Southern hemisphere Twenty20 Tournament

Now where did you hear that before? And on the IPL model?

Well, wherever you heard it, it has transpired/is transpiring - Cricinfo

Damn! Where are all those righteous ones who gave us an earful of junk?

And I need to check out a forum I haven't been to in ages - BBC 606 - to see what the "wonderful people" out there have to say about it all now.

The scenario one suggested waayyy back has fallen in place - Stanford controls one part of the world with England as a sidekick, IPL another, the Southern Hemisphere a third, the ICL (with a hypothetical possible tie-up with Stanford in future) the fourth option for freelancers, and one league involving players from assoc members and played in non-regular cricket nations....we've suggested it all before.
Suddenly, all that sneering and mockery sounds silly.

One tried to present it as the way forward sensing the changing times we live in and the aspirations of cricketers. It had become necessary to start it all so kids would play cricket rather than go the West Indian way of other, better paying, sports and keep spectators in the fold while bringing in new ones to sustain the economies of staging test cricket.

There had to be a cricket one could play in countries where interest spans rarely go beyond that of a footie match...or may need to be played indoors...where a 50/50 would be commercially unviable - the electricity bill itself would eat off a chunk.

T20 fit the bill and one foresaw five leagues, or maybe six max, operating in this world.

And people counterargued with some strange concepts like greed of players, Indians, BCCI etc....

I mean I am sure those who did argue that way are all altruistic people who never work for greater profit in life themselves, or have others earning for their pocket-money, or never plan for changing business scenarios and take steps to accomodate it.

I mean, the players were supposed to be some mechanical robot without life or sensation...who would remain unaffected by the world around him and continue to play cricket for our pleasure while we tossed him a few peanuts in return because well...that's cricket. Chin up for the greater game and all that stuff!

We pointed out the problems of the assoc memeber country players who couldn't take a day off to play 50-50 even in the WC...curiously, when I asked a prominent assoc member blog about how they felt the T20 could address their immediate woes so they could develop other versions with greater comfort, one got a earful of standard-issue prattle prevailing at that time from the blogster who was doing nothing but complaining about the state of the assocs since he started the blog! We heard plenty problems and not one solution...not one solution which incorporated any of the insights they themselves were offering!

We suggested that players today wanted more security at deeper levels from the sport they opted to play for...sport and profession are quite indistinguishable these days...and many countries could not afford to fulfill the aspirations based on the revenue generated from 50-50 and test matches. There may be exceptions in the form of England, Australia, SA, and maybe NZ...but the rest of the world couldn't provide any sense of security during the playing days of its players - no health coverage, not enough pay, no avenues for alternative learning or employment for the life after...nothing. To institute it all needed money and that's the problem with all countries. It's OK to talk grassroots, but to tend to the grassroots you need money...and the nature of our times demand that that money will come when certain other things are done - like take into account changing spectator needs/limitations, develop a new model to be the revenue engine, expand your participant base...T20, out of all, appeared to be the one which fitted all those qualities within it.

Then the very nature of T20 was such that you could open your kitbag anywhere and rap it for a while and then wrap it all up and go home with the boombox and all. It was designed to be a franchise sport. It was in its genes and one body couldn't control it...or own it.

We suggested that at least 5-6 leagues would be needed to accomodate the cricket playing public of the world.

We suggested there could be a championship of these leagues as and when they came about...that T20 was a different animal and that its energy must be harnessed to keep drawing the cricketing cart forward.

I had interesting responses to all back then - some were polite (mostly here) but others were not so(at forums) were clear that I was smoking a greedy pot or something worse.

Our suggestions came after considering the effect of the first Stanford in 2006, and later when the ICL-BCCI fights began that year, we took time to examine what one learned from Stanford events and that fight. WI was a microcosm of the cricketing world...th larger portion of it with all the troubles afflicting it which could afflict cricket - ICL's emergence from a relatively stable country like India was an indicator of how loosely structured cricket was despite its tight image. How discontent could, in today's world easily brew over into something different - now the vehicle was there...the magic seed of T20 was there. We refused to waste time in parrotting tunes by rote.

Well, here we are...two years down the line.

I think tonight I should pay a visit to BBC 606...it can sometimes be fun to say "I told you so!"