Where is the IPL heading?

While I had fervently hoped last year that the number of games would come down so that the tournament could be finished soon, that was a pipe dream considering there's so much money riding on TV rights, etc.

However, I reckoned then that the likes of Hayden, Gilchrist, Kumble, Ganguly, Warne and Murali would not play in IPL 2011. Of the 6, only Warne, Gilchrist and Murali will play. Hayden and Kumble have retired while Ganguly's failure to get anyone to sign him up means that his playing career has effectively ended. Unless, as he exhibited often over the last 20 years, he wriggles out of the situation and surprises everyone.

The main theme at the inaugural IPL auction in 2008 was to get big name players from the same city, state or region that the franchisee had bought the rights for. This was evident when Bangalore went for Anil Kumble & Rahul Dravid, Hyderabad went for VVS Laxman, and to a lesser extent, Kolkata secured Sourav Ganguly's services.

All these players were in their (or nearing) mid-30s and were already at (or close to) the end of their ODI careers.

This year's auction seemed to indicate that franchisees were less interested in creating a fan-base built on the basis of picking in-region players. That's probably why Delhi didn't go for Gambhir, Nehra & Ishant, Bangalore for Dravid & Uthappa and Hyderabad for Laxman.

Are the teams then focussing on building up a team (& fan base?) that will stick around for 3 years together through thick & thin, headed by a few wise heads and driven by impact players?

It's tough to say that, considering Dravid turns 38 tomorrow (happy birthday!), Laxman is 36, Warne is 41, Murali is nearly 39, Gilchrist is 39 and the Duracell/Energizer bunny Tendulkar is nearly 38. How many of these players would even play IPL 2012? Is a year sufficient to create a solid team structure? I'm not sure.

Kochi (Laxman & Murali) and Jaipur (Warne & Dravid) have taken a huge risk. They must hope that the professionalism of these greats rubs off on the younger bunch.

So, is the IPL then moving away from [what seemed to me] a key aspect of its creation, that of a sustainable long-term & loyal fan base for each team, to just creating groups that played together (& were followed) for at most 3 years, only to disband at the next option?

You could argue about it both ways - the number of teams will most likely keep increasing (e.g. Ahmedabad or Baroda, Kanpur, Gwalior or Indore, etc.). Hence, it is only fair that all players are put up for re-auction without any retentions. On the flip side, franchisees & advertisers have spent a fair amount of money in associating a star player to their brand name. It would seem ridiculous for the same player to turn up under a different banner a year later.

Then again, that's not too uncommon anyway, for brand association contracts seem to only be 1 year long ones.

Labels: auction, bcci, india, indian premier league, ipl 2011, lalit modi

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:57 pm | Sledge/Read 7 sledge(s)
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Johnson Cherian, Lalit Modi and a couple of domains

Over 3 years ago, I'd written about one of the BCCI's domains - bcciratings.com. The domain was registered under a name 'Johnson Cherian'. I now notice that the domain has Lalit Modi as an administrative and technical contact.

Tinu Cherian reckons that the ownership details of iplt20.com changed on 19 April.

I don't think his reasoning is right. The 'Updated 1 hour ago' entry he points to merely indicates that the whois server fetched the data 1 hour ago. Just click on the "Refresh" link to see the last update details change.

But yes, the larger issue is that iplt20.com and clt20.com (the Champions Twenty20 League domain) are owned by someone from Modi Entertainment Network, even though the BCCI's address is provided.

So, is Johnson Cherian someone who works for Lalit Modi at the BCCI office? He does seem to work at Modi Entertainment Network, since he is listed as the administrative contact for modi.com as well.

In passing, you can actually go and buy the iplt20.com domain. The whois record indicates the domain expired over a month ago.

For the record, just in case the ownership data changes, here's what the whois information looks like:

iplt20.com

Registrant
Email:
Organization: BCCI/IPL
Address: CRICKET CENTER,WANKHEDE STADIUM,CHURCHGATE
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Country: IN
Postal Code: 400020
Phone: +91.2222800300
Fax:
Name: bcci ipl

Domain : iplt20.com

Administrative Contact :
Name: bcci
Organization: BCCI/IPL
Address: CRICKET CENTER,WANKHEDE STADIUM,CHURCHGATE
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400020
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2222800300
Fax: 0
Email:

Technical Contact :
Name: bcci
Organization: BCCI/IPL
Address: CRICKET CENTER,WANKHEDE STADIUM,CHURCHGATE
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400020
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2222800300
Fax: 0
Email:

Created on.......: 2008-03-14
Expired on.......: 2012-03-14
Last updated on..: 2009-01-14

clt20.com

Registrant :
Email:
Organization: NA
Address: BCCI,Cricket Center,Churchgate
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Country: IN
Postal Code: 400020
Phone: +91.1111111
Fax:
Name: Lalit Modi

Domain : clt20.com

Administrative Contact :
Name: Lalit
Organization: NA
Address: BCCI.Cricket Center,Churchgate
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400020
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2266637373
Fax: 0
Email:

Technical Contact :
Name: Lalitk
Organization: NA
Address: BCCI.Cricket Center,Churchgate
City: Mumbai
State: Maharashtra
Postal Code: 400025
Country: IN
Phone: +91.2266637373
Fax: 0
Email:

Created on.......: 2009-02-05
Expired on.......: 2013-02-05
Last updated on..: 2010-01-12

Labels: conflict of interest, domain, indian premier league, ipl 2010, lalit modi, website

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:50 am | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
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BCCI & TEN Sports, ICC "Hall of fame" and Michael Vaughan retires

Sometime last week, the BCCI announced that India would play a tri-series in Sri Lanka, with New Zealand being the third team. The announcement came a few days after India were thrashed at the Super Eight stage of the Twenty20 World Cup leading a lot of folks, including the coach Gary Kirsten, to proclaim that fatigue was one of the main reasons for the pathetic showing.

Maybe the BCCI was making a point - "You chaps can keep bleating about burnout. Until you actually collectively start pulling out of series, we'll keep milking you for what it's worth". So doesn't this previously unscheduled 4-match ODI series present a wonderful opportunity for players like the skipper Dhoni, Ishant, Gambhir and Yuvraj to excuse themselves from this tour?

Maybe there's a commercial angle that doesn't seem so obvious here. This would be the 3rd consecutive unscheduled series (or hastily arranged series) that is being played in a country where TEN Sports has the telecast rights for the Indian TV audience. The first was the ODI series in Sri Lanka and the second is the on-going 4-match ODI series in West Indies.

It does seem too much of a coincidence. But perhaps not when you realize that TEN Sports was in fact launched in India by none other than Lalit Modi and his MEN distributed the channel for a few years.

TEN Sports is partly owned by Zee, and the BCCI has basically not been on talking terms with Zee (Subhash Chandra) ever since he took the BCCI to court over the BCCI's allotment of TV rights 4-5 years ago when Zee Sports first won the rights only for the BCCI to move the goalposts when ESPN-Star bleated.

Now, after the BCCI announced an amnesty scheme for those affiliated with the ICL, maybe the BCCI and Zee Sports are becoming friends again. Maybe, like I predicted a year ago, the ICL would be wound-up and the quid pro-quo would involve TV rights, IPL team ownership, etc.

So maybe the new-found bonhomie explains why the BCCI is scheduling matches in these countries/regions. After all, surely the BCCI would have earned more revenue (gate proceeds, in-stadia advertising, etc.) if the games had been played in India.

Now, moving on to the ICC. At the start of the year, the ICC announced that it was creating a "Hall of fame" and the first list would have 55 players.

That '55' number sounds so arbitrary. Why wasn't it 50, surely a more 'round' number? Or did the ICC think they'd create 5 teams of 11 players each from the first batch of inductees? Given that the only wicket-keepers they've picked are Knott, Marsh and Walcott (who only kept wickets in 15 out of the 44 tests he played in), there's no way they could have got 5 playing XIs.

Ok, so that 55 is just a number picked out of the someone's nose. What was the criteria for picking these players? Test records? ODI records? Contribution to the advancement of cricket [especially applicable for those who played in the first 2-3 decades of test cricket perhaps]? Domestic cricket records? Gut-feel? Only those who'd retired before a specific date? There're a few players who really make me wonder about the criteria.

Barry Richards is universally considered to be among the best batsmen who never got to showcase his wares long enough in test cricket (4 tests at a batting average of 72 against a bowling 'attack' of Garth McKenzie, Ashley Mallett and John Gleeson). Watching this video of him batting convinces me that the perception about him isn't wrong. Yet, the hard facts are that he only played 7 innings.

Was David Gower such a good player? Obviously he was a very attractive batsman to watch, and was good enough to make bowlers look ridiculous. But he didn't do it often enough, and most certainly not when the bowling was of decent quality (averaging 33 against West Indies, for example).

Javed Miandad retired from international cricket multiple times, the last occasion being after Pakistan were knocked out of the 1996 World Cup. Martin Crowe played his last international cricket game 3-4 months before Miandad retired. So clearly 1995 doesn't seem to be the cut-off year. Perhaps it is 1996. Why 1996?

Surely, if David Gower finds a place on the basis of him being lovely to watch, Crowe must be a shoo-in, especially considering he averaged 45 against West Indies, 50 against Pakistan and 48 against Australia!

As noted in multiple tweets, Michael Vaughan retired from all forms of professional cricket yesterday, 11 months after he quit as captain. Exactly 3 years ago, I wrote about how he was only 32 and nearly retired because of his wonky knee.

Vaughan was a very pleasing batsman to watch, especially in 2002 and early 2003 when he was consistently dismantling India's and Australia's bowlers. However, the runs pretty much dried up after that series, and the most he averaged in a year after 2002 was 47.6 in 2007. It certainly wasn't for lack of opportunity, since between 2003 and 2008, he played at least 9 tests every year, including against West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

The reality is that Vaughan under-achieved as a batsman. On that front, I'd rank him alongside Stephen Fleming, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly and Damien Martyn (until 2-3 years ago, Mahela Jayawardene would have also been included in this list). TV commentary, newspaper columns, reality TV adjudication, etc. beckon and I hope he does well in his new roles.

Labels: ashes, ashes 2009, bcci, book cricket, england, hall of fame, icc, lalit modi, retire, ten sports, tv rights, vaughan

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:23 pm | Sledge/Read 6 sledge(s)
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The future of cricket, as I see it

A few days after a Twenty20 Champions League was announced, followed promptly by the ECB's partnership (?) with Allen Stanford for a series of five Twenty20 games where the winner of each game received US $20 million (and the loser got to watch the winner's cheques), it is fairly obvious that the ICC's hold on cricket is being loosened, and big time at that!

For all their talk about how having three forms of the game is so wonderful, it is hard to see how the ICC can come up with a calendar which accommodates enough quantities of test, 50-over and 20-over cricket. In fact, it is all the more baffling that even after these two announcements, they have not said a word about the impact on their vision for international cricket.

Instead, what we got was an announcement yesterday about the launch of the ICC Champions Trophy 2008 in Pakistan. Now that tournament is probably the most despised one-day tournament in the world given how it turns up unnecessarily every couple of years, a year before, or a year after the World Cup.

It does seem as though the ICC is totally oblivious about how the big money flowing in to promote Twenty20 will impact test and 50-over cricket. Assuming that all 3 forms of the game will co-exist, and every year there's one major ICC event lasting a month, it's hard to put up a schedule which accomodates 10 tests per country per year and 30 ODIs, aside from Twenty20 games. So is it fair to assume that in a few years, we won't actually have 3 forms of the game?

You can vote in our poll on a hypothetical scenario where the ICC allowed you to choose the two forms of the game. Which ones would you choose: Tests and Twenty20, ODIs and Twenty20 or Tests and ODIs?.

I don't believe there's enough time in the international calendar to support 3 forms of the game in addition to tournaments like the PLPL, TTPL, IPL, SAWEPL, WSPL, etc. Given that aside from England and West Indies, most other countries have overlapping domestic and international cricket seasons, it is highly unlikely that cricketers would be able to play for sufficient lengths of time in more than one such league.

Brendon McCullum, to pick a random name, could turn out for his IPL team for 3-4 games, scoot off to play 2 games in the TTPL, come back to the sub-continent for 2 games in the PLPL but miss out on the SAWEPL because he has to join his Kiwi mates for a test series against Bangladesh.

If Lalit Modi had his way, McCullum would have to apply to him for a work permit to play in other leagues. In the event that there was a conflict of interest between choosing which team to play for in the Champions League tournament, McCullum's interest would be over-riden by Lalit Modi's brainwave for the day. In addition, McCullum would need to be careful about who he hobnobs with and if he's caught talking to 'rebels', he can forget his pay cheque.

I don't think advertisers and sponsors are quite ready to throw away the 50-over game and the 8 uninterrupted hours of audience attention that they get through 100 guaranteed over-breaks, upto 20 wicket breaks and 1 hour of pre-match and post-match analysis. I believe that the ICC will end up kowtowing to 'market' interests and we will have (perhaps in the span of 5-8 years) two forms of the game, neither of which will seem remotely like the way they are now.

Bangladesh and Zimbabwe would still be playing test cricket, but they'd only play 3-day 'tests' against each other, Ireland & Kenya for 3 years and then move on to 4-day tests. All other test matches would perhaps still be played over 5 days, but there would be radical changes. Over rates would become faster, reaching 100 per day. Teams will be allowed to break-up the total number of overs they receive or bowl across two innings and the winner of the toss would choose from 3 options (1st innings overs faced-2nd innings overs faced): 150-100, 125-125 or 100-150. I'd detailed this out in a post in October 2004.

50-over and 20-over cricket will be merged and we will have 30-over games split across 3 innings of 10 overs each per team. There would be an alternating pattern to each team's innings (A1, B1, A2, B2, A3 & B3), similar to baseball. Each 10 over inning would have 3 overs of power-play, 2 of them at the start and 1 at the end. Teams would comprise 11 players, with only 7 allowed to bat. Boundary ropes would be around 50 m away from the wicket, enabling even scrawny chaps and no-hoper batsmen like Ashish Nehra to hit sixes. On a side note, there'd be some critics who'd complain that the middle 7 overs are boring. But those same critics would complain about the middle 3 balls being boring even if we reduced games to 1-over per innings! There'd be a Dirty-Thirty World Cup, sponsored by Surf (or pick your favourite detergent brand), held every 2 years.

Subhash Chandra would have wound up the Indian Cricket League in 2010 and Zee would thus get the telecast rights it wanted or ownership of an IPL team. It'd really seem like a win-win situation for all. Except that 30-year olds like Ambati Rayudu, Tejinder Pal Singh, R Sathish, Shalabh Srivastava and Abhishek Jhunjhunwala would feel so ridiculous that their prime years were spent (wasted?) in missing out on good money in the IPL and not being picked for India because of selectorial squabbles or because they were associated with the ICL. To paraphrase Marlon Brando's superb dialogue in 'On the Waterfront', they could have had class, they could have been contenders, they could have been somebodies. Instead of bums, which is what they became, let's face it!

Technology would finally be used appropriately in making several line decisions. Someone like Andrew Symonds would never keep getting away with umpiring howlers. Tony Cozier seems so frustrated, he forgets that this wasn't the first time in the last 6 months that Symonds has benefitted.

For a nation that is constantly hunting for 'the next big wrist spinner', Australia will give up their 5-year search for a half-decent spinner and settle on using Michael Clarke (current strike rate: 45, current avg: 20.5) and Andrew Symonds (current strike rate 83, current avg: 36.5) as their spinners in test cricket.

Shoaib Akhtar will be banned yet again, this time for using the Prime Minister's helicopter to arrive in time for a World Cup game. His excuse would be that he was helping the PM with campaigning for the general election.

Labels: champions trophy, future, icc, indian premier league, ipl 2008, lalit modi, prediction, stanford 2020, twenty20, umpires

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:48 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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The BCCI's domains

A year ago, I wrote about the ICC's domains.

I found the BCCI's ratings and awards site today. A 'WHOIS' lookup reveals quite a few things.

Registrant:
Johnson Cherian
Modi Entertainment Network Ltd
3rd floor Nirlon House, Dr A.B Road
Worli Dadar (W).
Mumbai, Maharashatra 400039
IN

Registrar: NameSecure.com
Domain: BCCIRATINGS.COM
Created on 08-29-2006
Expires on 08-29-2009

Administrative Contact:
Johnson Cherian
Phone: 66637555
E-mail: jcherian-mwc@modi.com

Technical Contact:
Namesecure Inc.
Phone: 570-708-8418
E-mail: support@namesecure.com

Name Servers:
NS5.INDIALINKS.COM 70.87.144.130
NS6.INDIALINKS.COM 70.85.222.226

The domain is 'owned' by Modi Entertainment Network. No prizes for guessing the identity of the chairman of Modi Enterprises, the parent company of Modi Entertainment Network.

The administrators at the BCCI have probably not realized the importance of ownership of such a domain name. While I don't necessarily doubt Lalit Modi's intentions, the BCCI could end up on thin ice a few years later.

Labels: bcci, domain, lalit modi, website

Thus spake Jagadish @ 4:35 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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