What if Wednesday | What if Lalit Modi never happened to BCCI
Controversy sells and we are not only talking about the Indian media. It sells in every single sphere of life. When the Indian Premier League (IPL) embezzled in one of its own, everything seemed dark and gloomy. But the negative PR worked and people flocked to it as nothing happened.
It was the very foundation for which the IPL calls itself the best league in the world, and foreign boards without batting an eyelid, agree to it. There was a Kochi Tuskers controversy, betting, match-fixing caught hold of two teams, and then there are those morally unethical practices of changing the constitution to favour a certain rich and powerful man from the south. But like a phoenix emerging from the ashes, the picked itself up, gathered the debris and stood up on its own to sing the rhymes of glory. But do we remember the beginning?
In the truest sense, Lalit Modi was the pioneer, who turned a pariah. He was the man who converted a fresh product into a huge brand, he was the man who set the ball rolling, and turned the BCCI into a money-making machine that would rule the world. As cliched as it may sound, Lalit Modi changed cricket in a way that nothing has and it is hard to say if anything else will. But when the romance ended, with lawyers ready on both sides, it was a sad end to a story that promised so much.
Could things have been any better? The Kochi Tuskers case and the subsequent ways in which Sahara Pune Warriors pulled themselves out of the league, made Modi a lame-duck chairman of the IPL and the court cases were inevitable. However, if that allowed the board to claim - as it eventually did when he suffered a life ban - that the IPL would have been a better entity even if Modi was not there was ludicrous, to say the least.
I mean, sure, Modi was no saint but the claims that “his contribution didn’t matter” were as baseless as Donald Trump’s USA is safe from Corona speech. As the Indian Premier League virtually celebrates the 12-year-anniversary from the date Brendon McCullum dazzled the stage with an innings of a lifetime, imagine the League without Modi and think where the product would have otherwise ended in a parallel universe.
For the sake of the story, let’s assume that the archaic big bosses of the BCCI managed to form a tournament, without having a certain little man, who entered the BCCI forum by virtue of being a vice-president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association. They coined the tournament as Indian Premier League and went ahead with the first edition planning. Here comes the tricky part: how will they go about it? I will dial Hindsight to see what actually happened and then figure out what could have happened.
The Indian Premier League is now a registered entity, with the boards forming their own franchise, like Indian Cricket League. No outside IMG-style management, no electronic billboards, no cheerleaders, with money being laundered from the outset. The same ol’ Harish Thawani-owned Nimbus Communications, India’s Production company for the home series back in 2008-09, would have been the host broadcaster. While that doesn’t seem like a big change, imagine the start of an IPL with the old-world style of Neo Sports, and not the ultra-glamorous anchors, making IPL a brand during that time. Neo had been the domain of Sanjay Manjrekar and Ravi Shastri, and no drive of Archana Vijay, Mandira Bedi and the occasional appearances of Bollywood celebrities to promote their movies.
Understanding how International Management Group, a Modi deal in every sense possible, works gives a perspective on the planning system. Sitting on the Centre Court of All England Club during a Wimbledon game, Modi met few IMG officials to pitch the idea and thus behind the formulation, brought a mixture of British, America and Indian style to create a buzz that was never the way a BCCI functioned before. It was the idea of the Chief Operating Officer, Sundar Raman to start an auction instead of a draft to bring in the Financial Fair Play, that the big football leagues like EPL embraced much later, and easy to say, the auction added a buzz to the league that no draft could have.
So now, without Modi, we are in a time when Big Bash League, who thanks to Cricket Australia’s efficiency and adaptability to change, emerges as the No.1 League in the World, with the BCCI losing truckloads of money. With CA having the writ power, BCCI have no way than conceding the battle to the ones they once, with Jagmohan Dalmiya and IS Bindra, protested against and now Indian players will have to flock to the BBL, Vitality Blast and dare I say, Caribbean Premier League, too.
Now, we know the BCCI pays a huge amount of taxes to the Government to boost the Indian economy, but without Modi, the BCCI, lest they manage to find a product worth sellable, would have been fully dependent on the gate receipts. That can pay some bills but like BCCI struggling to find a shirt sponsor once Sahara threatened to pull out, at most, it would have been left in a Pakistan Super League kind of situation. Imagine a situation like that.
Of course, not having Modi, might have averted situations like Kochi suffered in their one-year sojourn in the league - one of two-way dysfunction and mismanaged corruption - or so we think. In the old-world management, with the BCCI having multiple factions, it was hard to imagine if the tournament could be a viable entity even after 12 years. There are many reasons that Indian cricket needs to thank Modi for, while remaining firm in the direction the BCCI had to take. Like many love stories, there was a squawky divorce but like those many stories, there are multiple memories to thank the once all-powerful Commissioner of the Indian Premier League.