The addition of two new teams to the world’s most high-profile cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL) makes it a 10-team tournament.
However, this is not something innovative, or original, because almost a decade back, 10 teams did participate in the IPL (in the 2011 edition of the league there were 10 teams divided into two groups of five). It was later discontinued (the last time more than eight teams played in the IPL it was in 2013 when nine teams were part of the annual extravaganza) because of several reasons.
It was discontinued, perhaps, because the idea was a bit ahead of its time as it was still early days for cricket’s billion-dollar child. Another reason could have been that the world of cricket was then reluctant to embrace the inevitable dominance of the IPL — a league which is now slowly becoming the centre of the cricketing universe.
Some would even argue that the economic survival of the International Cricket Council (ICC), the global governing body of the game, is indeed enormously dependent on this league, which until recently used to be disparagingly referred to as ‘India’s domestic tournament’ none less by a few former BCCI stalwarts. Maybe, it was just a clever ploy to divert all the attention from the Anglo-Australian block who suspected the traditional format of cricket (Test cricket) wouldn’t survive the onslaught of this slam-bang format (T20 cricket).
Anyhow, a lot has changed since then, and even if grudgingly, the whole world (except maybe Pakistan because they’ve not had access to this proverbial golden goose) has unanimously accepted that the IPL is the ultimate cricket tournament, maybe even bigger than the one day international World Cups and T20 formats.
However, it’s not just about the staggering money that the IPL rakes in for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), it is about the overall impact the colossal brand that the IPL has become, which masks all the flaws of the board otherwise. Yet, it must be accepted that it’s one thing to generate such mind-boggling revenue from the IPL year after year (despite all the scepticism in the beginning), and another to have a special skillset and expertise to manage it so efficiently. This is what makes the BCCI not only the richest and most powerful cricket board, but also allows it to deliver a world-class tournament every year.
For the uninitiated, this great tradition of hosting top-class and seemingly flawless cricket tournaments started with the successful hosting of the first-ever global cricket tournament, the 1987 World Cup. Since then the BCCI has not only continued this glorious tradition magnificently, but has also been raising the bar for other nations.
The economic impact by the entry of two new teams into the IPL is going to change the landscape of the game in India, but what it is also likely to do is to make a huge difference to the entire cricketing system. There are already plans of having two IPL seasons in a year, one during the traditional Indian summer (April-May) window, and the other one is the new-found winter (September-October) window in the United Arab Emirates after having successfully hosted a back-to-back IPLs in 2020 and 2021. This is not a radical idea by the current BCCI, but an old and grand ambition by IPL’s former chairman Lalit Modi.
Not just the BCCI, even the franchises are emboldened by the growing clout of the IPL brand globally. In the past some franchises have requested the BCCI to allow them to play ‘bilateral-friendly’ games among the teams: For example, a three- or five-match T20 series between, say, the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Chennai Super Kings in the United States, or the United Kingdom, or Canada.
In past, the BCCI never entertained such ideas because it didn’t want to dilute the brand IPL, and also because the FTP (future tour programmes) of the ICC which would not allow most of the overseas players to play in such fixtures, which were not part of the actual IPL window.
However, all this is likely to change since the ICC no longer dictates the FTP as sternly as was the case earlier, and most of the cricketing nations and players have belatedly acknowledged that T20 — and more precisely the IPL — is the only format which is going to survive and thrive in future. All in all, cricket has a new synonym: IPL.
Vimal Kumar is a senior sports journalist who has covered multiple cricket world cups and Rio Olympics in the past two decades. Vimal is also the author of Sachin: Cricketer Of The Century and The Cricket Fanatic’s Essential Guide.
Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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