T20 leagues | India can look beyond the bottom line and decide which way the game goes

The IPL is getting ready to take over the world. South Africa cancelled a one-day series against Australia to focus on the launch of their domestic T20 tournament. All six franchises have been bought by owners of IPL teams. Three teams in the Caribbean Premier League are already owned by them, as are three in the UAE’s forthcoming T20 league. At least two IPL franchises are in the frame for next year’s T20 league in the US.

Is this a watershed moment for the sport? How long before the IPL takes over completely, with a large number of players contracted to (and controlled by) the half-a-dozen franchises? Historically “the death of cricket as we know it” has been a running theme, but will it become reality now? Perhaps this is an extreme position, but is international cricket at a crossroads?

Pulling away from the rest

The International Cricket Council’s Future Tours Programme doesn’t suggest that — till you examine it closely and realise that in a manner far subtler than was conceived some years ago, India, England and Australia are drawing away from the rest.

India play one of the other two in 20 Tests out of their 38 scheduled for the 2023-2027 period. These are the most lucrative series in world cricket, and television is happier with these than any other (with the exception of an India-Pakistan series which depends on the political winds). The less powerful teams play most of their Tests among themselves, making for two divisions without actually formalising it.

And just to make it all clear, there will be a formal window for the IPL during which period all international cricket is suspended. By 2027, there will be 94 matches in the IPL.

Supporting Test cricket

India have been calling the shots in world cricket for some years now, and on the face of it there isn’t anything wrong with that. Particularly since they have been great supporters of the five-day Test and the five-match Test series and possess the bench strengthto play red-ball and white-ball cricket simultaneously in different countries.

But most other countries have neither such a large pool of players to choose from nor sufficient public interest to make this worthwhile. Often cricket is not the No. 1 sport.

New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa are rugby nations, the West Indies and Zimbabwe are struggling to attract youngsters to the game while Afghanistan have much catching up to do, and despite their promotion to the highest ranks are hardly treated on a par with others.

This leaves Sri Lanka and Bangladesh where the game remains a passion. But the national teams lack the glamour and record of their neighbours. Outside of their own borders they lack the kind of support that an Indian team commands. India alone have the power to look beyond the bottom line.

Although Test cricket managed with just three teams (England, Australia, South Africa) for the first fifty years of its existence, the world has changed too much and the alternatives have become too many since the 1877-1928 period for that to be practical now. The Ashes, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the Pataudi Trophy, howevercompetitive or widely followed cannot by themselves sustain Test match cricket.

Future of ODIs

The call for reducing if not actually doing away altogether with the one-day international has been getting louder. Logically, if one of the three formats has to be sacrificed it will have to be the ODI. But the 50-over World Cup remains popular. Can you have only a World Cup without any other internationals? The ICC doesn’t think so, and have even resurrected the tri-nation tournament.

Top players — Ben Stokes being a recent example — are retiring from one or more of the formats to focus on the remaining. Stokes quit the ODI to focus onTests. Compatriot Moeen Ali and Sri Lanka’s Dhanushka Gunatilake, among others, have travelled in the opposite direction, giving up the red ball game to focus on the white.

So this is the brave new world of cricket. India, already more powerful than the ICC, can, theoretically, bring the whole edifice crashing down on a whim if they are so inclined. The power they wield is extraordinary, and a little scary.

They decide if their players may ormay not play any of the other domestic leagues or indeed The Hundred in England. No one dares displease India, whose standing in the game is a tribute both to their long-term planning (even through many legal cases) and acknowledgement of the sheer numbers of eyeballs on TV which convert to billions of dollars.

But is India’s enormous success discouraging other nations rather than stimulating their interest in the five-day game? When the bottom line is serviced by T20 cricket — administrators can argue that they are merely giving the public what it wants — something is bound to give.