The Indian Premier League (IPL) announced the addition of two more teams - one based in Pune and another based in Kochi. This was bound to happen given the initial success that the league has faced and the increasing appetite for the Indian audience to spend money! Its official: professional sports has made its way into India in a big way. In some ways we have the 'erstwhile' Indian Cricket League (ICL) to thank.
Based on the price paid by the two new teams (in excess of $300 Million USD), the first eight teams have made a great return on investment already. This may not be surprising considering the craze Indians have for cricket. This will only keep going up in the next few years before it stabilizes. I feel that the two new teams will also see a healthy return on investment within the next two to three years. As far as turning out yearly profits is concerned, we will see a totally different story. The teams that spend their money wisely and still are popular with the masses would be the winner. Profit minded owners need to assemble talents without simply throwing money at big names. Getting concessions from the local governments would also help in keeping the cost in control. This could be in the form of tax subsidies and infrastructure improvements in and around the ground. In addition to this, the teams need to be creative and assemble as many sponsors as possible. The off-season will also begin to play a big role. The teams would be well served to make use of the off-season to generate and sustain interest in their product ' the local cricket team'. It will be interesting to see how the next few years will play out.
On the cricketing front, this will provide an opportunity to many more local players to be under the spotlight and earn a decent living playing cricket. I can see this directly benefiting the standard of cricket played in other domestic competitions. Tournaments like Ranji trophy and Vijay Hazare trophy will now feature 'stars' instead of unknown domestic players who weren't lucky to play for India. On the other hand, if the IPL teams are more aggressive they may consider the local state cricket associations to be their competition. They might not want their players (whom they have signed to a contract paying quite a bit of money) to sustain injuries playing in the domestic matches. This might cause friction between the state associations and the team owners.
Under the ICL model, the league had a few different tournaments throughout the year including a 50 over competition. If the economy hadn't taken a hit and if democracy had prevailed in the cricketing world, ICL would have also had a tournament for the longer version of the game. In the same vein I do see IPL taking over the entire domestic setup of the game in the country in the next ten years with about twenty teams. In this way, they would have 'their' contracted players play in the Ranji trophy, Vijay Hazare trophy, and the 'all-star' Duleep/Deodhar trophies.
I don't think this is necessarily bad for the game of cricket in India. The entire domestic scene would consist of a select number of meaningful domestic tournaments during fall and winter while leaving the spring for the 20-20 game. This will force International matches (between countries) featuring India to be held beginning late spring into early fall allowing at most three to four tours in a year (for test cricket and ODI). Here is a hypothetical Indian cricket season in 2020:
October 2020 - Champions trophy (20-20) featuring 12-16 teams from around the world;
November 2020 to January 2021 - Ranji trophy (5 day games) league matches + knock-out matches;
January 2021 to February 2021 - All-star Duleep trophy games;
February 2021 to March 2021 - Vijay Hazare (50 over) league matches + knock-out matches;
March 2021 - All-start Deodhar trohphy games;
March 2021 to May 2021 - IPL 20-20 tournament;
May 2021 to October 2021 - Five months of International cricket featuring 3-4 tours (home and away);
Cricket all through the year - a cricket lovers dream!
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Nice article. A bigger benefit can also be achieved due to the popularity of the game... If the Government is keen then they should levy a new tax on the profits from this in the form of a "Sports Tax" in the lines of the Entertainment tax. This should be levyed on the organizations that owns the franchises. The proceeds from this tax should directly go towards funding other sports (Hockey, Football, Tennis, etc). This way we can end up improving the lot of all the "poor" cousins of cricket, and thereby ensuring that India is in the global sports map.
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