A few nights ago, a Soulberry exhausted by the long day's events couldn't summon sleep. No, not even when he was about as beat as a fully-flogged tanga horse. It was just so much effort to sleep! So he crept into his viewing couch and extended a creaking limb towards the remote ( wonderful invention that ) and switched on the news sedatives available on the tube. From here to there and finally settled on CNN-IBN. Just because Sehwag's visage popped up in conversation with Gaurav Kalra, their cricket point-man, and there's no better sleeping pill than a routine interview with a cricketer. Soulberry forgot it was Sehwag....and not just another standard coached cricketer.
Somewhere towards the end of that chat show, this is whaat he said "I was surprised, but they did clap for me after the game. It's a domestic tournament..."
That kinda stuck in Soulberry's mind as he dropped off to sleep...
Next morning, Soulberry picks up the newspapers and skims through the nominal news on the front pages and the innards till he reaches the bulky sports section. He espies a colourful advertisement there from the home of Chennai Superkingos (The Hindu originates in that region) and is amused...for the parting words of Sehwag linger from the late-night rerun of a cricket chat show.
The last five times Soulberry saw a domestic tournament, spread over a few years, he didn't recall any advertisement soliciting custom. He didn't recall any such rates....ever...for a domestic tournament in India. Nah, not even for the Challengers or the inaugural T20 jingbang BCCI had reluctantly tested out back then before the ICL earthquake hit their stolid offices. Yeah sure, maybe he did see adverts for Ranji in the newspapers in his lifetime, but that was decades ago, at least three decades of them, if not more. Sure, there were adverts for charity matches and benefit matches in the intevening period, which was understood, but was too muted and low-key to register. One didn't see them in all the newspapers or the web (Web didn't exist then). But never that range of prices....
It all seemed odd and contradictory and was a perfect chewing gum for Soulberry as he drove a long way to work.
"What would happen if the number of international players were reduced to one per team?" he asked himself. "Would the stands be as full?"
"Suppose we do away with the international players, will we have similar adverts?"
Chewing harder, Soulberry crunched upon another question "Would there be as many watching and talking and writing about it without the international players?"
The conclusion was obvious - Sehwag was wrong, even though IPL appears the way he put it. So Soulberry looked up the archives at various repositories of cricket news.
After trawling through the navigationally difficult Cricnfo (at least for a layperson like Soulberry), he gave up and settled on the easier IPL FAQs which said -
"What is the Indian Premier League?
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a franchise-based Twenty20 competition organised by the BCCI, and it has official sanction since it has the backing of the ICC. It features the world's best cricketers playing - their affiliation decided by open auction - for eight city-based franchises, owned by a host of businessmen and celebrity consortiums. The inaugural edition of the tournament will run from April 18 to June 1."
...and this -
"Whose idea is the IPL?
IPL is the brainchild of Lalit Modi, the vice-president of the BCCI, and is modeled along the lines of club football in Europe, specifically the English Premier League. Though there is a school of thought that the idea came about in the 1990s, the announcement that such a tournament would happen, and which it would be a precursor to Twenty20 Champions League, cricket's version of the European Champions League, came only after Subhash Chandra, the owner of Zee Televison said, in April last year, that he was intending to start an unofficial league called the Indian Cricket League, fuelling speculation that is was a reactive idea rather than a proactive one."
...and also this - "How different are the IPL and ICL to each other?
The IPL is an official sanctioned Twenty20 tournament, and unlike the ICL, which is not recognised by any of the national boards or the ICC, it will have a better status, international reach, players, and the requisite infrastructure by default. Since the IPL is sanctioned by the ICC, players don't have the danger of bringing their international/first-class careers to a halt - as is the case with the ICL - whose players have been banned by the various boards. Another major difference is with regard to franchises - the ownership of the team rests with the individual owners and not one single entity."
Not finding any mention of the domesticity of the tournament there, he headed over to the ICC website. That's a maze so he shifted to the IPL official website. Nothing much there either about this aspect.
WIKIPEDIA stop next. Zilch again!
Then he checked out this unofficial website. Nothing there either.
Curiously, no one mentions anything about the domesticity of this tournament...and yet Sehwag goes ahead and calls it a domestic tournament!
Scouting around the various team websites revealed little as well.
So what is it? Is IPL a domestic tournament? If so, then please explain the ticket rates and adverts to Soulberry, which clearly are "international class". Please explain the absence of the word domestic in the write-ups of cricket establishments. It doesn't gell...
Or, is it that all concerned, ICC downwards, are skating over this issue and keeping mum so that people can think whatever they like and see it as whatever they feel, rather than risk scaring off their enthusiasm with emphasis on the domestic label?
ICC and boards could have stakes here, perhaps all knew that if this test case got off, they'd get their acts up and going...or at least a few more. Nobody wants to emphasize they are domestic tournaments....Soulberry thinks they aren't quite domestic, leagues are a different entity...they have an international icing to top-off the basic cake beneath.
But it is a curius thought....a mischeivous thought...if only one could pull out afew international players...if only one could highlight the domestic label...would the stands be as full? Would tickets be priced at international rates?...OK, just under perhaps but unimaginable ratios nevertheless, for a Ranji match costs Rs.0 to see. A ratio of comparison isn't possible.
Would there be an advert for a domestic match saying "Sold Out"? The last big crowd I saw in a domestic match at the Kotla was about 100 strong. OK...you caught me out, I was exaggerating...50-60 was more like it for the remaining 30-40 were staff and the odd policeman. I was king of the stadium then...could watch it from any stand I felt like...could walk in and out as many times as I liked...and free.
Whatever the intention of ICC and various boards are....they are willing to allow an essentially domestic system be viewed in "intenational" colours, just so, that crowds actually come in, watch, and pay up for domestic matches. When a few more leagues spring up elsewhere (WI is going international and so is England), the same impression will be allowed to remain, just so an inter-liga will have that much more value. Selling an idea has plenty to do with illusions...not one of the crowd in the Chennai arena would come to watch Vidyut or Gony play a T20. Even if Dhoni and the rest of the natives turned up, you'd probably find not more than 5000...irrespective of the T20 WC which anyway is receding into history now.
Mix it up right
2 hours ago
11 comments:
SB - it is a domestic tournament :-)
It is called the INDIAN Premier League. If it wasn't domestic it would be called the International Premier League.
The teams competing are Indian cities. The matches are being played in India and the team owners are all Indians.
Its an Indian tournament, thus a domestic one.
The way English counties allow 2 foreign players per team, the IPL allows 4. Would you call the county season non-domestic?
Indian league, Indian Board, Indian teams, Indian owners, Indian players. Everything is Indian about it.
Its definitely a domestic tournament.
The crowds coming and in and the ticket rates and the ads all goes to show that the face of domestic Indian cricket is changing and for the better.
Oh and btw, your wish came true today. Sangwan played for Delhi and bowled along side McGath and Asif. What a moment for the youngster.
That's the illusion Q. None of the sources I mentioned, said a word about IPL or league cricket in future being domestic explicitly.
It does look like all boards and ICC are keen to accord a third status to leagues.
Now that the WIEPL is a reality, let's see how all boards treat these leagues. I'm sure at least two more will come up...in the southern hemisphere.
They all say it is to help domestic cricketers, but none is actually calling all these leagues...existing and proposed...as actually domestic. there is nothing at the ICC website as well.
Think this is a clever marketing strategy...let people interpret it as they want?
I see what u mean SB.. the leagues are definitely different from the domestic cricket as we know it but I think going forward each country's league will be known as its own domestic league much like the football ones (English, Spanish, Italian, etc)..
PPL will come up end of the year, Australia might have their with New Zealand. WI and Eng as u mentioned are already planning theirs.
Wonder where the int'l stars will go cos they have signed 3 year IPL contracts...
One point here SB. I read eenadu daily everyday, 1000s of miles away from the eenadu land.
Among the IPL news in eenadu, one day I read that the ticket prices for the entry at Rajiv Gandhi Uppal stadium is a secret and not to be disclosed! lol. It just means there is no ticket! If there is no crowd in the stadia, the TV audiences will feel dull, boring. The stadium is free to enter, hence.
I am not sure of the chennai crowds, but the prices are mind boggling, I see, from the ^^ ticket scan!
If we do have leagues in the southern hemisphere as well, the seasons will be different.
We will have a summer league and a winter league in essence.
If you recall, when the discussion was about "windows", I had suggested that ICC will need only two window max....one for the northern hemisphere leagues and one for the southern hemisphere leagues.
When that happens, as I believe and hope it will, then leagues will assume more domestic/developmental utility.
International stars will be spread out...there will be an increase in the number of T20 stars and will become entities of their own as anticipated. I foresee even assoc country players taking part in these leagues.
Actually, Asia itself could afford to host at least another league...there is space and players for it, but I don't know if that's the way they'll go about it.
Cricket has changed for ever...I couldn't help notice that none of the officials of any board has explicitly chosen to call these leagues domestic when they should be in a sense.
It was evident from the beginning of the league concept that boards were watching to see the response of both the ICL and IPL experiment before setting up more leagues. That is now happeninng and phase II has already begun.
I'llbe watching for the classification of these leagues and the stats therein. T20 per se is being treated very differently from the way boards have handled even 50-50 cricket. More market-saviness involved.
There is a fear perhaps that calling a tournament domestic before it is well-established, may reduce the appeal in some spectators' minds....and maybe they wouldn't be willing to fork out such sums as in the advert nor throng the stadia. These things do have a subtle effect...marketing gurus here would perhaps know what I'm trying to say. Some illusion around the product is necessary to ensure it sells well and becomes a familiar product.
Yenkayya, how is Eenadu placed vis a vis the Deccan group. We know the media wars in Andhra are divided along camps lines.
That said, in the case of DC, there could be a case for rebates and cut rate tickets. If their performance had been better, maybe we would have seen adverts.
I doubt entry would be wholly free, for knowing India, then crowd control would be difficult. I'm sure tickets are being sold and they are perhaps at the rates of a flop movie night show rates.
Soulberry,
This off-topic.
Here in Chennai the matches are preceded by live music concert and then we have Sivamani drumming up flagging spirits throught out the match.
How was is it in Delhi? Are they selling it as a package?
Ott, this is Delhi you are speaking about. There isn't a Sivamani in this part of the world...BMX bikers and recorded music with a few bhangra specialists were all I saw. There was Akshay with stunts on the first day. That's about it.
There isn't much by way of adverts and promotion in Delhi. Curious, but publicity has been low key and tacky.
One may see a few forlon black banners with cheap printing here and there in the city...that's all, and they are easy to escape the eye as well. No packages or much publicity. In fact I was uncertain about the match till I reached Kotla the day before it to collect my ticks/passes from a friend waiting there.
I just went for the first day when there was all the action by way of cultural events...I guess Gaurav of NC has taken in more matches live and may be in a posish to say what it was like in subsequent matches.
I am surprised to hear it. No wonder ticket sales are low. Wonder whether the same applies for Mohali.
The Chennai franchisee is making each match as if it is a family's day out.
You listen to music, watch some fast and furious cricket.
I'm not sure about that Ottayan. The grounds are full.
Kotla is still a smallish ground despite the renovation and the expanded seating capacity is full in most matches.
It was quite a bit of fun when I went for the first match with my son and his grandmother.
The problem is only 8.00 pm matches will work here...4.00pm matches are too hot...way too hot for anyone.
I don't think it is a media war. Eenadu didn't try to bag a contract, so there is no conflict there. As for the DC franchise goes, DC is not rich enough to buy a franchise. DC doesn't even figure in the top 5 AP newspapers. DC is confined to Hyderabad, even in Hyd+Sec'bad, most people follow Hindu and TOI. DC is just the gate name, the inside funding is undisclosed much like Preity and Shahrukh!
One of the problems for Uppal stadium is that it is located a bit far from the city, about 2 - 3 miles. That is far, in India. So, no takers even for free tickets. Another problem is, ICL was received well at Hyderabad. After all the ICL games, the city is not ready again for another event like ICL. That is also cited as another reason. Ofcourse, ICL was held at Lal Bahadur stadium which is in the heart of the city, the stadium was packed whenever I watched ICL.
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