels and layers of spin-off and corollary effects. Raising the standard of play, for instance. It is a known truth that one of the pre-requisites for any sporting team to earn revenue for it's owners success on the field. With profit being the primary motive behind any private sponsor to buy stake in a sporting team, a fair percentage of the investment would go towards improving quality on field. Besides, it is simple law of averages - if there is something of value at stake, and if you have 10 people competing for it, the intensity of competition is bound to be high.

A second, almost inevitable implication that will follow if this model does succeed is the expansion of the league, and inclusion of more countries. Several African countries are not very successful in top-flight football, but continue to follow the game through the exploits of successful footballers like Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto'o, or even middle level footballers with average levels of success such as El Hadji Diouf. 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 Brandon Taylor would probably get a far stronger springboard to leveraging his cricketing skills if he gets opportunities to ply his trade in stronger, more competitve teams apart from playing for Zimbabwe.

This is just tipping the iceberg of possibilities and speculations. A lot will depend on whether the league will do well, a lot of that will depend on understanding the template that the league will be working in. There are various factors which determine why football leagues around the world work (or not), and a fair amount of thought needs to put into finding out which of these factors are relevant for cricket, and which are not. There are numerous roadblocks that need to first be overcome for the league to work, not the smallest of which is establishing supporter loyalty for privately owned teams without any regional allegiences, giving the viewer something to put at stake each time a team plays.

The possibilities that this new venture holds is one that deserves more time and space to be fully explored, and possibly, enjoyed. A good time to do it would probably be after the 24th of this month, after the very exciting and enlightening Twenty20 World Championship reaches its conclusion, and leaves us with some attention to spare.

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