The Hindu Business Line : IPL vs ICL: A real contest is possible only in a free market!

Given that the IPL is ‘official’, it is inevitable that it will have more clout than the ICL. A real contest is only possible in a free market. This isn’t a free market. In this fight, one side has an advantage.

CRICKET HISTORIAN, DR BORIA MAJUMDAR

The old adage of first mover advantage does not hold true. Ask the Indian Premier League! Despite coming late but well-armed and neatly packaged, the newest avatar of cricket has caught on like wild-fire, much to the chagrin of the supporters of the ‘unofficial’ Indian Cricket League, the under-dog. Despite claiming to be progressive, does the new breed of couch-potato Indians still give in to the allure of ‘officialdom’? “Given that the IPL i s “official”, it is inevitable that it will have more clout than the ICL. A real contest is possible only in a free market. This isn’t a free market. In this fight, one side has an advantage,” reasoned cricket historian, Dr Boria Majumdar when Business Line asked him.

Though he thinks Twenty20 has once again successfully introduced that ‘element of uncertainty integral to cricket’, the research fellow at Latrobe University, Australia, feels it’s good for the game as teams will now have more chances to redeem failures; fans will however find it far easier to erase memories of past disasters!

Excerpts from the e-mail interaction:

Do you think the Indian Cricket League will be able to build on the popularity of Indian Premier League?

It will be difficult to do so for three reasons.

Firstly, given that the ICL is considered a “rebel” league and lacks official sanction, it will not have the hype, support and clout as the IPL. Without ICC endorsement, it will certainly not be as popular in other cricket-playing countries.

Secondly, as one media house, ZEE, owns ICL, other media houses will not back it with the same enthusiasm as they have done in the case of IPL. For example, while ZEE will and does cover IPL, Sony will hardly give ICL space. Also, news channels will not want to antagonise the BCCI by going too far ahead with supporting ICL. This is because they might then lose access to the players and tournaments that have the BCCI sanction.

Lastly, sponsors too will want to back the next edition of IPL in the absence of official sanction for ICL. Finally, fans, it is expected, will soon be tired of raining sixes and fours. A saturation point is surely round the corner and the ICL may well lose out instead of making gains.

Clearly, the second mover seems to have managed to draw crowds better than the rebel league. Plus, the business model, glamour, high scores and high occurrence of nail-biting finishes seem to clear winners. Is this the way world will watch cricket now?

It is foolish to think this is “the” form of cricket that the world will now support. Test cricket is and will always remain the real thing. Also, please remember Test cricket has survived for more than 130 years now. Had its foundations been weak, it would not have survived the one-day revolution. There’s little doubt it will surely survive the T20 revolution as well.

And, given that the IPL is “official”, it is inevitable that it will have more clout than the ICL. A real contest is possible only in a free market. This isn’t a free market. In this fight, one side has an advantage. Thums-Up, for example, continued to be way more popular than Coke or Pepsi in India of the 1980s. Only with the opening up of the Indian economy, in other words in an ambience of free competition, did the multinational brands make real headway.

Coming back to the multi-million-dollar cricket leagues again. Do you think in India people will pay to watch two leagues?

No. There will soon reach a point when even the IPL will have to innovate further. Once the novelty wears off, once people get a flavour of the entertainment-cricket package on offer, interest is bound to dwindle. One will always be more popular than the other. In fact, there might soon be a situation where we have a tripartite contest — IPL, ICL and Soaps. However, for this to happen the ban on ICL will have to be revoked.

Now for a toughie. What are weaknesses or, as they say in cricket speak, the chinks in the armour for IPL?

Once the novelty wears off and people get tired of raining sixes and fours and ‘Slapgate’ becomes a thing of the past, the IPL will find it increasingly difficult to retain the eyeballs it has captured. More because the icons, who are also the highest-paid players of the tournament, have all failed to deliver.

While Saurav Ganguly hasn’t scored heavily and is under immense pressure to lift his team from the doldrums, Rahul Dravid’s individual performances haven’t been enough for Bangalore. Deccan, it seems, will do well without Laxman; Dhoni hasn’t been in superlative form for Chennai, and Sehwag too has been inconsistent for Delhi.

Faced with teams made up of random conglomerations of players, the draw for most spectators to start with was less the game and more the entertainment that was on offer. This was borne out to me in the interviews I conducted with fans in the first week of the tournament.

But will fans really want to be merely ‘entertained’ for two straight reasons?

In the absence of the strong sense of regional city loyalties that is so crucial to the well-being of sports, this becomes the moot question. This problem was best exemplified by my friend, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, while commenting on the Kolkata vs Bangalore match for Cricinfo. This is what he started with, “Siddhartha Vaidyanathan at the commentary booth. I began supporting dear ‘ol Kolkata (korbo, lorbo, jeetbo and all) but have lost a bit of faith over the last few days. Will decide who to support at some stage.”

If longer periods of time were factors that went against the game (like one-day internationals or tests), why have cheer-leaders or hold concerts at the stadium during every match?

Not the only factor but certainly a factor. Rajasthan, for example, does not have a film-star endorsing the team. Matches have still drawn fair crowds. Shah Rukh has still not performed at the Eden Gardens. Yet, we have had full houses for most games. And cheerleaders are integral to global sport, so why fume only in the case of IPL?

Cricket World Cup 2007 was nothing short of a disaster. Do you feel that T20 has given fresh running legs to cricket as a sport?

The answer to your question is ‘yes’. That Twenty20 is a format for the future is by now well established. Full houses for most contests in the T20 world cup in South Africa and subsequently in the IPL have supplied the necessary evidence. Whether or not it will sound the death knell for the 50-over game is a far more pertinent question.

If history is anything to go by, the one-day format has little to fear. Rather, Twenty20 will inject new energy into all forms of cricket. In India, for example, the one-day series against Australia, which followed the T20 World Cup, was played to full houses. Indian cricket fans at home and in the diaspora lapped up the games played by the national team.

Soon after the Twenty20 World Cup was over, Indians in Melbourne and Sydney started queuing up for tickets for the historic Boxing Day and New Year Tests at the MCG and SCG. And the India-Australia series witnessed unprecedented excitement both at home and in the diaspora.

Back in the 1970s when One Day Internationals (ODI) were striving to gain currency, there was considerable speculation over ODI’s future. So much so that Robin Marlar writing in the Indian Cricket Annual of 1977 called ‘circus cricket’ a bore. Once it became established, people questioned if ODI would hurt Test cricket. It didn’t. Test matches, if anything, have benefited from the popularity of the one-day game.

In England and Australia, for example, most Test matches played between 2005 and 2008 have been complete sell-outs. The recently concluded India-Australia Test series or the India-England Test series in July-August 2007 were major cash bonanzas for Cricket Australia or the ECB.

Will this format draw the American crowds to a cricket match chanting ‘Dhoni, Dhoni’?

No. The popularity of T20 does not mean it will make the Americans endorse cricket. For the Americans, it is only their own sports that matter. This explains the popularity of NASCAR for example. It is only the diaspora in the US that it readily going to take to T20.

What have you liked about the business model of IPL? It seems fairly robust, right?

Regardless of the hubbub and questions to the contrary, the IPL is an exciting proposition, if for no other reason than its success in commercialising cricket in a manner unthinkable just a few months ago. It has already generated unprecedented money in sponsorship and in the amounts spent by franchise owners. Another major USP of the tournament is its truly cosmopolitan nature.

The local favour strategy seems to have worked out pretty well. The Rajasthan Royals, Kolkata Knight Riders, Deccan Chargers etc. have managed to draw out people. Do you feel that since an IPL/ICL encounter seems to be the first match of a portion of the spectators, the real challenge is to bring them again next time? Yes, absolutely, I have already stressed this point (above). Once the novelty wears off, it will be considerably more difficult to retain eyeballs and draw spectators to the grounds.

A lot has been said about the hectic schedule that cricketers are subjected. Do you feel T20 gives a relief on that front?

No, certainly not. The hectic pace, travel schedule can seriously drain cricketers. And the demands of constant cricket can certainly result in serious injuries.

As a cricket historian, how would you like to describe T20 in the annals of cricket chronicles? A necessity, an aberration or simply something borne to please the market forces?

Twenty20 has once again successfully introduced that element of uncertainty integral to cricket. With yet another format, teams will now have more chances to redeem failures and fans will find it far easier to erase memories of past disasters.

Indian fans, for example, have completely forgotten the disastrous Caribbean campaign. Sponsors now have a new format to invest in alongside Test and ODI cricket. Indeed, soccer and hockey administrators will find it doubly hard to alter this monopoly in future.

Finally, India’s Twenty20 World Cup victory helped alter a fundamental reality of Indian cricket. Indian cricket has always been about individuals and not the team per se. This victory without the holy trinity of Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly marked a watershed in the history of Indian cricket. The team had outshone individual performances.

The victory in the Twenty20 World Cup again fuelled the Indian dream to have a crack at world domination and the popularity of the IPL is a direct consequence of the T20 world cup win. IPL would not have been half as popular if India failed to make the world cup semi-finals. Test match cricket and 50-over contests will live off T20’s popularity in the foreseeable future.

D. MURALI

KUMAR SHANKAR ROY

http://InterviewsInsights.blogspot.com

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