Twenty years ago English football suffered arguably its worst disaster when 96 Liverpool fans died in or as result of a stampede at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield. The tragedy seen in hindsight, stemmed from the public perception of football-a sport by, for and of hooligans-and the consequent reaction: hostile stadiums, hostile policing. From the debris of that disaster has arisen the most valuable, global club based sports tournament, which has become a benchmark for the rest of the competition.
That rebirth was not accidental. Hillsborough forced the British authorities notably the Thatcher government- to look at football in new light. The prescription came from the Taylor commission investigating the Hillsborough tragedy: the way ahead for football, was as a family game, a more wholesome form of entertainment suitable for a weekend afternoon. That required a transformation of the football grounds from medieval human cages to modern, all-seater theaters. That in turn required money. The clubs certainly didn't have that kind of money, nor did the Football trust, and so, in 1993, was born the premier League and the deal with Murdoch's Sky television that brought in the stars, and as the Premiership imported talent it exported itself-first to Europe and the Americas, then to Asia and Africa.
Around the same time, the NBA was taking its first steps on the road from being seen as a domestic tournament in a quintessentially American sport to becoming a global behemoth, breaking markets that are still largely impervious to western concepts and products.
What's the connection between all this and cricket? Well, cricket today is also at a tipping point of sports- it has a brand-new format that is not merely bringing in the big bucks but bankrolling the entire game; yet it has split the sport down the middle, becoming at once the game's salvation and the destroyer of cricket as we know it. Twenty20 is cricket's big game changer; it has, inside two years, spawned not one but two billion-dollar tournaments, introduced a radically different noting of the teams playing those tournaments and reised the prospect of freelancer cricketers, All this in two years flat.
Yet it is clear cricket has grown all it can within the traditional parameters; its economy is maxed out the overly dependent on one country. Growth will not come from within. One of today's more thinking cricketers recently said the game needs to broad base its finances with more foreign investment. He was speaking in the context of the IPL, but taking his theory and tweaking it leads me to this proposition: To grow , cricket needs to move in to new frontiers, break new ground, It will achieve the potential offered to it by Twenty20 only if it sheds its image of being a colonial, antiquated British game played in whites, over five days with halts for lunch, tea and drinks. We know t has changed but there's whole world out there-literally so-that does not. In short, cricket needs to go truly global.
And Twenty20 can do the trick. It is the simplest form of the game, it isn't weighed down by tradition or other archaic baggage, it is young enough to be further customized, and-crucially- it is the format of choice for younger fans even in established cricket markets. Why was it so easy for football and basketball to go global? Marketing played a huge role, of course, but two key factors are inherent in the sports team selves. One, their essential simplicity, in terms of rules and the equipment needed, which make team far more attractive to youth then relatively sedate cricket. Until Twenty20 came in.
If Twenty20 is the agent of change, the primary carrier will be the South Asian Diaspora; it is now a truly global presence that has either the numbers or the wealth, or both, to make Twenty20 viable in some form-from TV rights or from buns on seats- almost anywhere in the world. Whether it's a group of locals and expats playing in a purely local tournament, or a road show featuring stars from the IPL and Champions League, who's to say it's not viable? An IPL XI (or two) could feature players from every single Test-playing nation, enough to draw in crowds wherever they play.
Ultimately, cricket's road to going global could lie with the Olympic Games. The sport was last played in the Olympic in 1900 but talk of reentry started soon after the inaugural IPL season.
The Premier League and the NBA are probably the world's two most global Leagues. Football has always been the global game but the Premiership took it to the level of an interactive experience. Fans no longer had to be content merely watching their idols on Television: they could watch the matches wearing their official team shirts, sitting in an appropriately themed bar or pub, playing for their entertainment with credit cards branded in their club's name. Smart marketing allows the TV viewer almost any-where in Asia to watch more Premiership football-six-odd games every weekend, plus the cup tournaments-for next to nothing, compared to the fan in England, who play an arm and a leg for his Sky subscription.
The problem for cricket, especially the new leagues, is of credibility and professionalism in administration. Ask any sports journalist whose beat includes the IPL and the Champions League, where rules and regulations are at best nebulous. The running joke is that everything is decided on Lalit Modi's BlackBerry(well, it would be a joke if the stakes weren't so high).
It's not just Modi and the IPL that appear averse to regulation. It is the Indian cricket board, the game's de facto custodians, whose typical response to any crisis-a match referee's verdict, an inconvenient anti-doping policy, the establishing of another Twenty20 league-is to raise the stakes to a level out of reach for the other parties and then begin negotiations. The men who run cricket may inspire some confidence in the markets but they inspire none among those who love the sport and view it seriously.
**************
No comments:
Post a Comment