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When the Subhash Chandra led Essel group announced its intentions of organizing a parallel league – better known as the Indian Cricket League – the BCCI had no option but to get their long dusting plan of an inter city tournament out. This was christened as what we now know as the Indian Premier League, and one season on, the IPL has had everyone talking. This piece revisits the whole concept right from its inception and explains it in brief to the uninitiated.
The Inception: As mentioned above, Subhash Chandra′s ICL deserves all the credit for the execution of this idea that was germinated eons ago, by the same man, Mr. Lalit Modi. The plan had been shelved earlier, but the cricket Board had no option but to go for it this time.
The Concept: The concept was a unique one, especially for the audiences in India, who had not seen foreigners play for their local cities. The Ranji team of Maharashtra did have a couple of Englishmen ply their trade for them, but apart from that, IPL brought the Shane Warne and the Adam Gilchrist to represent the Indian cities. There were supposed to be eight teams - eight cities - who would play on a home and an away basis, and the top four would make it to the semi-finals, followed by the finals. The eight teams would have a corporate look, a team owner, and if required, posts like the CEO and a COO. These team rights would be bought by the owners from the BCCI through a bidding process, and then the same process would decide which players play for which side.
The Teams, the Captains and the Owners: Mr. Modi had decided on eight teams and this figure would remain for some more years, before more teams start to come in. The cities would obviously have funky sounding names, and would try and would have at least four Under-22 and four local cricketers in the squad. The teams would not be allowed to have more than four foreign players in their playing XI; this rule causing a lot of debate amongst the experts. In the end, Mr. Lalit Modi has decided to stick with it for the forthcoming IPL tournaments too, as it helps in the development of local talent and prohibits a franchise from over reliance on the foreign players.
For the first season, the eight sides were Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi DareDevils, Kolkata Knight Riders, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Rajasthan Royals, Kings XI Punjab and the Deccan Chargers from Hyderabad. All but one of the teams were led by the Indians, the only team not to have been was the Rajasthan Royals, which was skippered by Shane Warne. There was also a concept of icon cricketers that would get 15% more than the highest paid player in their teams. In the end, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag were the icon cricketers, and they had to represent the cities that they came from only.
The owners consisted of the who′s who of the corporate world and Bollywood, with Mukesh Ambani, Vijay Mallya, Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta being a part of the owners′ list. The others were GMR Holdings, Deccan Chronicle, Emerging Media and India Cements.
The Money: It was not all about money, honey, yet it was the single biggest talking point of the Indian Premier League, what with the Mumbai team been brought over by the elder of the Ambani brothers for more than $110 million! The rights to Bangalore were got by Vijay Mallya for almost that amount, where the Rajasthan Royals was the most economic team; for a ′measly′ amount of around $70 million. The story does not obviously stop here, the broadcasting rights were sold to the Sony-WSG group in a ten year deal worth $1 billion! The players were richer by varying amounts, but amongst the more rich ones were M.S. Dhoni whose contract was worth $1.3 million, followed by the rest like Andrew Symonds, Sachin Tendulkar, Virende Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly amongst others.
The 2008 season: The first season saw the experts making a cardinal mistake of downplaying a team′s chances that did not look too strong on paper. Rajasthan Royals, led by the Aussie maestro, Shane Warne, shocked everyone with their rich vein of form, that saw them lose only three matches right to the finals, where they beat the Chennai Super Kings to become the first ever winners of the Indian Premier League. But not before the match had gone down to the last delivery of the match! Yuvraj′s Punjab and the Delhi DareDevils were the losing semi-finalists, where as the pre-tournament favourites, Deccan Chargers lost most of their matches to finish last in the tournament! With the corporatarization of cricket brining in more accountability, the CEO of the Bangalore Royal Challengers, Charu Sharma was sacked by the owner, Vijay Mallya, while Ganguly and Warne were involved in an off-field spat. However, the lowlight of the tournament was an incident between Harbhajan Singh and Sreesanth, part of which got aired on the television over and over again. The latter was shown to be in tears, which later transpired to be due to a slap across his face by the ′Turbanator′. Tendulkar missed the early half of the tournament, and Mumbai Indians narrowly missed out on qualifying for the knock-outs, while Shahrukh Khan kept getting involved in one or the other controversies or news, which would probably take another 1000 words to describe.
The Future: One of the mobile providers had a tagline that went ″The future′s bright...″. The way thing stand for Lalit Modi and co., it can only get better. Already, the Champions League of T20 cricket has been planned, and this would include around two best teams of each country′s local T20 tournament and they would compete against each other, a la the Champions League in soccer. Lalit Modi has also announced that there would be a player trading - or bartering - window would open up a couple of months before the next season, in which, if both the teams and the player himself are alright with it, the cricketer would be traded. With almost all stake holders associated with the IPL laughing their way to the bank, it seems like the concept is here to stay... and prosper.
All in all, the future looks as bright as it can get for the IPL - and cricket - in general.
Keep reading here for more over the next few years! |
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