When news emerged in Australia and England this week of a breakaway threat to cricket’s world order, for the many in deep discontent with the international game, it was easy to get carried away.
The sport is so shockingly run at the moment, with so many deep fault lines within it, that a prospect of any new order is bound to feel bracing.
India’s Essel Group, which owns the Zee network and created the Indian Cricket League (ICL, the defunct precursor to the Indian Premier League), has registered domain names and companies of what sound like cricket events and alternative boards in several cricket-playing countries.
They have not yet outlined details of their plans, but in an official statement they said they are “geared up to enter the sports business at a global level, focusing on cricket, since it has been limited to Commonwealth countries. Our research reflects that there is an immense opportunity to make it a global sport.”
It is an appealing statement, especially as it hits directly at cricket’s current raw nerve, its failure to expand meaningfully beyond 10 countries.
Observers familiar with Essel’s plans, which were initiated approximately 18 months ago by Subhash Chandra, say one of the many aims is to try to exploit the lingering discontent of associate countries.
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Denied an opportunity to join cricket’s elite, their share of revenues from international cricket potentially reduced, and generally ignored, how could an alternative structure not be tempting to associates?
If any new set-up also offers a more egalitarian administration, in which these parallel boards are all equal, that will represent an appealing sporting utopia.
In reality, however, this development looks more and more like another aftershock in the long-running dispute between Zee and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
It is an opportune time for it to catch heat, with Narayanswami Srinivasan, hitherto Indian and world cricket chief, newly vulnerable at home as well as at the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Zee has long wanted rights to Indian cricket, rights it felt it has been cheated out of on several occasions.
They responded once by creating their own league, the ICL. This is another response, in a time when Star Sports has acquired rights for all the most lucrative cricket imaginable.
In so much as it remains true that, like China sneezing and the world catching a cold, any impact at the BCCI has consequences for the world game, this episode, too, will have an effect globally.
The Big Three are concerned. An added complication is that Ten Sports, a subsidiary of Zee, has broadcast rights of five ICC members.
The channel’s chief executive, Rajesh Sethi, denied that the channel was in involved, in either sounding out players from the boards with whom they have deals or of registering the domain names, when contacted by The National.
Board officials also have denied any contact over the issue. But it remains the case that the Big Three do not want Ten Sports.
A clause exists in the restructuring from last year that states broadcasters in legal dispute with member boards, as the BCCI is with Zee, can be a reason to cancel a series.
Pakistan host England later this year in the UAE, and though nothing official has been said, according to one Pakistan official, Giles Clarke occasionally grumbles – allegedly at the behest of Srinivasan – about how Ten Sports should not be the broadcaster for that series. it is easy to see the Big Three bearing down with greater pressure now on those boards to cut ties with Ten Sports, which in turn, brings its own unforeseen consequences.
But beyond this, can there be a parallel cricket world? It is difficult to see how any new venture would not end up the same way the ICL did. And this time, how many players would sign up?
In the post-IPL landscape, opportunities to earn good money in various sanctioned Twenty20 leagues around the world are so plentiful that it is difficult to see any player from the top 10 countries switching.
Remember as well that players who took part will hardly recall the ICL with any great pleasure.
Many of them were not paid. Stories of corruption were rife. Those who did take part suffered when the league went under. Why, it is reasonable to ask, would it be any different this time?
Do they have the kind of money to lure top-class international cricketers?
If they had so much money, it could be countered, they would already have some kind of stake in Indian cricket.
Maybe, by not having to pay for broadcast rights for any tournament it did conceive, Essel will be able to offer players greater pay, especially those not so well remunerated. And if competition remains limited to the Twenty20 format, then it is easier to see players becoming interested. Anything longer, and there has been talk of it, then it becomes more difficult still to tempt players.
The involvement of Lalit Modi, the founder of the IPL and now on the wrong side of Indian cricket’s power equation, could also be decisive. Modi and Essel both deny he is involved, but given his fervent desire to get back into cricket somehow, anyhow, those denials seem shallow.
He has been shown the plans and that he has been a consultative influence in some way is likely. His presence alone could add a layer of nous and seriousness to any venture.
None of this is to completely wipe away the impression that this is maybe a final attempt by Subhash Chandra to make a significant inroad into cricket.
There is even a view that the project had lost steam over the last few months but has suddenly found a fresh lease of life.
What it does do, however, is ask an old and delicate question at an awkward moment: are existing boards the only ones in their countries who are the owners of the sport?
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