Game Changer

It is hard to be sure as yet which way it will go,but a new history of Indian cricket (The Great Tamasha: Cricket,Corruption and The Turbulent Rise of Modern India) traces the arc,from the induction of Indians in games of cricket on Bombay’s Maidan to the hysteria of the IPL,dramatically enough for the questions to be delineated sharply. James Astill was the Economist correspondent in India for four years till ’10,and had planned to write a book exclusively on the IPL. Those were the magic years of almost 10 per cent growth,and cricket was outpacing the economy,so that by 2011,“Indian advertisers spent $3 billion to buy airtime on televised cricket,representing 90 per cent of the total TV spend on sports in India,and a quarter of the total spent on television advertising.” More than 80 per cent of cricket’s global revenue was believed to be generated in India,and the IPL made the assertion of the shift as nothing else.

It wasn’t just that cricket’s finances and administration had given BCCI inordinate power in the running of the sport — that shift had already taken place in the mid-Nineties. Now the IPL had rewritten the rules of how teams formulated their schedules,how the game was reported (by commentators appointed by the masters,of course),who and how the stakeholders were chosen (be it the franchise-holders,the League officials or,indeed,the players who could put themselves up for auction) and perhaps most importantly,how cricketers young and old began to rework their career plans. The IPL’s is a story not yet completely told,and Astill treads rather familiar ground as he tries to convey a valid measure of its game-changing coordinates. In fact,lest the reader be left with any suspicion that he may be open to conversion to the IPL,he lets the scorn flow freely whenever in touching distance of anyone or anything touched by the League. The reasons would be familiar to any IPL-sceptic. Astill’s accomplishment is,however,the positioning of the IPL story against the backdrop of Indian cricket’s long history as well as the oft-ignored places where its essence resides,from the maidans to the slums,from large cities to far-flung villages,from the still-grand Chiefs’ Colleges to more modest grounds where men like Arvind Pujara (father of Cheteshwar) have dedicated decades of their lives to coaching boys free of charge.

The juxtaposition serves a purpose more valuable than simply putting the IPL’s excesses in such sharp relief. The mix of repeated clarifications by cricket’s greats of the elevated place in their estimation of the Test format and disdain of that format by numerous stakeholders in the IPL begs its own question on how wisely — or,as is more likely,not — the brains trust of the BCCI is serving the game. Also,the hysteria that attends cricket in its different forms — especially the ugly chauvinism that bubbles up from time to time — is offset by the quieter enjoyment of the game as it is played in make-shift conditions. Or as Astill puts it while considering ways in which the BCCI is likely to bend the calendar to the demands of the IPL: “For cricket tragics,it is a depressing outlook. India,a country that has so enriched cricket,is now the gravest threat to its most precious traditions. But then again,look closer at what cricket means to Indians,and it is hard to remain altogether disapproving.”

Cricket’s is a lexicon that unites diverse followers in a common conversation. The tragedy is therefore not that the game’s administrators have succumbed to something like the IPL — for all of Astill’s disapproval,a League need not be a corrosive innovation. The tragedy is that cricket as it is being organised at the highest levels is opting out of that conversation as an engaged and accountable participant.