Kenya tour adds spice to masala controversy

However, enquiries by this newspaper reveal that it is not the Kenya Cricket Board which will be lining its pockets at the end of the tournament, but a third party.

The BCCI usually makes a song and dance that it will not help third parties to profit at its expense and will promote only National Board-to-National Board understanding. The facts here are otherwise.

The BCCI will get a guaranteed sum of US $250,000 for participation. South Africa and Zimbabwe will each get US $100,000. The Kenya Cricket Board will receive US $150,000 as guarantee money and a further US $50,000 as appearance money!

The catch, meanwhile, comes here. The Kenya CricketBoard is entitled only to gate money from the tournament (the Nairobi Gymkhana, where the matches are to be played, can hold a maximum of 6000 spectators who will pay in Kenyan Shillings which, in any case, has little value). In turn, it has to bear the boarding and lodging expenses of all the teams, umpires and other dignitaries; cost of security arrangements and transport.

At the end of it all, the Kenya association will be lucky if it makes a profit of US $100,000!

The hugely lucrative television rights and in-stadia advertising rights will go not to the Kenya Board but to a third party called Intex Group. This newly-formed company with two Kenyans of Indian origin and a famous Indian cricketer indirectly involved is virtually in for a bonanza the next five years, should this tournament become an annual feature.

The Intex Group, in turn, has tied up with Media Plus Group (a Kenyan company) for organising and marketing the event.

The question is: why has the BCCI got into this arrangement? They haverepeatedly held they will not encourage third parties (middle men) to benefit at their expense. Numerous matches in India and elsewhere (including the one in America which is currently in the news for the Board having refused prominent Indian cricketers permission to participate) have come a cropper due to this principled stand of the BCCI.

However, all these principles seem to have been thrown to the wind in the case of this Kenya sojourn. If promotion of cricket is the raison d’etre of the Kenya tournament, then the Kenya Board should have held the television rights and made big money out of it.

To put the importance of TV rights in the correct perspective, the forthcoming Sri Lanka series to be contested between India, Australia and Sri Lanka has been sold for a whopping US $5.1 million).

Certainly, something is amiss. Will the International Cricket Council (ICC) delegates, including Jagmohan Dalmiya, who will meet — safari and holiday too — for a week in Kenya in preparation for the ICCknock-out tournament there, do something?

It is anybody’s guess.