April-May Month. What does that mean to any average school or a college student?? Summer holidays or semester holidays right?? But now ask them they would say it tis the season of IPL, the great Indian gala. Most of the kids who used to keep the grounds busy in the evenings on the other days, come the IPL they would want to play earlier or finish off the matches soon or play less matches just to go home and watch the game.
What impact has IPL made to the Indian Cricket? This topic is very much debatable.
What is IPL? The IPL was started in 2008 not to entertain the people, but just as a rebel league to Kapil’s Indian Cricket League as the BCCI did not want an individual to find talents for India and also make huge profits. So they made a huge advantage of the loophole the ICL had. The ICL was only for uncapped and out-of-radar Indians and retired and interested players from foreign countries. They found this loophole and made the advantage work for them by allowing all then present-day players from India and other countries to participate. This was a huge success as the spectators were more interested in watching their heroes in action for 40 overs rather than watch some X uncapped Indian player or an overseas player.
How did the IPL override the ICL? Firstly it was the auctions and the cities. The IPL had almost covered the same cities like the ICL had and if I remember the names would also be somewhat same. Like the Chennai Superstars and Chennai Superkings, Mumbai Champs and Mumbai Indians like that and then added more entertainment in cheer girls. Then in the players who played the game. Obviously an average Indian would come and watch a Sehwag or a Sachin play rather watching a Hemang Badani or an Ibrahim Khaleel play. That was followed by the blazing start that the tournament got in the form of B-Mac’s 158* in the tournament opener. This created more buzz and fan-following. To eliminate the ICL completely they further imposed bans on the ICL contracted-players by not considering them for selections even for Ranji trophy matches, and in 2009 by issuing that players who leave ICL can participate in Ranji and will represent India almost every players declined their ICL contracts thereby ICL was done and dusted.
This was followed by huge amount of successes in the next editions and with the quality of the cricket it is one of the most viewed leagues in the world. The Young Indian players were getting tips from foreign players and were exposed to tough match situations which make the present Indian team strong even in nail-biting situations as they have been exposed to such situations, they know how to react and also handle the pressure well. Without the IPL, players like Sanju Viswanandh, Rohit Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Mohit Sharma and many more would not have come to the limelight soon. Some of them like Rohit and Sanju are even talked about being the next big in Indian cricket with Sanju as MS’s successor as a gloves man and Rohit for his captaincy.
With the IPL, not only talented Indians got national call-ups but also some foreign players too. And the main reason they were picked in the squad- talent? There would be more talented players in the queue for the spot. It was the exposure they had to the sub-continental pitches by which they were selected. Brad Hodge had to still wait for an Australian call-up after Symonds, Martyn and Gilchrist leaving the arena. Who was that who got the nod ahead of him? Shaun Marsh the Orange Cap winner of the IPL 2008.
But for a brighter side there should be some dark side behind it. No, am not going to talk about the fixing scandals. But the other dark part of the story. The Indian sub-continent was once a fortress for the other nations to win and to win here you need to change your game and adapt to the conditions here unless you are part of the Invincible Australian era. Overseas players play with the Indian players get to know their strong-zones and weak-zones and when they play in an ODI/T20/Test against you? They were ready to use it. This cannot be said as a minus as the Indians also got to know the weak-zones of the overseas players too. But what was valuable was the experience that they got by playing the Indian conditions. And given that the BCCI did not allow Indian Players to participate in BBL, CPL or the Ram-Slam, played further to their part. On one side you have a Steve Smith who knows how to play in Indian conditions and on the other side you had a Rohit Sharma who struggled Down Under against Australia. Even if the BCCI allowed, would the players have played? No. The BBL allows 2 overseas player, Ram Slam 0-2 overseas players in their sides. But they would have got the exposure of the conditions. Imagine if a Rohit Sharma or a Virat Kohli who would have played a season or two of the BBL? The entire scenario in the recent Border-Gavaskar series would have been different.
What can be done? My suggestion is that if the IPL is here to promote cricket make it in some neutral venues or around the globe not only in India and rename it to as Cricket Premier League. The main reason is that some players are making them available for IPL even when on national-duty. Or if it is for entertainment only, it can be slowly scrapped off. Or adjustments can be made in other leagues to ease the quota of overseas players and make the Indians participate. Whatever done should benefit Cricket as a whole not only to the advantage and disadvantage of some boards to make Cricket more global. Organising Cricket in growing nations like Ireland, UAE would benefit in globalising cricket rather than it happening at India always.
-S.T. Guha Karthikeyan.
-S.T. Guha Karthikeyan.
