the new essel cricket league debate

a good friend of mine, MF, sent me this about the proposed cricket league in India:

Essel Group comes up with a new initiative

Business mogul announces break-away cricket league

Cricinfo staff

April 3, 2007

Subhash Chandra, who heads the Essel Group, owners of the Zee brand, has announced a breakaway cricket series called the Indian Cricket League (ICL). The Essel Group will invest Rs 100 crore (US$ 23 million approx) in the project, which will run parallel to the leagues and tournaments of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The ICL will have six teams with two Indian internationals, four overseas players and eight juniors in each side, though Chandra didn't name those players, if any, who'd already signed up. At the end of the third year, there will be 16 teams in the ICL. Chandra, while announcing this initiative in Delhi, said this initiative was not in conflict with the BCCI but would be complementary to them.

Stating that the Indian board's selection process has failed to create "a reserve pipeline of players", Chandra added that the idea behind the league is to create an "ideal pool with killing instinct". The BCCI, he said, would be free to draw from the talent pool.

"We feel that despite cricket being a passion, a religion in this country and despite it having great commercial players, BCCI has only six A-grade players signed up," he said. "Therefore, there is need for some united effort to create a talent pool. And this will be done by a three pronged strategy -discovery, diligence and display."

To achieve its objectives, Zee plans to set up cricket academies equipped with state-of-the-art facilities across the country. Sports medicine would be introduced to ensure players' fitness and a full-fledged record maintained of their behaviour pattern, diet-plan and game statistics. The group will also appoint talent scouts in all 35 states to hunt for young players to play in the ICL.

The finer points of ICL:

- 6 teams or clubs to play in the opening year
- Talks on with BCCI for gaining access to stadiums
- Executive Board of the league under installation
- Pool of referees and umpires to be created
- Rules committee to form regulations for ICL
- Ombudsman to look into grievances of players
- League to begin with Twenty20 format and move to ODI format
- League to be a joint venture between Essel Group and ILFS Group
- Each team to have a mentor, media manager, psychologist, physio
- Prize money for the winner- US$ 1 million
- League teams to compete with teams internationally
- Number of teams to be increased from 6 to 16 in three years

© Cricinfo

His initial take on it was:

have been suggesting this for ages - that the subcontinent 4 (ind, Pak, Bdesh, SL) should create their own internal domestic cricket league in the mould of the UK Footbal Premier League...The reason being that the current domestic cricket structures in all 4 countries are in shambles - they do not propely serve their national purpose of discovering and training new talent, nor do they attract a great amount of viewers or money or TV..........I always thought an enterprising businessman a-la Kerry Packer (he who transformed cricket in the 1970s with TV and coloured clothing and made it far more commercially, and TV, friendly ) or Bernie Ecclestone (who did the same for F1) could do the same for cricket in the subcontinet.....

...After all, with a domestic base of 1.5bn+ people, cricket already a religion, and an established roster of sponsors. ...And think of the excitment of club cricket, like Mumbai CC taking on Colombo Colts esp if the League decides to allow free and full international trade in players...you could see the emergence of 'superclubs' like Man U or Real Madrid...It would be a huge monepsinners - cricket is to the subcontinet what football is to Europe - so, given the right organisation and capital, I cannot think of a reason why domestic club cricket in the Subcontinent cannot be as commercially successful as European football??

My reply was:

Great idea – but there are a few flaws to it and I think there are some phenomenal barriers to entry.

Funnily enough it is India who has most to gain from something like this. But before I get to that, I think what needs to be set up first is not exactly what the Essel group has in mind – it should probably be more on the lines of the US Major League Baseball or national Hockey League. You basically set up Super-teams based around a large city's capture market around a large stadium. Very important is the prevalence of a competitive TV market affiliated to a national broadcaster. You could even have a couple of teams per large city such as Mumbai, Karachi, Delhi, Dhaka etc.. Funnily enough there should also be a cricket season – a defined length of play of the game within the year to sustain a heightened sense of anticipation and build up – aka the beautiful game in the UK, F1, baseball, American football etc. There should be other games in the off-season but these need to be very much secondary sports – what basketball originally was to US Football.

So what are the barriers to entry:

1. the cricket season. There actually is none any more. The game is so global and the ICC runs the national teams like a league with both the test and the ODIs. Summer in the Northern Hemisphere is open season and Winter means the tropical countries and those in the Southern Hemisphere get the visitors. It is a year round sport at the highest levels.
2. building the teams/infrastructure. The mix of economic ingredients for local teams to succeed is just not there. There is still no TV station dedicated to just a city anywhere in the subcontinent. The investment in the stadiums has also been done at a national government level and they would need to be involved in how it was given out.
3. India should have a pool of talent 50x ours. There is a clear need for the Indians to identify and nurture talent early at develop it. There current selection process I think has failed them successively and needs to be revamped and what Essel proposes makes sense as a complimentary service to the BCCI. PCB has there own process and it seems to work but they could definitely do with much more transparency – but this in a country run by a Dictator, Bangladesh need to nurture their existing talent in the team. In Sri Lanka funnily enough we have a fairly good colloquial system – it works inspite of the BCCSL – probably has to do with how small we really are and the fact that school matches and club matches are well attended and put in to the newspapers.

And he replied:

Yeah I agree - My point was general - in the sense that a country (India) with the passion, population base and wealth should be able to support a commercialy successful, TV focused cricket league. All the points you raised are valid - and see more such points in the cricinfo debate - but, just like the Kerry Packer Wordl Series in 1970s, this could be the big catalyst which creates a true profesional sports league in India (and hopefully by extension, draws in its subcontinental neighbours).....either because its succesful in its own right, or because it forces the existing system to change. As for whether it can work within existing ICC rules and schedules - my point is exactly that India can call the tunes at the ICC, and force them to change (which would be a change for the better, cos all these ridiculous and meaningless cricket tournaments can be gotten rid of, leaving just a core bunch of meaningful International competitions).

On your final point - i disagree. I think that ALL the subcontintental first-class systems for finding and nurturing talent are broken and pathetic....Because SL are doing well now, everyone is saying our system is good....Just 12 months ago, at the beginning of our Test Series in UK (not the end, when we did very well against expectations), when we succumned to humuliating defeats, every pundit, both local and foreign, was waxing lyrical how its because our system does not produce the right kind of talent, at the right time, playing on the right surfaces, yadi yadi yada.

At the moment - its Indian and Paks' turn....4yrs ago, when India went to the semi's, everyone was gushing on how great the domestic Indian Ranji trophy is at producing talent. Now everyone says its broken. yes, BCCI power struggles between Dalmiya, Pawar, Ganguly, etc are pretty bad - but nothing compared to SL genius in that dept with our local hero Sumithipala dishing his thug lovin'....Honestly, when i arrived in SL last June, I was worried that SL Cricket wouldnt even have the organisational skills to field a team for the World Cup this year! The fact that our guys are doing well, and gelling as a team, is probably due to alot of luck and personalities.

The reality is ALL the subcontinetnal systems are not working - because they are essentially State Owned Enterprises in monopoly industry, which are run according to political objectives - and therefore suffer from the usual various rent-seeking / incentive-compabitibiity issues inherent in such structures. England and Aus Boards are also state-owned, but they are far more professional, run by a salaried, professional cadre. Its really like comparing the English Central Bank with a banana-republic version (of course, SL CB is much better than that!). Which is why a commercially focused, privately owned, sports league hopefully can provide the competition to change some of this

And my reply was:

Agree – with the need to build proper talent acquisition systems in the sub-continent and with the need to professionalize the management. I have unfortunately seen how Sri Lankan Football has been run as a personal fiefdom and what this has done for the country in the sport.