The New BCCI
A little under five years ago, the cricket establishment in India
privatized a national passion. They started an ‘Indian Premier League’
modelled on the NFL and The English Premier League (only this was
happening with cricket), complete with privately-owned teams, with the
country’s greatest cricketing icons being assets on the balance sheets
of tycoons, four of whom found a place in the Forbes Billionaires List.
The money was being sucked out of the national game and domestic circuit
into the privately owned part of the game. Governments in several
states gave the IPL tax exemptions running to millions of dollars though
tickets could cost as much as 400 dollars or more at the top end.
Hyper-commercialisation of the game was welcome to the media that made
millions of dolars in ad revenue. And the format of the game is T20,
that is, 20 overs a side, so the whole thing gets done in four hours -
as against the five days a proper test match runs to.
While some players earned as much as two million dollars or more a
season, the whole thing reduced a great international side to playing
third rate club level cricket. The motivation to play came from these
spectacular earnings. It also affected their technique, for the
bang-bang version does not enhance one’s skills. A team once ranked at
the top of the world has been slaughtered in England and Australia. The
wages of IPL are showing.
Scoring 30s and 40s (even 20s) at a quick clip is pretty okay in the
Indian Premier League. That’s what our guys in Australia are still
doing. Consider that in the IPL you might earn two million dollars
throwing your bat around for 30s and an occasional flaky 50. Or for
bowling four overs a few times in a 90-day season. It’s hard to strive
for your best when there is so much incentive to do your worst. The same
body, the BCCI, presides over both private (IPL) and national cricket.
It enables huge money to be made by one. And strangles the golden goose
that is the other. The problem is not that our ‘boys’ have been playing too much
cricket. It’s that they haven’t been playing cricket. They’ve been
playing IPL T20, where focus, concentration, technique and staying power
count for little. And it’s showing.
Too much IPL
Is this a bad bunch of players out there? Wounded pride leads to that
easy conclusion. In truth, Indian cricket — crazy as this might seem
just now — has ridden for long on its finest batting line-up ever. We
may never again see players of the greatness, quality and achievement of
a Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman or Sehwag. You might still see late
brilliance in the test that remains, but I wouldn’t bet on it. There’s
been too much playing to advertising-driven, media-orchestrated euphoria
with the IPL. You belt sixes over shortened boundaries, swank in and
out in perhaps 30 balls — get lionized for it, and swagger all the way
to the bank. Some players have done IPL seasons but skipped going to the
West Indies just before difficult tours. Others when ‘tired’ took their
‘break’ from playing for the country. They played in the IPL, though,
injuries and all. England and Australia were disasters waiting to
happen. It’s because you have great players that these have taken some
time to unfold.
However talented, it’s also about who you’re playing for. Are you
playing for your country, for those countless millions of fans who
follow the fortunes of the national team, who make cricket the game it
is in India? Or are you playing for Vijay Mallya, Mukesh Ambani et al.
This is a far more important question than a media self-servingly in
love with the IPL will allow. We served up India’s brightest and best to
private team owners. Indian cricket paid the price. Most of those who
slaughtered us in England and Australia did not play in the IPL. Some
took a conscious, and wise, decision to avoid it. Acclimatization is not
just about the weather and pitches. It’s also about switching back
mentally to the real game. And being clear on the source of your
motivation.
‘Club over country’
We have every right to be shocked by the Indian team’s showing. We
have none at all to be surprised. Every step, every road led here.
Remember the ‘club over country’ debate when players skipped
national-side tours but played the IPL? That debate missed the fact that
there are no ‘clubs.’ Not in plural anyway. The IPL-related ‘clubs’ do
not exist as mass-based physical entities in the way their models
elsewhere do. It’s not about allegiance to ‘club over country.’ Dressing
it that way lends the tragedy a veneer of moral dilemma: do we play for
those hordes supposedly backing our clubs, or for the countless
millions of fans backing the national side?
The only ‘club’ here is the Club of state-subsidized billionaires.
The allegiance of the cricketing establishment, and thereby the players
(and most of the media) is to this club. The BCCI today stands for
Billionaires Control Cricket in India. Your top cricketing icons are
reduced to assets in the balance sheets of corporates. The
“bring-us-their-heads” humiliation that is in store for the team will
actually hijack the debate from why things went wrong. The rants will be
all about the players and their appalling performance. Maybe even a few
yowls at the selectors. But little about how IPL has savaged Indian
cricket and harmed the game around the world. The Laxman now being torn
apart for performance has a stunning average in Australia and is surely
one of the greatest batsmen ever. So are a couple of the others. It’s
not as if they haven’t played and done well in Australia before. Is it
just age?
Just weeks ago, the pundits said this was our best chance ever to
beat Australia in Australia. Our best team possible. Did the best team
ever age in weeks? What happened?
IPL happened. And happened long before the disaster tours. A
team full of players carrying injuries playing 90 days of sub-standard
club-level cricket happened. That prepares you only for more
sub-standard stuff, year after year, not cricket at the highest levels.
They continue playing there with injuries because the BCCI-IPL has
brought big bucks to the privately-owned side of the sport, not to the
domestic game.
It is the domestic game that has been the feeder for Indian cricket.
All our greats came through the Ranji grind. Some through the under-19.
None emerged from the IPL which has in fact had a bad impact on the
skills of youngsters who might have made fine test cricketers. Today,
the feeder line is to the IPL. The Australians have a robust domestic
circuit and a healthy gene pool. We are killing ours with neglect. Think
of it: the BCCI could have boosted the domestic game. It has the money
to do so, but not the motivation. The cash coming out of IPL goes to
private pockets. That’s more difficult to achieve with domestic cricket.
The hyper-commercialization of the game means it is today a mess of
money, agents, lobbyists, corporates, endorsements, advertisers. Cricket
is a by-product. (There are also times when selectors find it hard to
drop some players because of their ‘brand value’ in this system).
Far-reaching impact
The impact goes beyond India. IPL affected the game everywhere in
quality, schedules and priorities. A Malinga, perhaps the greatest Sri
Lankan fast bowler ever, quits test cricket to focus on it. For some
nations, this worked out better over time. Several Australian and
English IPL players are retirees. And in Australia’s case, even the
still-playing veterans skip the IPL to focus on national duty. In India,
our very best are in there, deep. Now, out there in test cricket, it
shows.
As one of India’s more loved ex-cricketers is said to have told his
friends off-record: the IPL-T20 is far from demanding and easy to play.
Fielding? The ball might come your way five times in a match. And you
have to bowl four overs max. And it’s all over in four hours. The ODIs
are far more demanding and, of course, five-day tests are the supreme
challenge.
A few former greats — no enemies of Indian cricket — have worried
about IPL’s impact. They include Ian Botham and Arjuna Ranatunga. In
India, some of the greatest of our greats, have not just refrained from
criticism but vociferously defended IPL on countless television
programs. The co-opting power of the BCCI-IPL money machine is wondrous.
Now and then, a little conflict-of-interest blip appears. Like
commentators being paid huge sums by the BCCI — who are then unlikely to
criticize its golden child. It is equally unlikely that media fed with
stacks of ad revenue will speak up either. Any other institution seeing
half the scams and conflict of interest that the BCCI-IPL has, would
long ago have drawn sharp media scrutiny. But whatever emerges does so
when the IT or ED departments get active, not the media. There are also
too many journalists co-opted into the IPL network, unable to look at it
critically.
And there is no way serving players will criticize it (or anything
the BCCI does if they value their careers). Not while it’s positioned as
the Kamadhenu of Cricket. That status was and is a choice the BCCI has
consciously made. It controls the game in the country. With its money
power, it lords over it at the global level too, in a manner that earns
us the mistrust of other nations. It isn’t just that BCCI chooses to
privilege one format of the game over another. There could be, as some
argue, a place for all three. BCCI chose to privilege the private over
the public. We pay the price.
Here’s the problem: when the shouting is done and the players heads
have rolled, things won’t get better. The system and gene pool of Indian
cricket have been, are being radically altered for the worse. We need
to think about how to revive the domestic game, rescue cricket from the
billionaires club and restore it to the public domain.
P. SAINATH is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, where this piece appears, and is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories From India’s Poorest Districts. He can be reached at:psainath@vsnl.com.
