FEATURE | CRICKET
“If you have a three-hour offering, then you are putting yourself in the mainstream of entertainment products.”
Australian batsman David Warner celebrates an IPL century for Delhi Daredevils in 2012
Changing the order Few developments in world sport have had the kind of far-reaching implications that Twenty20 has for cricket. Now, as the format reaches the end of its first decade and its biggest league, the IPL, celebrates its fifth birthday, SportsPro looks at the story of the fun innovation that became serious business. By Eoin Connolly
T
en years ago, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) launched the Twenty20 Cup. The result of a UK£200,000 consumer survey led by marketing manager Stuart Robertson, it was a domestic competition with the modest ambition of reviving attendances at English county grounds. Its premise was simple, yet brilliant. It would feature a shortened version of oneday cricket with 20 overs a side instead of the usual 40 or 50, with each contest lasting around three hours. The rules were
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near identical to the existing game; in fact, the model was familiar to amateur club players used to fitting in a match after a day at school or the office. Cricket, like so much else, makes infinitely more sense in hindsight, with small events on the field gaining huge significance when the day ends. Even now, the argument rages as to whether the creation of Twenty20 was a eureka moment or a springing of Pandora’s Box. What is clear, though, is that this ‘hit and giggle’ format was in fact the most significant innovation in the sport in
at least a generation. A huge success in England, it quickly spread, with national teams soon involved and the International Cricket Council (ICC) playing the first World Twenty20 tournament in South Africa in 2007. It was then to have an even more transformative effect. Shortly before the ECB’s brainwave, IMG executive vice president Andrew Wildblood had been mulling over the idea of a city franchise-based competition that could make the most of the enormous cricketing fanbase in India. He had established a working relationship with
the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in the early 1990s when IMG bought the global rights to a home Test series, giving the organisation its first rights fee and prompting it to shake off the broadcast stranglehold of state network Doordarshan. In the time that followed, he had grown convinced of the need to satisfy a public who could wait years to see top players in the flesh as the Test and one-day international roadshow rolled through the country. Wildblood’s plans were to drift through the early part of the last decade before, at an India v Pakistan one-day international in Abu Dhabi, he encountered the livewire businessman and BCCI vice president Lalit Modi. “And actually, the first thing we did was have an argument!” Wildblood recalls, speaking in February. “We fell out with each other. Then a couple of years later, in the summer of 2007, Lalit called me and said, ‘Let’s meet.’” Modi, too, had been dreaming up a franchise-based league in India, and the conversation the two men were to have at that second meeting would alter the
course of modern cricket. Wildblood went back and “conceptualised the whole thing” with a team at IMG, and within weeks was giving a detailed presentation to the BCCI. The league had already taken shape: the number of franchises was set, there was to be no promotion or relegation so as to “give investors confidence”, and a broadcast deal would be sought before the launch to guarantee its financial future. Wildblood and Modi also decided, “very quickly”, that to give itself the best chance of moving “away from the traditional allmale Indian consumer to a more familydriven demographic”, the new competition should adopt cricket’s newest identity. “If you’ve got a one-day, 50-over, traditional limited-overs match, you don’t compete with Bollywood movies,” explains Wildblood. “If you have a three-hour offering, then you are putting yourself in the mainstream of entertainment products because you’re offering something that can be consumed in the evening.” The franchises would be sold to major Indian companies, with interest high despite the first knockings of the global banking crisis, while Bollywood celebrities were recruited to infuse some added glamour. But most critical of all, Wildblood says, was “making sure that what was taking place inside the boundary was hard, serious, competitive, aggressive sport”. That meant gaining BCCI and ICC clearance, something which was beyond the reach of the “badly conceived, badly constructed, unsustainable” Indian Cricket League as it rushed to market in late 2007. It also meant attracting the world’s very best players, something for which Modi “was almost exclusively responsible”. He signed 50 top international stars to deals in such a way that the BCCI, which had underwritten his efforts to the tune of US$200,000 a man, was not financially exposed. They would join the best that India had to offer. “We got who we wanted,” says
Wildblood. “Like all sports, if you’ve got the right players then you’ve got value.” Buoyed by India’s win in the inaugural World Twenty20 – which had made T20 zealots of a hitherto sceptical nation – the publicity around the league carried through the inaugural player auction. Then on 18th April 2008, Kolkata Knight Riders travelled to play Royal Challengers Bangalore in a game marked by a world record score of 158 not out by New Zealander Brendan McCullum. The Indian Premier League (IPL), cricket’s first big-money domestic competition, had begun. Less than five years had passed since the first official Twenty20 match. Five years on, the IPL is the richest commercial property in cricket and the fastest-growing professional league in sporting history. As with the wider story of Twenty20, it is tempting now to see this as a fait accompli from the outset, but there have been examinations along the way. In 2009, its second year, the tournament was relocated to South Africa in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the Indian government’s refusal to fund security during concurrent national elections. For IPL chief executive Sundar Raman, speaking to SportsPro from India in mid-February, that was a bold but crucial move. “It was important from the standpoint of the tournament,” he says, “the largest aspect of the tournament, so we can’t thank the sponsors, the franchises and all of the broadcast rights holders enough because they saw the vision and they saw the need, even in spite of relocating, to keep the tournament going. That did a big service to the fans. You can’t deny the fans what they’ve seen in year one, when suddenly you don’t have a tournament the next year. That’s not in anybody’s interest.” A little over a year later, the IPL was plunged deep into crisis again when the BCCI forced Modi from his role as commissioner. Modi’s relationship with Indian cricket’s other leading figures
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