This may not be news, but the ICL is simply in danger of not being taken seriously enough. How many even know that the league's second Twenty20 series begins on Sunday? It's a pity because whatever its executives say, this league is a breakaway venture -- the thing that set everything else in motion. But the IPL began making noise, and the perception now is that if any league represents the future of the game, the BCCI's league is it. It did everything the ICL was supposed to do, and not a ball has been bowled.
On the face of it, you could say the ICL doesn't work, that it's no comparison to the BCCI's upcoming production. That the collection of cricketers is far too undercooked and lacks sustained celebrity power, which the IPL has. But the people who organized the ICL believe there's still some way to go.
"After the first series was done, the internal perception was that we could have done better," a former ICL administrative official said. "But look at what we did. Imagine organizing an event this size from scratch. We had never done this before! In normal tournaments, the host association organizes things for a few days before someone else takes over the operation. Here we did it for 17 straight days. It was like a World Cup. We built stands, printed tickets, organized cars, booked hotel rooms, and did everything for the first time. Okay, let me ask you something: how many cars do you need to transport six teams? Can you tell me right now?"
Meetings with advertisers would go swimmingly. They were enthusiastic and encouraging about the concept, but did not put up the money. Who knew how the BCCI would respond? The Zee network, which broadcast the tournament, offered extremely low advertising time rates, and the response forced them even further down.
Meanwhile, the steam about the IPL picked up. In February Sony-WSG promised a billion over ten years (with a walk-out option after five for significantly less than a billion), the teams were auctioned, and the players were sold. BCCI officials insisted it was "a triumph of the free market". This is what the ICL was supposed to have been: The alternative way (free choice was implied). Ask yourself: A year ago, barely weeks after the World Cup, which cricket body held more promise? And now?
Ironically, it's probably the quality of cricket that was disappointing. Supporters of the league point to signs of passion by the players, but some tournament organizers believe that the standards could have been higher. In a text message, one official wrote, "I hope the cricket is good. Last time [the] cricket wasn't good."
That's the core difference this time. There are more quality players now, and with some utility left, too. There's Damien Martyn and Lou Vincent, Heath Streak and Shane Bond (the catch of the season). Cricket could be of a higher standard this time. There's a lot of hope at work here.
And yet something's not quite right. While each team has four or five international players, the rest are names you've heard of before, but can't quite place. And even most of the big names have a jaded air about them, like a relative overstaying his welcome. It gives the venture a feel of something that's big and expensive, but not quite there yet. The difference is even starker given how young the team that won in Australia is.
This has been the league's big challenge. How to create a cricketing ecosystem from scratch? The last time this happened, three decades ago, players with a genuine grievance teamed up with a disgruntled broadcaster who presented them a clear way forward. The common cause of the ICL rings hollow, for several former players see it as a lucrative way to spend their time. The roll of unhappy players has become smaller. It defeats what the league was set up to do.
Perhaps Chandra understands that his returns will not be immediate. That it takes significant numbers to give a league a voice. That if he can resist the IPL's tide, and hang on beyond these three years, there will be younger cricketers and new infrastructure is possible. That perhaps the BCCI's hold on the game cannot be broken just now, but in time it can be chipped away as the ICL adopts talent. It takes a single extraordinary talent to revive interest.
But these are big ifs, and Chandra can only throw in so much. It's here that he could take a leaf out of the BCCI's books and do what he should have done a long time ago: open up the market, even if it is in a limited way, and hire more talent scouts than just the six he had in December.
Ps. This Sunday marks the first of 91 Twenty20 games in the next 84 days. Perhaps a little much?
(Rahul Bhatia, a former correspondent with Cricinfo, is currently on sabbatical to work on a book on his favorite subject cricket. Rahul will file regular reports/features/interviews for Rediff during the ICL tournament. More of him here. http://grch.wordpress.com)
