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Cricket: Cloak and dagger breakaway league offers loads of intrigue

Cricket: Cloak and dagger breakaway league offers loads of intrigue

It seems plans are afoot for a rival organisation to take root in a number of cricketing countries across the globe, in an attempt to shake up cricket’s status quo. Details are currently murky, but this has all the potential to be something incredibly intriguing. By ANTOINETTE MULLER.

It seems plans are afoot to establish a cricket breakaway league. The International Cricket Council is investigating after it was established that the Essel Group, the folks behind the defunct Indian Cricket League, have been registering company names to rival national cricket boards.

Along with the company names, a number of domain names have also been registered in the last six months, including www.worldcricketcouncil.co.in. The Guardian reported that several company registrations have been popping up last year, and Cricket Australia were first alerted to the registration of Australia Cricket Control Limited by the subsidiary Essel Corporation Mauritius six months ago. CA have already objected to the registration of the company name, but the same is happening elsewhere. In New Zealand, of New Zealand Cricket Limited, Kiwi Cricket Limited and Aotearoa Cricket Limited have all been registered. Cricket Control Scotland Limited and the domain name cricketassociationofengland.co.in have also been registered.

The origin of these domains, The Guardian says, can be traced to Deepak Srivastava, a senior IT manager at Ten Sports. Ten Sports is the broadcaster of international home matches played by West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Those countries are, of course, some of the countries who initially kicked against the “Big Three Takeover” of the ICC just last year. The boards eventually had to surrender because, at the time, they had no alternative, but the tide now seems to be turning. Star Sports currently have the monopoly of broadcasting rights in India, so it’s no surprise that Essel is trying to manoeuvre into a different position. Broadcasting is, after all, where the money lies within cricket.

Establishing a rival cricketing body won’t be without its challenges, but these are challenges that can easily be solved with the right amount of money and the right broadcaster behind it. One of Essel’s biggest failings with the ICL was lack of broadcasting power, but the birth of the IPL, which was essentially a better organised and more glitzy ICL, showed that it would be possible for cricket to pull big figures outside of its international broadcast. Although Modi has denied direct involvement with what seems to be the rival world league, he did say that he looked at a proposal and has not ruled out any future involvement should the rival league take off.

Dr. Subhash Chandra, chairman of the Essel Group, has also denied Modi’s involvement and said: “Essel looks for new initiatives to develop businesses, cricket has potential outside Commonwealth countries.” Chandra is simply reiterating what everyone, except the ICC, has known for years.

The biggest challenge for the rival “board” would be convincing players that it is viable. With Essel already achieving success in the ICL and Lalit Modi having had tremendous success with the Indian Premier League, it shouldn’t take too much to convince players that there is an alternative to the ICC. But to achieve this, Modi’s involvement is critical. He has already made a number of international players rich and there is some trust between him and some established players through is involvement in the IPL. The ICL on the other hand, has a far murkier reputation. A number of players did not receive full payment and there were many allegations of corruptions with ex-New Zealand international Lou Vincent admitting to fixing during his time playing for the Chandigarh Lions in 2008.

This rival organisation, then, is currently in a state of flux. It is entirely feasible that boards could be “bought” and, thus, by default, the players who are contracted to the board would have to defect to the rival organisation looking to shake up world cricket. Such a league cannot be a success without the big-name pulling power from a number of cricket’s “big names”. It also depends entirely on what the rival organisation is planning. If it’s simply a hit-and-giggle global T20 league, it can survive on the castaways and fringe players, but if truly wants to revolutionise the entire cricketing landscape, it needs to establish domestic structures as well as an international league.

Cricket has evolved tremendously. It is a global business and, like all other global businesses, the sport and its stakeholders have their price. The question will now be, who is willing to take the plunge first? DM

Photo: File photograph dated 19 January 2010 shows Lalit Modi, Commissioner, Indian Premier League (IPL), speaking to the media after the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction in Mumbai, India. EPA/DIVYAKANT SOLANKI

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