YET another season of the Ranji Trophy has just commenced, and in these times of cricket’s financial muscle, it is unsurprising to note that that the winner of this domestic championship will carry home a cool Rs 20 million.
It is with some regret and nostalgia that I recall the times when I played the Ranji Trophy back in 1994, got paid three thousand rupees per match and felt quite elated about it. Guess I should have been born some 20 years later to cash in on this veritable bonanza.
The prime theme in sports pages in those days was the poor plight of the domestic players, the yawning gap between international and domestic cricket (financially), and the pathetic conditions surrounding domestic players (they were staying in ramshackle places and eating dhaba food).
How all that has changed! Now for one Ranji game a player gets in excess of 100,000 rupees, travels business class and stays in plush hotels. Even if a player does not go on to play for the country, there is the IPL, the Champions League, League cricket in England and so on.
In fact, now is a great time to be a domestic cricketer. Earlier, there were depressing stories in sports pages about the likes of Amarjeet Kaypee, Rajinder Goel, Padmakar Shivalkar and others, who could not make it big despite being superb cricketers. But right now, there is everything to gain by just being a Rajat Bhatia or a Chetanya Nanda.
For a player like Rajat Bhatia (30) – for example – chances are he will never go on to play for India. But is he complaining? Quite on the contrary, he has everything to play for. While it is true that a player always yearns to represent the country, in these enterprising times, even if you do not play for the country, and are a decent enough domestic player, you stand to gain a lot.
Bhatia plays for Delhi in the Ranji Trophy, for Daredevils in the IPL, for Daredevils again in the Champions League, for a club in England, where he also makes money doing part-time work. On top of all this, such players also have nice jobs with corporates like ONGC etc. Actually today’s domestic cricketer is much better off than yesterday’s international cricketer. And the scenario is only going to become more lucrative with each passing year.
At this rate, the day is not far when the Ranji Trophy champions will pocket something like Rs 100 million. The IPL will be played almost incessantly all the year around. And in between there will be things like the Champions League and so on. You will have a chance to play and make money in T20 leagues in other parts of the world as well. In short, a great time to be just a domestic cricketer in India.
But even now there are experts and pundits complaining that there is too much cricket happening all around and that is not good for the game. Players are getting injured and the mandarins of the game – egged on by their greed – are killing the hen that lays the golden egg is the lament doing the rounds.
Some days ago, I was watching a programme on a prominent TV channel where the legendary Imran Khan was one of the guests. He was being asked – isn’t it bad for the game that so much cricket is being played all around? The trouble, said Imran, was not that too much cricket is being played but the fact that there are far too many experts than what is good for the game.
According to Imran (and he knows a thing or two about cricket), cricket is a highly technical game and only those who have played it at some first class level understand its intricacies as these intricacies should be understood.
I feel the trouble with our so-called experts is that they must carp and cavil. When international cricketers want to opt out of domestic cricket, they want them to play for their respective Ranji teams as well. When a player comes back after a break, they call him short of cricket. When he has played a couple of matches, they want him to take a break. When a player is seen in commercials, they want him to concentrate on his game. When he plays cricket, they think there is too much cricket going on. When he plays IPL, they say he should play for the country instead. When he plays for the country, they say he should concentrate only on Test matches. I think Imran needs to talk to these so-called experts.
Now just to digress a bit, in the one-day series that is underway at the moment, Australia seem to be hanging in there despite all their casualties. It appears India are playing against an Australian A side because the majority of the Australian first string players are unavailable due to diverse injuries (Brett Lee, Nathan Bracken, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Peter Siddle, Calum Ferguson, James Hopes). If fit, all seven will play in the starting XI. So India should be beating this second string Australian side quite easily at home. But is that really happening? The result is 2-2 with three to play. I think by the seventh match in Mumbai, India will be facing an Emerging Australian side with the series locked three all.
