tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/indian-premier-league-16050/articlesIndian Premier League – The Conversation2023-12-25T21:07:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168152023-12-25T21:07:30Z2023-12-25T21:07:30ZHalf-watched TV and part-heard radio: summer Test cricket is steeped in nostalgia, but these ‘traditions’ have short histories<p>As the old year passes and a new one arrives, three notable sport events occupy the languid vacation hours. Melbourne’s Boxing Day and Sydney’s New Year’s Test matches are spliced by the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.</p>
<p>Unlike the race, a set-piece seasonal spectacle notable mainly for its <a href="https://cyca.com.au/event/2023-rolex-sydney-hobart-yacht-race-official-spectator-vessel-the-jackson/">Rolex-sponsored</a> affluence, picturesque helicopter shots, and (seemingly) AI-generated reporting, the cricket stirs strong emotions.</p>
<p>Many people are seduced by the nostalgic notion that no Australian summer is complete without two metropolitan Test matches played on green fields. Much of the experience involves half-watched television and part-heard radio broadcasts.</p>
<p>But anyone who messes with these <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674559561&content=toc">national treasures</a> risks accusations of the greatest national sin – being <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/un-australian-national-identity-twenty-first-century/">un-Australian</a>.</p>
<h2>Adored matches with short histories</h2>
<p>Like many “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/invention-of-tradition/B9973971357795DC86BE856F321C34B3">traditions</a>”, the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-25/boxing-day-test-match-tradition-has-short-history-at-mcg/8135852">Boxing Day Test</a> at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is quite recent – in fact, barely 40 years old. </p>
<p>It is the product of jet travel, global year-round tour schedules and, especially, the needs of commercial television.</p>
<p>Kerry Packer grasped the lucrative potential of large, captive audiences on vacation. Acquiring the <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/the-sideline/the-packer-revolution/news-story/18ef12781ed1cd7c5f93f43b64e5061c">broadcast rights</a> in 1979, he set about maximising their value for Channel Nine. Before then, Boxing Day Tests in Melbourne were intermittent, with three in the 1970s even being staged in Adelaide.</p>
<p>Fairly regular Tests at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) in January and February began in the late 1960s, but it was not until the late 1990s that they settled on the first week of the year. Patriotic television <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1I4anHgXnQ">advertisements</a> substantially created this misleading picture of time-honoured festive <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqWzzj_HxUY">cricket rituals</a>.</p>
<h2>An evolving game with a crowded calendar</h2>
<p>In the midst of this orgy of cricketing nostalgia and overindulgence of food and liquid, purists find the mounting threats to the five-day format unpalatable.</p>
<p>It is hard to imagine today that <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/rewind-to-1971-the-birth-of-the-one-day-international-464234">one-day cricket</a> was once regarded as the “fast food” version of the game. </p>
<p>But that was before we got the memo from, in particular, the men’s and women’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/if-the-ipl-rises-we-rise-how-lachlan-murdoch-was-sold-on-cricket-s-showbiz-behemoth-20230331-p5cx1l.html">Indian Premier League</a>.</p>
<p>Here, players are literally bought and sold in a sporting meat market, along with megabuck franchises. Cricket contests are shrunk to 20-over “big bashes” of barely three hours’ duration, the senses bombarded with music, dance, programmed crowd stimulation and loud advertisements.</p>
<p>This Twenty20 form of the game has mushroomed around the world, including in the <a href="https://www.playthegame.org/news/the-saudis-in-sport-ambitions-much-larger-than-sportswashing/">sportswashing</a> capitals of the Middle East. It has been joined recently by a newer, fast-paced variation called <a href="https://www.thehundred.com/">The Hundred</a> to compete with the slower, longer one-day and Test forms of the game.</p>
<p>After more than a century in the Olympic wilderness, cricket is also returning to the fold at the <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/cricket-olympics-los-angeles-2028-inclusion-reactions-india">2028 Los Angeles Games</a>, courtesy of some heavy lobbying by India. It may well feature at the <a href="https://www.cricket.com.au/news/3732578/cricket-included-olympics-2028-los-angeles-icc-2032-brisbane">2032 Brisbane Games</a>, where its famous venue, the Gabba, will be rebuilt.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Television ads for text cricket in the 1980s were big on patriotism (and jingles).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Consequently, the global cricket calendar is becoming even more congested. A clear case is the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-22/australia-india-twenty20-hard-to-fathom-marnus-labuschagne/103138994">Twenty20 series</a> that took place in India within four days of the month-long men’s 2023 World Cup.</p>
<p>The teams that played in the one-day <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/11/19/photos-head-breaks-india-hearts-as-australia-win-sixth-world-cup-title">final</a>, Australia and India, faced off again in the Twenty20. But half the Australian team returned home, and only one of the Indian one-day team participated.</p>
<p>Such time pressures and competition variations encourage more players and coaches to specialise in different cricket formats. The money is comparatively easy in the short form of the game, while the physical and mental health toll can be reduced by <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/t20-blessing-or-curse-to-cricket/">opting out</a> of Test and even one-day cricket altogether.</p>
<h2>Suffering in the name of tradition</h2>
<p>The Australian cricketers who do play in future Melbourne and Sydney Tests may find they will move west to Adelaide or Perth, or north to Brisbane. As Cricket Australia goes to tender for its new <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/pitch-battle-why-boxing-day-new-year-s-tests-are-up-for-grabs-20230901-p5e19j.html">seven-year broadcast contract</a>, it has made clear that no venue has a guaranteed Test match.</p>
<p>Of course, such matters are being raised in a play for more cash. But with expensive new stadia to fill and state governments offering juicy inducements to snag a prestigious Test match, Australia’s two largest cities may be dismissed on these crucial days.</p>
<p>There is also the problem of the frequently sodden Sydney, with <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-11605239/Cricket-fans-call-New-Years-Test-taken-AWAY-Sydney-wet-weather.html">agitation</a> that the key New Year’s Test should be moved from one of the <a href="https://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/cricket-weather-reality-check-sydney-is-as-wet-as-manchester/535863">wettest cities</a> where elite cricket is played.</p>
<p>To preserve the heritage value of the New Year’s Test, must bored, damp spectators sit in the stands? Or TV viewers be forced to watch images of a covered pitch and listen to droning fill-in commentary?</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1440783320941284">COVID pandemic</a> lockdown showed, sports like cricket now resemble continuous-process manufacturing industries, or global just-in-time operations where the “product” is assembled via intricate logistics.</p>
<p>The lines between tradition and progress constantly shift in these hyper-commercial cricketing times. One casualty may be the largely illusionary sense of continuity proffered by Australia’s Boxing Day and New Year double bill.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Summer in Australia is often set to the soundtrack of a Test cricket match. That sentimentality can get in the way of seeing cricket for what it is: a hyper-commercial cash machine.David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1462172020-09-18T09:39:26Z2020-09-18T09:39:26ZCricket’s Indian Premier League heads to the UAE as political power and money hit coronavirus concerns for six<p>The Indian Premier League (IPL), a franchise Twenty20 cricket tournament in which players from around the world compete in eight different teams, was postponed in March <a href="https://sports.ndtv.com/ipl-2020/ipl-2020-postponed-to-start-from-april-15-instead-of-march-29-bcci-2194362">because of coronavirus</a>. </p>
<p>After months of uncertainty, it will now take place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) instead of India, with the first game on September 19 in Abu Dhabi, followed by other games in Dubai and Sharjah. This brings relief to cricket fans, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), team owners, broadcasters and sponsors. </p>
<p>The total value of the tournament in 2019 was estimated <a href="https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/ipl-value-2019-tv-rights-sponsorship-commercial-mumbai-indians-cricket">at US$5.9 billion</a>. If the 2020 tournament hadn’t taken place, it was estimated the BBCI <a href="https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/sports-news-bcci-plans-ipl-in-empty-stadiums-says-cant-afford-loss-of-revenue/354519#:%7E:text=The%20BCCI%20relies%20heavily%20on,loss%20of%20Rs%205%2C000%20crore">could lose</a> around US$680 million in revenue.</p>
<p>The tournament has been to the UAE before. In 2014, unable to host the IPL during India’s general election, the BCCI chose the UAE as the venue for the first 20 matches. The Gulf country was easily accessible from India, offered excellent sporting and hospitality facilities, and was also home to about 2.5 million Indians who would ensure the galleries were filled. </p>
<p>In 2020, with all Indian cities under lockdown and the BCCI determined to organise the IPL to keep the revenues flowing, UAE stepped up as host again. Aside from the BCCI, the other beneficiaries are India’s ruling politicians. </p>
<h2>India-UAE relations</h2>
<p>The UAE and India share amicable diplomatic and trade relations. In 2018, UAE offered financial assistance to flood victims in Kerala. The following year <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/modi-thanks-uae-for-support-on-kashmir-seeks-investments-for-kashmir-in-uae-bahrain/articleshow/70821688.cms">it supported</a> the Indian government’s controversial decision to rescind the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir. Shortly afterwards, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was conferred the <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/uae-confers-order-of-zayed-to-pm-modi/articleshow/70817695.cms?from=mdr">Order of Zayed</a>, UAE’s highest civilian award. </p>
<p>The two countries have also <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/national/coronavirus-uae-sends-medical-supplies-india-reciprocates-with-88-docs-nurses-832761.html">helped each other</a> during the COVID-19 pandemic. The UAE donated seven tonnes of medical supplies to India which reciprocated by sending a contingent of doctors and nurses. It’s likely the decision to shift the IPL to the UAE will strengthen bilateral ties further.</p>
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<h2>State reluctance</h2>
<p>India’s state governments, both those ruled by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party and its allies, as well as opposition groups, are also likely to be relieved that the tournament moved to the UAE. They were circumspect about policing venues when their risk management resources were already thinned by the pandemic. </p>
<p>The IPL’s cancellation in March meant all India’s states lost a stage for city-branding and the income raised by taxing state cricket associations. But the potential gains were unlikely to balance out against the tremendous effort required in security and public health arrangements. </p>
<h2>Virus concerns</h2>
<p>The security of the IPL personnel is now a foreign country’s responsibility. But in mid-September, a few days before the start of the tournament, the UAE was reporting <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/united-arab-emirates/">around 1,000 new cases of the virus a day</a>, jumping nearly four-fold in a month. </p>
<p>By early September, the virus had breached a cricket bio-secure bubble and <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/cricket/report-covid-19-cases-in-ipl-2020-rise-to-14-after-bcci-medical-commission-member-tests-positive-2840882">infected 14 IPL personnel</a>, including players, support staff and one BCCI medical commission member. Most of those infected belonged to Chennai Super Kings franchise. </p>
<p>The infection of cricketers with the virus was not enough for the BCCI and the Indian government to cancel the tournament. As former cricketer turned-BJP politician <a href="https://www.republicworld.com/sports-news/cricket-news/i-dont-think-that-players-will-be-afraid-of-it-gambhir-on-covid-19.html">Gautam Gambhir said</a>: “Just because of one person, the tournament can’t be sacrificed.” Gambhir’s statement and the BCCI’s IPL mentality that the show will go on despite opposition in some quarters. There is resolute loyalty to a financial agenda.</p>
<p>A rigorous testing <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/uae/health/ipl-2020-how-rigorous-testing-and-bio-bubbles-will-keep-cricket-stars-safe-in-the-uae-1.1077988">regime is planned</a> for the tournament, with travellers to the UAE expected to quarantine on arrival, even if – for some players – that means missing out on some of the early games. But a few days before the tournament was due to begin, it still wasn’t clear if spectators <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/sport/cricket/ipl-2020-emirates-cricket-board-hopeful-fans-will-be-allowed-into-grounds-to-watch-the-action-1.1066313">would be allowed</a> into the stadiums at all. </p>
<p>The organisation of a long tournament with several hundred people, including cricketers, non-playing staff, team and match officials, and media from various countries during the worst global health crisis in a century, shows the extraordinary reach of the BCCI’s power. </p>
<p>The support the IPL has had from both the Indian government and the mainstream media for its plan to continue with the tournament are also clear indications of the BCCI’s influence. This IPL, if it ends well without further COVID cases, will only reinforce the BCCI’s clout in Indian political and financial circles.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Souvik Naha receives funding from European Commission grant number 844096. </span></em></p>Originally scheduled for March, the IPL 2020 kicks off in the UAE on September 19 with tight coronavirus restrictions.Souvik Naha, Assistant Professor (Research), Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755202017-04-06T09:11:27Z2017-04-06T09:11:27ZCricket: more Twenty20 may sow seeds of demise for the quintessential English game<p>A city-based franchise competition of Twenty20, cricket’s shortest (20-over) format, is due to be launched in 2020 in a bid to give the English domestic game a financial boost. It is the latest plan from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) <a href="http://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12140/10815888/ecb-reveal-plans-for-franchise-style-twenty20-competition">aimed at</a> increasing the number of people watching the sport. The teams are <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/03/26/ecb-ask-counties-vote-change-could-pave-way-twenty20-tournament/">expected</a> to be based around well-known grounds such as Lord’s and the Oval in London, Trent Bridge in Nottingham, Old Trafford in Manchester and Headingley in Leeds. </p>
<p>Cricket’s audiences are thought to be ageing and may not be replenished. In other parts of the world, match-day attendances for the longer formats of the game, particularly international Test cricket over five days, have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/31/big-bash-league-crowds-continue-to-beat-test-match-attendance-figures">declined</a> – although <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/943185.html">not in England</a>. </p>
<p>Reception to the ECB’s <a href="http://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12140/10815888/ecb-reveal-plans-for-franchise-style-twenty20-competition">franchise</a> competition proposal has been mixed. Former England captain, Michael Vaughan, said he viewed Twenty20 as “the saviour” and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/03/27/twenty20-league-exactly-cricket-needs-become-relevant-attract/">predicted</a> that it would have huge success in attracting new, younger fans. But he also warned that the new competition could eclipse other forms of the game, including international matches.</p>
<p>So, is the commercialisation of cricket a friend or foe to the game?</p>
<h2>Many iterations</h2>
<p>Cricket has been dealing with these tensions for longer than most sports have actually existed. Since its laws were first standardised and committed to paper in the mid-1700s, cricket has <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Globalizing_Cricket.html?id=0VpMAQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">witnessed</a> numerous incarnations in the name of progress and modernisation. Concerns about the economic model began in the 19th century, but the commercialisation of cricket in England experienced a step change in 1963 with the introduction of the first “one-day” competition, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2013/may/01/fifty-years-gillette-cup-anniversary">Gillette Cup</a>. </p>
<p>The shorter format became more frequent and more dominant, but various iterations were tried in the search for a commercially lucrative formula. Kerry Packer’s <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/worldseries/content/story/72632.html">World Series Cricket</a> in Australia in the 1970s, which saw players in coloured clothes (rather than the traditional whites) playing under floodlights with a white (not red) ball, would <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/sports-studies/cambridge-companion-cricket?format=HB&isbn=9780521761291">ultimately</a> convince the market of cricket’s commercial potential.</p>
<p>The broadcast of one-day cricket enabled the game to become a “mediasport” – funded by and structured for media consumption – as our <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sport-Media-and-Mega-Events/Wenner-Billings/p/book/9781138930391">research</a> has highlighted. Yet, despite considerable success, shorter variants continued to emerge, such as New Zealand’s <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/67577.html">Cricket Max</a> in the late 1990s and Australia’s <a href="http://mncjcc.nsw.cricket.com.au/files/15121/files/Game%20formats/Super%208s%20rules.pdf">Super Eights</a>. </p>
<p>But Twenty20, in which each team bats for 20 overs and the highest score wins, would become king. Ironically, given England’s role as the guardian of the traditions of cricket, Twenty20 <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/579245.html">was invented</a> there in 2003. </p>
<p>Such was the immediate commercial success of Twenty20 that multiple domestic-based and internationally resonant competitions subsequently emerged: the <a href="http://www.iplt20.com/">Indian Premier League</a> (IPL), <a href="http://www.bigbash.com.au/">Australian Big Bash</a>, <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/bangladesh-premier-league-2016-17/content/series/1063043.html">Bangladesh Premier League</a>, <a href="http://www.cplt20.com/">Caribbean Premier League</a> and <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/pakistan-super-league-2016-17/content/series/1075974.html">Pakistan Super League</a> currently exist. In the meantime, the English became victims of their own innovation. Their version, the <a href="https://www.ecb.co.uk/t20-blast">T20 Blast</a>, remained stuck in the traditional structures of county cricket and so lacked global appeal. </p>
<p>Enter the ECB’s new plan. The new city-based competition is set up for eight new teams – all owned by the ECB – with centrally-allocated pots of money for players and coaches. Each team will have a squad of 15 players, selected by draft. Teams will choose 13 players split across six salary bands and have two further wildcard picks – including a maximum of three overseas players to increase the tournament’s glamour. A play-off style system of 36 matches scheduled over 38 days will provide four home matches per franchise with eight matches shown <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/03/26/ecb-ask-counties-vote-change-could-pave-way-twenty20-tournament/">live</a> on free-to-air television. </p>
<p>Incomes should match those achieved by similarly global Twenty20 competitions. An annual IPL season in India, for example, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17430437.2011.620372">generates</a> more than double the gross income of a 50-over Cricket World Cup, which happens every four years. </p>
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<h2>Both innovative and conservative</h2>
<p>Such innovations always have a wider social impact. It’s unclear how the addition of the planned franchise competition will affect the existing one-day county and T20 Blast competitions, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/mar/26/ecb-regional-t20-tournament-plan">which will continue to run</a>. International Test matches will also be scheduled alongside the new competition, so which will draw England’s best players: cheque book or country? </p>
<p>Beyond logistics, there lies a more fundamental question. Twenty20 has become emblematic of the mediatisation and commercialisation of the game. While all sports have adapted to suit the needs of television and sponsors, the extent to which cricket has changed in the last 50 years is unprecedented. And yet, while Twenty20 incorporates the game’s fundamental elements – it is still contested between 11 men or women on a 22-yard strip of grass involving bat and ball – there remains much more room for innovation with the format. For instance, why insist on teams having five bowlers or limiting them to bowling 24 balls each?</p>
<p>The truth is that cricket is paradoxically innovative, yet conservative. The “inventors” of one-day cricket wanted it to look like the “real” thing – keen that short-term commercial goals <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Betrayal.html?id=l3x2JQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">should not</a> betray the game’s inheritance. The English traditions epitomised by the longer form of Test match and county cricket are what make the game stand apart from other sports in the global marketplace. As a result, the commercial and media opportunities made possible by Twenty20 also <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sport-Media-and-Mega-Events/Wenner-Billings/p/book/9781138930391">bring with them</a> a series of threats. </p>
<p>Each new iteration of cricket contains unresolved tensions. City-based Twenty20 will attract a new, younger audience, but perhaps they will be attracted for different reasons. Twenty20 packs stadiums drawn by cricket’s global superstars, but there is little evidence that it has the capacity to sustain audiences across the sport’s longer formats. You cannot breathe economic life into Test cricket by selling the audience something else so, at best, these latest plans create the need for further tinkering and, at worst, plant the seeds of Test cricket’s future demise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is the 20-over format a friend or foe for English cricket?Thomas Fletcher, Senior Lecturer, Events, Tourism, Hospitality and Languages, Leeds Beckett UniversityDominic Malcolm, Reader in Sociology of Sport, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514132015-11-30T12:25:56Z2015-11-30T12:25:56ZCricket has the opportunity to be a truly transparent world sport – it should seize it<p>Revelations of corruption in the administration of global sport have provided one of the ongoing dramas of 2015. The reasons for the plethora of scandals – notably at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/28/how-fifa-ignored-all-the-essential-steps-to-weed-out-corruption/">football’s governing body FIFA</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sebastian-coe-faces-a-monumental-task-in-cleaning-up-athletics-50480">International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)</a> – are easy enough to pinpoint. </p>
<p>International sport has traditionally been run by those who have a love for the game but often precious little administrative experience. Up until very recently there was little money in the likes of cricket, athletics or cycling. Many of those who rose to the top did so as they had learnt to make sense of their sport’s often arcane governance procedures. They weren’t doing it for the riches and many weren’t getting paid at all. It was all about the glory. </p>
<p>Throughout 2015, as FIFA and the IAAF have been rocked by ongoing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/04/lamine-diack-investigation-iaaf-corruption-doping">investigations</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/2015-fifa-arrests">arrests</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/34938953">allegations of conflicts of interest</a>, cricket has escaped relatively scot-free. Admittedly, there has been a permanent buzz of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-33517583">scandal</a> related to the Indian Premier League (IPL). But there are wider issues the sport must face up to. </p>
<p>The removal in mid-November of <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/once-the-czar-of-world-cricket-srinivasan-reduced-to-a-non-entity/">Narayanaswami Srinivasan</a>, the controversial former chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), nonetheless offers cricket the opportunity to make significant changes to how it operates globally. </p>
<h2>New man in charge of the ICC</h2>
<p>Shashank Manohar, Srnivasan’s successor, <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/sports/the-anti-srinivasan-shashank-manohar-says-bcci-ecb-ca-triumvirate-should-not-bully-icc-2522658.html">has made encouraging statements</a> concerning both transparency in world cricket’s governance structures and also the “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/26/shashank-manohar-icc-big-three-england-india-australia">bullying</a>” behaviour of cricket’s big three – the national associations of Australia, England and India. </p>
<p>Manohar also leads the Board of Cricketing Control of India (BCCI), the biggest and most powerful national board. During his short time in charge <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/sports/bcci-agm-shashank-manohar-aims-to-enact-sweeping-reforms-srinivasans-icc-future-in-doubt-2499638.html">he has also made positive steps</a> towards tackling the myriad of conflicting interests and opaque processes that have traditionally underpinned the BCCI’s work. </p>
<p>Manohar and his supporters may well be genuine in their wish to clean things up, but they still face a number of significant challenges – and the cases of FIFA and the IAAF are instructive in pinpointing where these challenges lie. Successful reform has a lot to do with the organisation having the willingness to take tough decisions and stick with them. </p>
<p>But how will we know if this willingness is genuinely there? The cases of both FIFA and the IAAF illustrate that there are five key indicators to look out for.</p>
<p>First comes leadership: is the ICC’s leadership asking the right questions? It took both FIFA and the IAAF far too long to recognise that there were problems inherent in their business model. </p>
<p>Until now, the recommendations of the <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/551836.html">2012 Woolf report</a> into governance in cricket and reports by well-respected organisations such as <a href="http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/transparency_international_calls_on_international_cricket_council_to_addres">Transparency International </a> have been largely ignored. Manohar needs to acknowledge this and work out a strategy for doing justice to their aims.</p>
<p>Second comes coherence: do the new ideas and plans fit with best practice elsewhere? The organisation of world cricket is at best complex and at worst downright opaque. Manohar needs to either revisit the Woolf report or empower a powerful group of external advisers to build on its conclusions. </p>
<p>They can then come up with empirically robust suggestions for change. Trying to do this internally – as FIFA in particular did – is not an option. Manohar needs to accept that implementing their suggestions will require no small amount of political skill. But it’s the only way that effective change will happen.</p>
<h2>Oversight, money and sustainability</h2>
<p>Third, is the question of whether the ICC is prepared to allow external oversight of its work. Ultimately, when FIFA suppressed the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jun/17/michael-garcia-report-russia-qatar-world-cups">Garcia report</a> into the awarding of World Cups to Qatar and Russia and ignored the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/apr/23/fifa-advised-implement-report-advice-reform">Pieth recommendations</a> on reform, it illustrated that it wasn’t prepared to allow external oversight of what it does. </p>
<p>The IAAF may have dealt with this better, but it still took a long time to get where it needed to go. The ICC must realise that it cannot regulate itself. Manohar needs to ensure that regulatory institutions are in place to ensure that when the ICC makes mistakes – and it will, just as any organisation does – there are ways to spot them and put them right. </p>
<p>Fourth concerns the money to make the change happen. Cricket is a game with a very skewed financial infrastructure. After <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/26096782">a deal pushed through</a> in 2014, three countries – Australia, England and India – provide the bulk of the revenues through their TV rights’ deals, and they have recently worked together to <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/717377.html">change the constitution</a> of the ICC to ensure that they have an effective veto over much of the ICC’s work.</p>
<p>This can’t be good for the game. India, Australia and England undoubtedly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/26029472">need to have their interests represented</a>, but they can’t be allowed to hold an effective veto. </p>
<p>Finally, the ICC must address questions of sustainability. Unscrupulous people can quickly make even the most well-thought through system look like the proverbial ass. There will undoubtedly be those who will seek to undermine the ICC’s work and those who prefer the opacity of the “old” system. But that’s not the way 21st century sport can or indeed should be run. </p>
<h2>An ongoing process</h2>
<p>Whatever reform path the ICC chooses, it cannot stand still as those who stand to lose out do their level best to get the most – in financial and power terms – that they can. Getting governance right is most definitely a process and not an event. It’s something you do, and monitor, continuously. </p>
<p>Cricket has often prided itself on the existence of a unique “<a href="https://www.lords.org/mcc/mcc-spirit-of-cricket/">spirit</a>” around which the game is played. If ever such a spirit existed – and there are plenty of reasons to believe that it has always been nothing short of a nice, pretty <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/621912.html">fiction</a> – then the <a href="https://theconversation.com/crickets-indian-premier-league-is-in-trouble-but-popularity-will-see-it-through-44739">corruption scandals</a> that have plagued the game in recent times should have woken everyone up. </p>
<p>The fact that through 2015 both the IAAF and FIFA have responded so clumsily to the challenges that they faced should also ring alarm bells. For once, however, the ICC and Manohar do have a chance to get ahead of the game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Hough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What can the International Cricket Council learn from FIFA and the IAAF? Plenty.Daniel Hough, Professor of Politics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/447392015-07-16T13:42:26Z2015-07-16T13:42:26ZCricket’s Indian Premier League is in trouble, but popularity will see it through<p>Just as one of cricket’s great spectacles, a Lord’s test match between England and Australia, gets underway, the sport in India has faced a day of reckoning. The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-33517583">suspension of two of the eight sides</a> in India’s megabucks Indian Premier League (IPL) following an illegal betting and match-fixing scandal shows that cricket has a corruption problem, and is at something of a loss as to how to deal with it.</p>
<p>The IPL was born in 2008 as the new, bright, exciting face of 21st-century cricket. The great empire game, traditionally played over five days and where around 30% of all matches <a href="http://www.itsonlycricket.com/entry/1910/">end in no result</a>, was metamorphosing into a showbiz extravaganza. Crowds in cricket-mad India flocked to see new franchise teams (with outlandish names such as the Kolkata Knight Riders and Chennai Super Kings) with the superstars of world cricket in their ranks play T20, a three-hour version of the sport where there was always a result. By 2014 the brand value of the IPL was around <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jun/12/england-twenty20-india-ipl-cricket">$7.2bn</a>, up from <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/deutsche-bank-co-ceo-anshu-jains-ipl-stake-sale-under-ed-scanner/">$2.01bn</a> in 2009. The league looked like a real success story.</p>
<p>But even before the recent two-year suspensions, the IPL was no stranger to controversy. In 2010 the IPL chairman, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/apr/25/lalit-modi-cricket-indian-premier-league">Lalit Modi</a>, was suspended by the organising body, the Board of Cricket Control for India (BCCI), and in 2013 <a href="http://sports.ndtv.com/indian-premier-league-2013/news/207838-sreesanth-two-other-rajasthan-royals-players-arrested-for-spot-fixing-report">three Rajasthan Royals players</a> and 11 bookmakers (including one former player) were arrested by the Delhi police for spot-fixing – performing in a certain way at a certain point in the game in return for money. </p>
<p>The fallout from these dramatic events led to the <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/indian-premier-league-2013/content/story/637612.html">arrest in May 2013</a> of Gurunath Meiyappan, one of the top officials in the IPL’s most successful on-field franchise, the Chennai Super Kings. Meiyappan was also the son-in-law of Narayanswamy Srinivasan, then BCCI president and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/jun/26/icc-appoint-srinivasan-new-chairman">since June 2014</a>, chairman of the International Cricket Council. The spectre of illegal gambling and moneymaking was getting dangerously close to the very top of Indian cricket. </p>
<h2>Fallout for teams’ owners</h2>
<p>The recent <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/sport/cricket-chennai-and-raja/1983166.html">verdicts</a> in the corruption scandal are not actually against the two franchises, the Rajasthan Royals and the Chennai Super Kings, but against their owners. Should these owners – Jaipur IPL (Royals) and India Cements (Super Kings) – sell their franchises, then the teams will be free to compete as normal. </p>
<p>Should they choose not to do that, then we are unlikely to see the sides again until 2018, when the suspension ends. The word “unlikely” is important here as the BCCI has to ratify the decision made by a panel that was appointed by India’s top court. In the murky world of India’s cricket politics, that is not a formality.</p>
<p>The question now is how can the BCCI clean up the IPL and how is the league going to move forward in fixing its now-tainted brand. Retired chief justice Rajendra Mal Lodha, who chaired the panel that recommended the suspension of Rajasthan and Chennai, <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/14/cricket-india-corruption-idUKL4N0ZU2Y420150714">was not shy in speaking out</a>. “Disrepute has been brought to cricket, the BCCI and the IPL”, he said. The BCCI <a href="http://www.bcci.tv/news/2015/press-releases/10509/bccis-statement-on-the-order-of-lodha-committee">said in a statement</a> that it is “committed to ensuring transparency, accountability and cleansing the sport”. Fine words, but what will this mean in practice?</p>
<p>The sheer popularity of the competition means that the BCCI and IPL will have to move quickly to protect the tournament’s integrity. One potential sponsor, the $11 billion JSW group, <a href="http://www.financialexpress.com/article/companies/jsw-shelves-plan-to-buy-cricket-team-cites-corruption-hit-ipls-negative-aura/102021/">has already gone public</a>, stating that it is shelving plans to buy one of the IPL franchises (the Royal Challengers Bangalore). The “negative aura” around the competition was enough to scare it off. India Cements also saw <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/india-cements-shares-slip-6-5-on-sc-panel-verdict/articleshow/48068010.cms">its shares drop 6.5%</a> the day after the judgments were passed.</p>
<p>Given the popularity of cricket in India, it is likely that the IPL will come through the brand management issues with the passage of time and the attraction of T20 cricket. So many people watching a sport they are fanatical about will ultimately see the IPL through these rocky times – providing these suspensions aren’t simply a sign of worse things to come. </p>
<h2>Need for independent oversight</h2>
<p>The bad news for those in the IPL who really do want to clean the organisation up is that there are no technocratic solutions to its problems. Talk of accountability and transparency is all well and good, but the IPL has to be willing to take some tough medicine. There needs to be more rigorous external oversight of both its affairs as an organisation and also those of the eight franchises. Much as is the case with <a href="https://theconversation.com/serious-about-fixing-corruption-whichever-way-you-look-at-it-fifa-doesnt-come-out-well-27532">football’s governing body FIFA</a>, which has faced its biggest ever corruption scandal in recent months, warm words don’t really mean much unless independent sets of eyes can test out whether they are being translated into practice. </p>
<p>This is particularly true considering the sums of money involved. Superstar cricketers on the sub-continent earn well, but only a relatively small number of players fit into that category. The tantalising riches on offer for doing something relatively innocuous – bowling a couple of no balls to swing a match, for example – will always be tempting. The importance of education and of explaining how to see the telltale signs of corruption problems is the only way to help (often understandingly naive) players out. </p>
<p>The IPL will survive. The sheer scale of the enterprise and the popularity of its product will ensure that. But, one should never let a good crisis go to waste. Those that run cricket’s richest competition have a real opportunity to sharpen up their governance act and ensure that the IPL makes headlines for the cricketing exploits of the players involved and not the various shenanigans that currently plague it off the field.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Hough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A corruption scandal in India’s cricketing super league has led to the suspension of two of its teams.Daniel Hough, Professor of Politics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/399972015-04-13T03:02:47Z2015-04-13T03:02:47ZCricket, commentary and the dollar: Benaud’s legacy is complex<p>Around 150,000 deaths are registered in Australia every year, but few receive the “end of an era” tribute accorded Richie Benaud. He was with us as a player, journalist, author, consultant and commentator for so long that he witnessed the cricket order passing from <a href="http://www.cricketweb.net/victory-to-the-bad-guys-or-was-it/">neo-feudal</a> to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/why-australias-cricketers-are-on-millionaires-row-20150220-13k4e7.html">hyper-capitalist</a>. He played no small role in the game’s transition, and a reading of the life of Richie Benaud is also a tale of the changing relationships between sport, media, economics and society.</p>
<p>Benaud’s conspicuous success as a leg-spinning all-rounder and captain has been <a href="http://www.howstat.com/cricket/statistics/Players/PlayerOverview.asp?PlayerId=0167">well-documented</a>. Of greater general note was his proactive approach to the game. This was widely interpreted as quintessentially Australian. More accurately, it stemmed from his conviction that Test cricket needed to renew itself or fail in the post-war “sportainment” industry.</p>
<p>Australia’s dashing captain, whose unbuttoned shirt sometimes bordered on the risqué, had little interest in the dour five-day draw beloved of cricket’s shrinking cohort of hair-shirt purists. This was the pragmatism of a teacher’s son born in Sydney’s outer west, relocated to the country, and who attended Parramatta High School with the Hollywood-bound Rod Taylor. </p>
<h2>A pioneer in the remaking of cricket</h2>
<p>At a time when even elite cricketers couldn’t survive just by playing, Benaud’s on-field flamboyance was underpinned by sober career planning, first in accounting and then in journalism. Combining professional cricket with Sydney Sun reporting rounds and advertised product endorsement, he went on to fast-track broadcasting training with the BBC in the heartland of the old Ashes enemy and to many decades as a columnist with the racy, now defunct, News of the World.</p>
<p>This was the internationalisation of a post-playing career that recognised new possibilities of making a good living from sport’s indispensable business partner: the media. It enabled a working life in two hemispheres, especially after Benaud began his long-running television work with Australia’s Channel Nine in 1977. </p>
<p>That was the year of the cataclysmic World Series Cricket ushered in by Kerry Packer. Benaud acted as his astute and <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/howzat_kerry-packers-war/">well-credentialled consultant</a>. </p>
<p>The “Packer Revolution” (disparaged by some as a “circus”) was certainly <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/cricket/farewell-richie-benaud-the-ultimate-professional/story-e6frg7rx-1227299204350">innovative</a> in many respects. It effectively utilised the still-new possibilities of colour television and introduced coloured clothing, night games, white balls, new camera angles, field restrictions, excitable commentary, high-pressure marketing and travelling bands of international cricketers for hire.</p>
<p>Packer’s World Series cricket substantially weakened the power of cricket’s international and Australian establishments, killed off the public broadcasting (via the ABC) of top-drawer men’s cricket, and made it possible for cricketers to become multi-millionaires. In advancing the popularity of one-day cricket, the World Series operation also paved the way for the sped-up, even flashier form of the game that is Twenty20 cricket. </p>
<p>By unleashing commercial forces in cricket as never before, the Packer-Benaud brains trust also laid the foundation for India’s political-economic domination of world cricket and the Indian Premier League’s Bollywood-spiced player meat market.</p>
<p>Benaud’s organisational acumen made him much more than an ex-Australia cricket captain with a talent for slow-cooked commentary and bone-dry wit. He somehow managed to be a moderniser cloaked in traditionalism, his stillness counterbalancing the noisy spectacle that he’d helped to create. </p>
<p>But Benaud’s predilection for change had its limits. He was keen, for example, to hold the line on the rules governing legal bowling.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mIL6KZox6Ao?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Part of Richie Benaud’s authority as a commentator came from his clear-eyed calls, none better than this.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Having made the switch in 1999 from the BBC to commercial free-to-air Channel Four in following cricket’s broadcast contract, Benaud walked in 2005 rather than follow the money to its new BSkyB pay-TV home. He determined, rightly, that this exchange of big broadcaster money for a much-reduced live audience was one commercialising step too far.</p>
<h2>An unlikely recruit to celebrity culture</h2>
<p>Benaud watched the game with great clarity from his vantage point in the media centres of the cricketing world. But he could not have anticipated that Richie watching would become a popular diversion in its own right. </p>
<p>His slightly odd appearance, redolent of an outback cricket fan making an annual visit to a big-city Test match, and his eccentrically memorable and compulsively imitable voice, made him ripe for parody. </p>
<p>From his “appearances” on Billy Birmingham’s big-selling <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-10/12th-man-artist-billy-birmingham-pays-tribute-to-richie-benaud/6384870">Twelfth Man albums</a> to the swelling ranks of his impersonators, <a href="http://www.therichies.com.au/">the Richies</a>, Benaud somehow morphed into a postmodern celebrity. Once again he was an embodied sign of the cultural times.</p>
<p>It was quite a ride from 5 Sutherland Road, North Parramatta, to his homes in Coogee, London and the south of France. By journey’s end Benaud occupied the prime cultural role assigned to those dignified male Australian cricket commentators whose longevity makes them plausible bearers of nostalgia-tinged, old-school <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/australia/11526643/Richie-Benauds-death-robs-us-of-a-true-gentleman-he-was-not-merely-the-voice-of-cricket-he-was-Mr-Cricket.html">gentlemanliness</a>. </p>
<p>Only the late <a href="http://www.sahof.org.au/hall-of-fame/member-profile/?memberID=303&memberType=athlete">Alan McGilvray</a> could challenge him as the “Voice of Cricket” in Australia – and for Richie Benaud the magic of television meant that cricket followers could put a cream jacket and a slight squint to the voice. </p>
<p>Despite the sanctifying tone of many of <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/cricket/richie-benaud-obituary-farewell-to-a-cricket-legend/story-fnp050m0-1227298107388">his obituaries</a>, Benaud did not lead an unblemished life. His management of the 1976 International Wanderers touring team in apartheid-era South Africa was an obvious error of ethical judgement. He was also rather reluctant to reflect publicly on any negative ramifications of his alliance with Kerry Packer and the other ruthless forces of corporate-commercialised cricket.</p>
<p>But Richie Benaud did much that was admirable in his life. His death has now made permanent the beige suit-sized hole in the Channel Nine cricket commentary team that appeared after his car accident and skin cancer diagnosis. </p>
<p>Much has been made of his <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/11526836/Richie-Benaud-his-eight-rules-of-commentary.html">Eight Rules of Commentary</a>. One fitting Benaud legacy would be to see that wise guidance fully absorbed by the current crop of self-regarding ex-player commentators and their successors who have benefited from his trailblazing life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Discovery Projects 'A Nation of "Good Sports"? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia' (DP130104502)</span></em></p>Richie Benaud was a key figure in cricket’s transformation into an entertainment business. A reading of his life is a tale of the changing relationships between sport, media, business and society.David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.