WANTED: Twenty20 vision

ECB marketing manager Stuart Robertson, whose brainchild this is, says, 8216;8216;We have produced a form of the game which not only seems to be appealing but also, importantly, is being played at convenient times for people to come and watch.8217;8217;

The idea 8212; not entirely original, New Zealand8217;s Super Max series works on the same principle 8212; is to draw first-timers to some kind of cricket, in the hope that they will converted to the conventional game.

So why should we in India care? Well, the problem is similar here, though the root is different. In England, the number 1 game, by far, is football; cricket is rapidly becoming a sport restricted to the expat Asian community. In India 8212; and this is ironic 8212; cricket is competing with complete apathy; we Indians don8217;t like cricket, we like cricket8217;s stars.

On the face of it, this isn8217;t a problem; the game is flush with funds, the BCCI sitting on a treasure-chest stuffed to overflowing. Indeed, cricket has squeezed the life out of most other sports. But the sport is itself in danger of losing touch with the people and, consequently, losing its soul. Like in England, cricket as a spectator sport is dying. Heretic, you say, or plain stupid. What about all those packed one-day matches? Well, when was the last time the average Indian cricket fan watched a domestic match at a stadium? Forget domestic, when was the last time he watched five days of a Test match?

Put in figures, the picture should cause the BCCI some alarm. Because though its revenues for the 2002-2003 season are estimated at Rs 100 crores, almost all that money came from television broadcast rights to 19 international matches. The 254 domestic matches Ranji, Duleep, Irani, Deodhar trophies brought in zilch.

Every Ranji Trophy game sees the host association spending between Rs 1 to 2 lakhs while the BCCI spends about Rs 2 lakh on match fees for the players. The income from these matches is almost nil; The total gate receipts during this year8217;s Ranji final in Mumbai for four days came to a modest Rs 60,000. This, in India8217;s cricket capital.

If the problem is the public8217;s obsession with stars, the solution is for those stars to play more 8212; any 8212; domestic cricket. Former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar puts his finger on it: 8216;8216;I8217;m sure you can attract a crowd of 20,000 at the Wankhede if Mumbai play Karnataka and Sachin, Kambli, Dravid, Srinath turn out. There should be a policy making it mandatory for Test players to play domestic cricket.8217;8217;

The closest thing we had to this was the Challenger Trophy, where teams drawn from top domestic and Test players slugged it out in a short-duration, one-city tournament. And its success speaks for itself. 8216;8216;We hosted it in 1997-98 8212; Azhar, Jadeja, Kumble, Mongia played 8212; and from the first day we had packed houses8217;8217;, says Ratnakar Shetty, joint secretary, Mumbai Cricket Association. 8216;8216;We had to print extra tickets after the initial stocks ran out on the opening day itself. Our total gate money was Rs 12 lakh, the best so far for a Challenger event.8217;8217;

What about replicating Twenty20 itself? Sunil Dev, DDCA Sports Secretary, is bullish on the idea. 8216;8216;This seems to be need of the hour. We are capable of organising such an event but it should be managed professionally. Besides the festival atmosphere there should be enough parking and security and the general comfort of the paying public should be of vital importance.8217;8217; The domestic players, starved of crowds and acclaim, would probably love it. Mukund Parmar would. The Gujarat skipper, among the oldest players on the domestic circuit, waxes on the excitement factor. 8216;8216;The batsmen will have no chance to settle down, they will have to go and just start playing their shots, which is what people come to see,8217;8217; he says.

But not everyone advocates Twenty20; for one, children are already exposed to too much one-day cricket, and the resultant decline in playing technique prompted the BCCI to contemplate a bar on limited-overs cricket for kids.

8216;8216;It won8217;t be good for cricket8217;8217;, says national selector Kiran More. Instead, the BCCI should rope in international cricketers, 8216;8216;then crowds will definitely come.8217;8217; He points to an instance just before the World Cup, when Sehwag came unannounced to the IPCL ground in Vadodara for the shooting of a commercial. 8216;8216;The word soon spread and there were 50,000 people to see him. So just imagine what would happen if he played in domestic cricket regularly.8217;8217;

Sumedh Shah, too, doubts whether it would work. The director of Professional Management Group gives an interesting reason: 8216;8216;Because we don8217;t have the same respect for the state as the English have for the counties. We would go to cheer a second-rate foreign team, not our own. 8217;8217;

Instead, he moots a corporate tournament, because the corporates have higher loyalty than the state teams. 8216;8216;It all depends on how the Board and the sponsors promote and sell the idea to the people.8217;8217;

So what does the BCCI have to say? It doesn8217;t, for one, have a proper marketing committee; the one it has is headed by Board chief Jagmohan Dalmiya and includes the usual suspects. Rajeev Shukla, who heads the co-ordination and communication committee, concedes that 8216;8216;a lot needs to be done8217;8217; to improve domestic cricket in the country. Then adds, 8216;8216;first the sponsors should come forward, only then can things change.8217;8217; Another top BCCI official called Twenty20 a 8216;8216;circus8217;8217; and said the Board wasn8217;t interested in making money through 8216;8216;gimmicks8217;8217;. 8216;8216;We are already being blamed for being money-minded and promoting the one-day version of game. By organising Twenty20 will just invite more trouble.8217;8217;

As we8217;ve said, there8217;s no danger of the money drying up 8212; yet. But if the BCCI cares about the long-term picture and the overall health of India8217;s top sport, it would do well to sit and think. Dalmiya has often derided Lord8217;s for its stuffiness. this time, they are one up on him.

Additional reporting by Jaideep Marar 038; Rohit Joshi