So, the first tournament of the Indian Cricket League has finally ended with the Chennai superstars proving their supremacy. A lot of controversy has surrounded ICL for some time now.
It has come as a ray of hope for the players who felt that their careers were going down the drain with limited money and even lesser reputation while playing at the Ranji level. With ICL, they are definitely getting better money and a chance of building a reputation. Breaking into the Indian cricket team is an uphill task particularly because of our ill-managed domestic structure with lots of politics involved. One can’t blame the players in this regard as they put in honest toil and get virtually nothing in return!
It is helping cricket to gain global popularity as players from different nations are being signed and they are getting good money too! This will attract talent from the minnows and non-cricket playing nations and will eventually helping in motivating people to take up cricket as a sport in such countries. Not only this, it will also help ICC in its quest for cricket’s inclusion in the Olympics.
In a sort of counter attack, BCCI formed an IPL (Indian Premier League) taking in most of the accomplished players from around the world. This will no doubt generate more excitement and money as people will rather watch Sachin, Dravid, Warne than Hemang Badani, Darryl Tuffey or T Kumaran! But then, it won’t help cricket raise its bar and elevate itself into a truly global sport. Rather than looking at it as a rivalry between BCCI and ICL, it should be seen that such a venture would take cricket to a new level altogether.
We can take a cue from other sports: soccer is the most popular sport in the world. Look at the way it is played! It is not restricted by national boundaries with talent and performance being the criteria for making it to the top teams. Man united, Real Madrid, A C Milan, Barcelona, Chelsea, Arsenal are just some names of the sea of clubs that rake in money and take in players of caliber. We can always guide cricket that way.
There was always this contradictory point that cricket is too long a game and that 90 minutes of entertainment can’t be compared with 7 hours of ordeal. But the new peppy Twenty-20 version has transformed the game. A spectator gets the entertainment worth the bucks he spends in quick time. Purists though may resent at the idea of so much Twenty-20 cricket being played but they should understand that this is important for cricket’s survival as it is losing its hold on the spectator’s interest. Moreover it’ll help in making test cricket more interesting. A lot of changes are being proposed in this regard too! I won’t dwell on that topic now!
ICL should continue and more such ventures should be encouraged to come up in the future.
