The bully and the challengers

UMPIRE'S POST

Neither logic nor common sense have anything to do with BCCI’s campaign against ICL.

As often happens, the first serious challenge to the bully has come from a totally unexpected little challenger. Sri Lanka Cricket has thumbed its nose at the Board of Control for Cricket in India by allowing five Sri Lankan cricketers who played in Indian Cricket League to play domestic cricket.

This was not to be expected. The Sri Lankan board, perennially beleaguered, should have obediently toed the BCCI line; after all, the Indian cricket board is the financial superpower in world cricket. Secondly, the Asian countries are supposed to be united against the white-skinned.

However, as Sri Lankan cricketers often do on the field, their board has pulled off an upset. It may have helped that Sri Lanka’s decision was largely in the hands of former cricket players. They would have had more empathy with the banned players than a professional manager, a career politician, or a wheeler-dealer may have.

In the process, they have also stood up for logic and common sense, neither of which has anything to do with BCCI’s campaign against ICL. The Indian board’s Indian Premier League and ICL are played on exactly the same format. ICL was the first to offer dozens of cricketers, who had reconciled to the humdrum and wilderness of domestic cricket, the opportunity to earn a decent livelihood and be part of a properly televised event. The fact that many of them took the opportunity is no reason to ban them. After all, BCCI had not offered them any better alternative.

BCCI’s lack of opposition to the Stanford 20/20 jamboree, which promises to make individual players richer by up to a million dollars, betrays the deep-seated lack of clarity in the Indian board. Stanford is an oil billionaire who has spotted opportunity in 20/20 cricket; Subhash Chandra, who is behind ICL, made his money in media and packaging. What are the criteria on the basis of which ICL is anathema and Stanford is not? Both ICL and Stanford’s tournament, just as BCCI’s own IPL, are about the game of cricket.

International teams and IPL and the other forms of what BCCI calls “authorised cricket” can accommodate only a finite number of players. The pool of cricketers is much larger. Those who are not chosen have the option to stay home and watch television, or look for other avenues, such as ICL. Cricketers are professionals and have the right to ply their trade where they choose to, as the bunch of Bangladeshi cricketers has done. To ban them is symptomatic of BCCI’s sense of insecurity.

The Indian board, in fact, should be grateful to ICL. The money-spinning IPL is not an original idea; it was born in response to ICL.