IPL at 14: Good, and not so good

T20 cricket isn’t the favourite format of the purist, but in these inflationary times, no one can deny that filthy lucre is very, very useful.

So, let’s look at T20 cricket from a purely monetary point of view. This isn’t the view of the idealist — who might wish to pursue sport for its own sake — but that of a pragmatist, who uses sport also as an instrument to improve his or her situation in life.

It may be abhorrent to the idealist cricket-lover, often comfortably affluent, but there does exist a persuasive counter-narrative — T20 cricket is a boon to many talented cricketers who otherwise would have played the game in empty grounds for a lifetime before fading away into anonymity.

When the IPL was about to be launched, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, one of the sharpest brains in the game, knew we were on the cusp of a new epoch.

T20 leagues had been around — in England and South Africa since 2003, in Australia since 2005. But cricket’s real goldmine was India, with its massive, one-sport fan base, countless sponsors, and billionaires who might desire a T20 team as a rich man’s toy.

Dhoni in 2008 had more clarity on the life-changing power of the lucre than the idealists; as a man from the lower middle class, who had played games for a few hundred rupees and got a ticket checker’s job, he knew that idealism was a luxury for the haves.

“It’s the start of professional cricket in India,” Dhoni told this writer just before the IPL took off in 2008. “It’s good for the players — as I said, it’s the start of professional cricket in India. More players will now take up cricket as a profession because they know that if they become good cricketers, they don’t really have to work on other things. As professional cricketers, they can earn loads of money and later on, when they leave cricket, if they want, they can go into business with their earnings. It’s important to have security about your livelihood — whatever you do, you want to have a secure future.”

No one can present any argument that could overpower this logic of material advancement and security — not even idealists, especially if they were to meet failed cricketers fighting depression and, sometimes, on the verge of suicide.

More money

When Kapil Dev joined the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) as an administrator, earning the wrath of the BCCI, money was a big factor. Many active First-Class cricketers also joined the ICL. The BCCI was rattled and it substantially increased the fees for its players. Earlier, the First-Class players used to get Rs. 4,000 a day, plus more money at the end of the season, depending on the BCCI’s revenues; due to the ICL shock, the fee was dramatically raised to Rs. 25,000 per day. With the revenues sky-rocketing, a domestic cricketer can now earn Rs. 30 lakh in a season for a minimum of 50 days of cricket.

Rising revenues from the IPL also led to big pensions, ex-gratia payments and health insurance for former players.

IPL@14, Dhoni @41

Just the other day, 14 years after the inaugural IPL, Dhoni, a few months shy of his 41st birthday, smashed 6, 4, 2 and 4 off the last four balls of the match against Mumbai Indians to win it for his team, Chennai Super Kings.

T20 cricket, because of its brevity, bridges the gap between the talented and the super-talented, the top-notch and the mediocre; it also allows oldies such as Dhoni to compete against teenagers. In that sense, T20 cricket is extreme democratisation of the sport, making equals of everybody. Cricket’s greatest skills — pace bowling and the art of spin, for instance — are undermined, say critics.

In a 2015 documentary called the ‘Death of a Gentleman’, the conflict between the old values of cricket and neo-liberal economics is beautifully delineated. On the actual field of sport, the conflict is between the classical and the pop — Test cricket vs T20 cricket. Tim May, the CEO of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, says in the film: “We know the players will go where the money is.” Kevin Pietersen says: “At the end of the day, you only play this game for a short while, so you’ve got to maximise your opportunities.”

The term ‘gentleman’ isn’t always positive; in earlier times in English cricket, ‘gentlemen’ were public school-educated players from the upper classes; the ‘professionals’ were working-class men who played the game for the money — apart from, naturally, love for the game. There was a stark class difference between them.

League cricket can be a bridge between classes, ethnicities and nationalities.

As for the money, ask yourself the question: given a choice between being a destitute idealist or a pragmatic millionaire, what would your choice be?