Monday, March 23, 2009

IPL, Where money rules

After a couple of weeks hullabaloo IPL flight has finally left for abroad (probably UK), may be It'll be great success or a Flop show of the year, yes with recession coming in to the consideration this is the possibility. Now lets consider how things have spanned out over past few months. May be the timeline sort of view.

1. The great Stanford league of Million $$$$$
May be it was the destined to fail. A million @ and rich Daddy for he tournament who probably never understood the game, what a combination. ECB was planning a coupe against the cash rich BCCI on the backing Of Mr. Stanford. May be the so much better playing conditions in England would've caused sleep less night for IPL organizers while players would have cherished playing there. But with staanford scam all those thing remained well off the reality & IPL was back in the business.

2. Cash rich & highly Successful 1st season:
Now consider the revenue generated from the IPL, just one season of IPL has provided enough war-chest to already cash-laden BCCI, to modify the ICC schedule as and when required. That's how we see an added test for the Indian cricket team and enough tour games for Out-of-the -squad players before the test series began. Well, well who would have expected that at the turn of the century. With the so much cash coming its way & with the team striking all the correct nodes I think we are on top of the game now and may be for 3-4 years to come.

Now lets see the possible scenarios linking above two relatively distant events:

1. IPL
IPL itself is an clear badge of BCCI Domination in the World of Cricket. Can you believe it they are planning to organize it in England, right before the T20 WC, which will take place in the same country. Now consider the situation where, the possible competitors for BCCI in thecricket world, namely ACB & ECB, decide to go the other way, Stanford LEague. That's where the organization of IPL in the British land becomes so damn important with ECB gettinng major chunk of revenue with already popular format. It's clear that T20 has rejuvenated cricket in Soccer-crazy England so IPL along with T20 WC if something is going to establish ECB for very long period.What's the gain for BCCI, they get an ally in ICC to commercialize the cricket even more. It is definitely not the situation that CA or ECB are the knights who'll save Cricket from commercialization but complete domination of any one member in the world wide body like ICC is definitely not a good sign.

Just imagine, the so called magicians of the IPL forgot such a simple fact about the Election for so long that they plan it and wait till the last fort-night to announce the verdict. Now the big question of the security, post Lahore Attacks, Wouldn't we could have set a great display of our Armed forces power in front of the world with Common-wealth games coming our way very next year and ODI World cup a year after that. Are we so damn handi-capped that we cannot host such event, of course we are cricket crazy nation, we have colossal population but are we so indifferent to accept such an insult????? Certainly not all the governments think on the asame notes also Defense Minister also thinks otherways. Now it could've been IPL where few teams would have played all there games away from there home crowds but nonetheless the revenue would have remained in the country itself to a major extent. Wouldn't that had benn nice in this times of recession, with the common man getting his share of the big cake???

But so is the Politics and power game of the today's world that game has been removed from the cricket-crazy nation just to appease the ally and keeping the profit flow on.