CRICKET’S TRAPEZE ACT OF ACCOMMODATING bilateral series even as T20 franchise leagues sprout up across the cricketing world is fast becoming untenable.
It is but natural of course that the game’s biggest draw – the Indian Premier League – is also the disruptor-in-chief. And offering a portent of what the future could look like sooner rather than later was Venky Mysore, CEO of Shahrukh Khan’s IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), in an interview to UK’s Telegraph.
Mysore has stated that IPL franchises are open to the idea of signing the best cricket players in the world on annual contracts which will allow more consistency between teams playing in different leagues. A total of 10 teams play in the IPL at the moment and a number of franchises have their presence in T20 leagues outside of India as well.
At present, IPL franchises offer contracts to their players for the duration of the IPL season but with KKR one of the IPL teams with a global presence (four teams in various T20 leagues), longer term contracts for their key stars makes business sense.
“If it happened that way at some point in the future, that’d be great. What we want to create is a common platform, a system, and a culture that allows us to participate around the year – enhancing our brand, building our fan base, and providing opportunities for cricketers around the world. And in the process, you build hopefully a successful business around it,” Mysore told Telegraph.
“In an ideal world, sure because that gives us the opportunity to make our vision and our strategy even stronger. If we were able to have X number of contracted players and were able to use them all in different leagues, I think that would be nirvana. Hopefully, some day it will happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did,” he added.
ICC working group
And that is precisely what the game’s global governing body is confronting. As per Forbes, the International Cricket Council might soon form a working group to figure out how to manage the seismic shifts happening in cricket.
The increasingly thorny issue was a major part of discussions at the ICC’s annual conference in Birmingham last week in the aftermath of new cash-rich T20 leagues announced in South Africa and the UAE.
Those much anticipated leagues, launching in January concurrently with Australia’s Big Bash League (BBL) undergoing revitalisation, are set to offer huge pay packets due largely to the IPL’s expanded footprint stoking fears its well-heeled private enterprises will cannibalise T20 franchise cricket.
“There are too many T20 leagues coming up, its eating into the FTP (Future Tours Programme) and causing rumblings over NOCs (Non Objection Certificate). It is genuinely a problem and is just going to fester,” a top cricket executive told Forbes.
There are many ideas being floated but one that could well gain traction is for “minor” leagues to start merging in a collaboration between boards to build something akin to super competitions, freeing up invaluable space in an increasingly congested cricket calendar. And the blueprint is already there with the failed Champions League Twenty20 (CLT20), which was a three-way joint venture created by the Indian, Australian and South African cricket boards in 2009/10.
The reasons for its failure are well documented, but fast forward to the present, and such propositions might make sense for the more cash-strapped boards.
“We can’t all have our own league, some aren’t even doing well,” an administrator at the conference told Forbes. “Why can’t we look at combining leagues in a partnership model? Let’s say have a three-way agreement between boards, where countries host on rotation.
“It would free up windows in the calendar, ensure no overlapping and NOCs become easier. Something needs to be done because the space for international cricket is shrinking.”
“Maybe this is the new world order, but there is apprehension around and a lot of questions over the primacy of international cricket and the sustainability of three formats amid such a squeeze on the calendar,” Forbes quotes an administrator at the conference as having said.
“It’s creating a lot of tension and it’s just the beginning.”
“It’s just the beginning!” is the key operating principal world cricket has to come to grips with. And there is no wishing it away.
