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There will be casualties too. It could potentially hasten the death of bilateral limited-over series as well as push the 50-over version into extinction. Only 15 years since it became a regular summer spectacle, the Indian Premier League has expanded its vistas at a hurtling pace. The 6.20 billion dollars auction of its media rights makes it the second most expensive league, on per-match basis, in the world. The League, a domestic tournament of a sport played professionally in just a dozen countries, has superseded the most watched football league in the world, the English Premier League. Every EPL match costs 11 million dollars, whereas the value of each IPL match is an estimated 13.82 million dollars, second only to the NFL, where every game costs 36 million dollars per game. If this does not make cricket — rather the IPL — a global player, nothing would.
The League’s soaring revenues will aid far-reaching plans for the next decade, a period when team owners hope to expand the IPL’s already robust calendar, make deeper inroads into overseas markets and increase the audience through streaming services. There is little doubt that the already wealthy Indian cricket board will emerge richer and more powerful. When the League was launched, then chairman Lalit Modi had labelled it as a marriage between cricket and Bollywood. Now cricket — or IPL — turns Hollywood-esque. Cricket, like most team sports, will likely become club-centric.
There will be casualties too. It could potentially hasten the death of bilateral limited-over series as well as push the 50-over version into extinction. As such, the charm of the ODIs has faded, except during the time of the World Cup. Two-nation T20 series are often considered meaningless, and their frequency could drop. Only cricketers in the team-sport world have this unique challenge of playing different versions of the same game. Perhaps a time will come when only the oldest and newest members of the family tree survive — the 146-year-old Test cricket and the 14-year-old multi-billionaire great-great grandchild. The rest might exist, but as faded figures in cricket’s family picture.
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