MUMBAI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Monday released the itinerary for Team India’s 2021-22 international home season, along with the venues.
The Indian cricket team will play 14 T20 Internationals and just three ODIs and four Tests at home between November 2021 and June 2022. The teams that will visit India during the eight-month period are New Zealand (November-December), West Indies (February 2022), Sri Lanka (February-March 2022) and South Africa (June 2022).
In between in December-January, India will be touring South Africa and the IPL will happen between April-May.
Against New Zealand, India will be playing two Tests and three T20Is while West Indies are due to play three ODIs and five T20Is.
Sri Lanka will play two Tests and three T20Is while South Africa will come for the shortest tour where they would play five T20Is in a space of 10 days.
“We have kept 14 T20Is because we have another T20 World Cup in Australia in a year’s time and we need to have adequate matches before the big event,” a BCCI official told PTI.
Let’s just say that SportzPower takes the reasoning offered by BCCI with a cellar of salt. But that’s a separate discussion.
What is relevant in the announcement put out by the BCCI is that the financial hit that host broadcaster Star Sports will perforce have to bear will be mitigated to the best degree possible by the overloading of T20is into the itinerary.
It bears noting here that in what is Year 4 of the 5-year media rights cycle of Star India’s record busting Rs 61.38 billion commitment made in 2018 to retain the worldwide TV and digital rights to Indian cricket, the per game payout will massively escalate from the Rs 420 million per game that the now Disney-owned network had been paying from Year 1 through to 3, to Rs 774 million per game (emphasis ours).
Totaled up, the Disney India’s payout to the BCCI for the 2021-22 international home season works out to a massive Rs 16.25 billion.
So why mitigated? Simply because the highest per game revenues that can be extracted is from T20is, less so for ODIs and the least being from the Tests. So having 2/3ds of the games in the itinerary as T20is is a mitigating factor.
Having said that, whichever way one slices and dices this, that the House of Mouse has a massive challenge on its hands to come away from India’s 2021-22 home fixtures in the green is a given.
