BCCI and IPL
Cricket is a Religion in India. Thats what everyone thinks. After the famous and only World Cup win in 1983, cricket had become craze in India. Whenever India plays any international tournament, in particular one day matches, the stadiums are zam packed if the matches are played in India. In addition to crowd in stadium, people are glued to TV to watch their favourite batsmen hitting 4s , 6s or bowler taking wicket. After famous win in1983, indian won some lost many matches but still the cricket craze hasn’t gone down. But during all these years, Indian Crowd never gave importance to local matches, matches played between states as in Ranji and Duleep Trophy, matches player between cities as in Deodhar Trophy. The reason was Indian like to watch only the star play cricket. So even if in those local matches, there were some good performance, those performance got unnoticed by Indian Crowd. Indian craze towards cricket made such an impact on the revenues on Cricket Boards that the boards realized that the only way they could make money is to keep Indian Crowd happy. Slowly the cricket craze has reached a point where a major tournament is deemed failure if Indian Cricket Team did not participate or they lost in the prelimary round. Everybody remembers that 2007 World Cup in West Indies was a major flop. TV Ads revenue and stadium revenues were down from previous world cup. What was the reason? Well I could attribute to India’s elimination from early rounds. Once India was out, the TV viewership back home almost dropped to 0. The advertiser lost huge amount of money in TV ads. This is when other cricket boards realized the importance and impact of Indian public interst in cricket matches. They made sure that in any next major international cricket tournament, India has to win the tournament to keep cricket a profit making business. At the same time BCCI was contemplating a plan for Indian Professional League. May be this is when other boards realized that with IPL how much money they and their players can make by letting India win the major tournament. Remember the shot Misbah-ul-Haq played in the 20th Over of the 2007 T20 World Cup final. Pakistan needed 6 runs to win in 4 balls and considering the way Misbah was playing, the target was piece of cake. But Misbah played a very poor shot and gave india a victory from jaws of death. Was this final fixed? Well nobody knows. But the result surely made all cricket boards and players rich. How? Everybody knows that 2008 and 2009 IPL was a huge success. Players, Boards, Cricket Ground, TV Ads and who else…everybody made money at the expense of poor public. Indian Crowd were willing to pay Rs. 500 ticket to watch matches in Stadiums. Indians were glued in front of TV for 4 hours. TV ads revenue shot up by more than 200%-300%. Franchise were willing to pay millions of dollars to players. Every other country player made money by playing for just 15-20 minutes in 4 hour game. They made more than what they could have made by playing test or one day matches with minimal effort. One South African IPL player correctly said after IPL 2008 that he has just returned from vacation. Wow..a million dollar vacation. Thanks to Misbah-ul-Haq. Imagine what could have happend if India was eliminated in the first round of T-20 World Cup 2007. T-20 matches doesn’t require players to show any skill, no stress unlike Test Cricket and One Day International. I guess anybody can play T-20 matches at the expense of Indian cricket lovers. Indian Cricket Lovers must realise that players, board, franchise are making money with minimal effort. Kya Yeh Sochne Waali Baath Nahin Hein?