After IPL, fillip for domestic cricket
There is good news for the Indian cricketers toiling away from the limelight. After the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the UAE, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is planning to have a truncated domestic season featuring the Ranji Trophy from January.
The IPL, with all its riches, is restricted to around 120 Indian players. There are nearly 450 more playing for various state teams in the senior men’s section alone. These players constitute the base that the superstructure feeds from. No domestic cricket this season would have meant no income for these players, who are dependent on match fees. Opening the avenue for IPL players to earn and denying the opportunity to a vast majority of the country’s total player pool would have set a bad example.
The BCCI deserves credit for trying to make this happen. As on date, the Covid-19 situation in India remains worrisome. Organising a tournament of four-day matches featuring 38 teams will be a massive challenge. But Sourav Ganguly and co think this can be done by having the matches in four or five cities, instead of following the traditional model wherein a team plays half of its games at home and the rest at the home of opposition teams. There are thoughts of having a tournament for women and another for juniors on similar lines. This is realistic thinking and, virus permitting, the BCCI has the funds and infrastructure to pull this off.
Criticised on certain points, the BCCI with Ganguly as president has already set an example by conducting the IPL in another country inside a giant bio-bubble. Organising domestic tournaments will be another feather in its cap. For a while, this will take the focus away from things like trying to change the board constitution and going back to the pre-reform ways, violation of conflict of interest rules by Ganguly who endorses products of the rivals of the board’s own sponsors, and delay in payments of domestic players, umpires and scorers during the pandemic. Assessment of the first Indian captain to have become BCCI president will depend on these factors too. But at the moment, he is scoring some brownie points.