Indian cricket’s commitment to overall well-being of game is second to none

India has allowed every facet of the game to thrive at its own pace and has not actually tinkered with the natural transformation of the game.

For a good 18 years and counting, the virtually impractical blame of allowing T20 cricket to spoil the traditional virtues of the game has more or less been on India.

The highly erroneous narrative that the Indian Premier League (IPL) and its vast riches have corrupted minds, eaten into packed calendars, and deviated sponsor and broadcaster interests has led to the notion that India’s primary interests in cricket aren’t leaning on the older formats anymore.

Therefore, as much as India wears the undisputed crown of driving cricket’s modern-day interests forward, and it remains a behemoth to that effect and a lot more, there’s much negativity that it keeps coping with on the side too.
This notion must go out of the window.

The fact is India has allowed every facet of the game to thrive at its own pace and has not actually tinkered with the natural transformation of the game.

India has ensured that Test cricket remains a top priority at all times. Making it to back-to-back finals of the World Test Championship cycles over the past four years is a case in point.

Numbers speak

There’s a reason why numbers are important. The ongoing narrative in some parts of the world holds this false notion that India happens to be cricket’s ‘Big Brother’ as far as its finances and global authority are concerned.

However, the fact of the matter is that no country has contributed to every facet of the game so wilfully and earnestly as India has – their inability to win the World Cup title more than twice being the only blip.

The numbers are a case in point as are the overall performances apropos victories – the 2018 win in Johannesburg, the MCG miracle in 2020, the pacers’ day out at Lord’s in 2021, and busting the ‘Bazball’ myth in 2024.

Outside of Tests, there’s been a great deal of contribution too. Where the 50-over format is concerned, in the last four World Cups, India won the title once, made it to the semifinals on two occasions and ended up losing the final the fourth time.

In the last two editions of the ICC Champions Trophy too – 2013 and 2017 – India won the former and made it to the final in the latter, underlining its commitment to all formats and titles of the game.

In fact, barring Australia in one-day World Cups, no single country has dominated all aspects of the game globally as India has. In the 2023 edition of the 50-over World Cup, India became the second-most successful team of all time when they made it to the final after a magnificent run in the tournament.

Men in blue

Immediately after India won the Dharamsala Test, the Board of Control for Cricket in India announced its landmark ‘Test incentive scheme’ that aims to benefit red-ball cricketers and motivate them to take up the format more seriously.

For a cricket board that has revelled in quite a bit of success on and off the field, this statement was merely another in underlining India’s commitment to the oldest format of the game.

It is a retrospective scheme that will benefit players who have played Tests from the 2022-23 season. The existing match fees for Tests, set at Rs 15 lakh, stays and the incentive scheme will be an additional reward structure.

To stick to the massive gains that come from playing T20 would have been the easier thing to do. Why slog in the longer formats that are far more time consuming and less financially rewarding when playing the IPL alone can guarantee all the wealth the game can help you make?

That top Indian cricketers Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and KL Rahul – among others – and Dhruv Jurel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan and others as part of the coming generation are willing to give top priority to Test cricket despite the option of picking from the white-ball riches is India’s ultimate cricket story.

By the time the Test series against England ended, it looked like all the opposition wanted to do was head back home. At no point in the series, post the duel in Visakhapatnam, did the visitors look like they could bat beyond 80 overs and they hardly did.

India, on the other hand, fought to make a comeback in the series and win it handsomely towards the end. Debutants made the contest more exciting and by the time England left, the hosts were spoilt for options in the middle order.

In Australia early this year, local broadcasters invited former India coach and top commentator Ravi Shastri to speak on air during an entirely different series as a build-up to India’s Down Under tour in 2024-25. By the time India takes that flight, the world will make time for what can perhaps be billed as the series of this rights cycle. Not the Ashes, mind you.

Big Brother

In 2020, Cricket Australia was fighting bankruptcy on multiple fronts. India’s tour promised revenue to the tune of $300 million but what made the fraternity sweat was the possibility of the tour taking place in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic.

The World Cup got rescheduled, the IPL was played, India missed out on hosting its domestic season, and across all aspects, the cricket board copped up a great deal of criticism (in the case of IPL, the futile argument that the T20 league was more important than domestic First Class cricket).

But where they did not receive a pat on the back, and in fact should have, was the willingness they showed to travel to Australia and participate in what was a painstaking tour. Locked inside rooms, forced to play within secure bio-bubbles, under the constant threat of falling prey to the virus, India’s cricketers and its board lived up to their commitment.

Not only did they end up playing a historic series, they also saved Australia the blushes on the finance front.

Similarly, as far as the Asia Cup is concerned, the BCCI ensuring the Indian cricket team makes time for the tournament, takes only a percentage share from the revenue of the Asian Cricket Council, and partakes in futile bouts of controversy-driven drama with the Pakistan Cricket Board is akin to them missing the forest for the trees.

That the BCCI continues to do what it has to do is its way of letting the sub-continent’s cricket fraternity know that they care.

Apropos arguments, the fact remains that should the Indian cricket board refuse to participate in any cricketing engagement with Pakistan – which they would willingly appreciate – the result would be the death of the Asia Cup, which in turn would hurt the cricket boards of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, among others, as far as revenue is concerned.

And to ensure that doesn’t happen, Big Brother has been ‘accommodating.’

Postscript

There are many follies around Indian cricket. But not respecting the game’s long-standing traditions and not caring for its stakeholders aren’t among them.

The Indian cricket board can do a lot more where its own administration and management strategies are concerned. They can communicate better, market themselves better and perhaps plan a bigger and better future.
But let it not appear as if they don’t care. They do and the fact is if they didn’t, it would’ve shown.