Where will Indian cricket reach in 2047, 100 years after Independence?

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala said having independent thought was important

Indian cricket had their most famous wins in 1971, towards the end of the first 25 years after Independence. Around that period, Doordarshan began to telecast cricket across the country. In the next 25 years, India found three global superstars, in Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, and Sachin Tendulkar; won a World Cup and co-hosted two more; and took the first steps towards unheard-of revenue through cricket. The third quarter of a century featured three more ICC trophies, the launch of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a steady rise in women’s cricket, and India firmly establishing itself as a global superpower of the sport. What is Indian cricket going to look like in 2047?

The IPL will be longer or more frequent

True, some fans complain of the mid-season lull in the 74-match league, but the astronomical amounts spent in buying broadcasting rights indicate that the interest is far from dwindling. If anything, fans will want more IPL matches. The progression from 10 teams, two months to 12 teams, three months may be natural, locking a quarter of the global cricket calendar.

However, there may also be two IPLs in the same year. A full-size one in the current window, and a shorter one, featuring mostly knockout matches, around December.

India will be one of three teams playing Men’s Test cricket

Pakistan toured South Africa for three Test matches in 2018/19. Since then, every Test series not featuring India, England or Australia has been two Test matches long. India, Australia, and England, on the other hand, are set to play five-match Test series against each other in the foreseeable future.

This disparity will only increase, and Test tournaments of the future not featuring the ‘Big Three’ will involve one match each. All cricket tours will perhaps switch to multi-format contests, mimicking the Women’s Ashes.

That will invariably lead to the next generation of cricketers in these nations not showing interest in Test cricket. The lure of the World Test Championship is unlikely to be enough.

Gradually, one by one, they will opt out of the format in favour of T20, which pays significantly more for fewer hours. The ‘Big Three’, however, will continue to play Test cricket, which all three boards will continue to market as something intangible like ‘real cricket’.

India will play simultaneous matches

Cricketers of the future will be identified as specialists – Test, ODI, T20, T10, perhaps there will be five-over cricket too – at a very early age, and their careers will be chalked out accordingly.

As a result, India will make the most of their unparalleled talent pool to develop mutually exclusive teams of Test, ODI, and T20I experts.

Eleven Indians may play a Test match against eleven Australians during the day hours; and on the first, third, and fifth evenings, another team of Indians may play a three-match T20I series against South Africa.

Fans will watch their preferred format or, even better, both formats.

Cricket will be taught more seriously at all levels

A lucrative IPL contract may pay a teenager more than what an engineering degree will pay them at 22. The students – and, of course, their parents – have been queueing up outside coaching camps for years, but things may reach unprecedented levels in the next 25 years.

Expect future stars to be identified well before they turn 10, and get streamlined and fast-tracked into higher levels. Expect cricket to feature in the curriculum from an early age, like physical education of yore – as an elective subject to begin with.

The IPL scouts will keep an eye, and the franchises will sponsor the most gifted children. They will grow up dreaming of pursuing careers with the Mumbai Indians or Royal Challengers Bangalore in the same way their parents used to want to work for their dream IT firms.

The next Indian star may come from anywhere

Cricket is no longer restricted to a few major cities in India, but not all corners of the country have been equally explored for talent. The scouts of the future will explore more than they do now, and catch cricketers at a younger age.

By 2047, a cricketer from Meghalaya or Chhattisgarh or Uttarakhand or Puducherry may lead India – thanks to the IPL scouts.

IPL will control world cricket even more than now

The seeds were sown in 2015, when the Kolkata Knight Riders bought the Trinidad & Tobago franchise in the Caribbean Premier League. By 2022, all six teams at the SA20 – South Africa’s T20 tournament – were acquired by IPL franchises.

They have since acquired teams in the ILT20 in the UAE as well as in the Major League Cricket in the USA and more CPL teams.

The next, obvious step is for them to get international cricketers from around the world to forego international contracts and play exclusively for them.

For example, Super Kings may pay Matheesha Pathirana – I chose both the franchise and player randomly – enough money to play for every Super Kings team (Chennai, Joburg, Texas, and whatever they acquire in future) and for no one else, including his country, Sri Lanka.

Perhaps they may release cricketers for World Cups. Perhaps not.

Cricket will allow more women to be financially independent

The post-2017 World Cup boost has already inspired women to take up professional cricket, but not at a mass level. That is very likely to change as the Women’s Premier League (WPL) takes subsequent strides.

It may be one season old, but the WPL is already second only to the Women’s NBA in terms of valuation among women’s sports leagues. As it expands from five teams to ten, with home-and-away matches in a designated window, the WPL will be the gateway to financial independence for generations of women.

Despite everything, however...

The fans, Indian cricket’s greatest stakeholders, will almost certainly be subjected to the same sub-par conditions at venues.

Over the past 75 years, India has established itself as the global hub of cricket off the field, and one of the strongest sides on it. But while the BCCI and the players have gone from strength to strength, the same cannot be said for the fan experiences at the venues. To hope for improvement may be optimism of the highest order.