The NFL, MLB, NBA, English Premier League and the NHL, the world’s most lucrative sports leagues, centred in both the USA and Europe, could only provide a cue at the moment where our great old game of cricket will be heading in the near future after the advent of the IPL, the franchise based league form of the sport.

It was only last month that the New York City based ‘Forbes’ magazine, which is renowned for its billionaire lists, published a list of the World’s Top-Earning cricketers (fortunately, sans any Sri Lankan in that!).

“While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it’s played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL was launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift,” said Peter J. Schwartz and Chris Smith of ‘The Forbes’ on Aug. 27 under a sub-heading ‘The Indian Premier League has lured the world’s top players with big hype and bigger paychecks.’

Lalit Modi

During these days where politico-economic gurus and pundits talk about a possible Indo-China economic super power in future, it could be interesting to ponder why the said native place of cricket, England, didn’t come up with a so timely ploy of introducing an international cricket league before Lalit Modi of the BCCI got away with the copyright for such a path-breaking Read more…

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On the 20th of August 1969, the Beatles finished recording the song “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, marking the last time all four band members were in the same studio at the same time. Indian cricket’s “Let It Be” moment came in Nagpur on the 10th of November, 2008, the last time Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman would be on the field representing India in a Test match for the final time.

Since 1996, these four names had been music to ears and meant brilliance, class, imperiousness and the sheer artistry of batsmanship to cricket watchers here, there and everywhere. But not all bands are perpetual in their existence like the Rolling Stones. All things must pass and a time comes in the life of every band when their musical collaboration will cease to exist. But unlike the Liverpudians imploding due to their own internal fissures and frictions after they recorded Abbey Road, the breakup of Indian cricket’s Fab Four came after a chorus and at times, a crescendo of public opinion that seemed to deafen the senses.

The swift and unsettling exit from the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean was the beginning of the whispers, which amplified into arguments and it was not too long before it was a national free for all. The fallout from the acrimonious departure of their erstwhile coach Greg Chappell, who they thought was just a fool on the hill, added fuel to the fire. Two new words entered and dominated Indian cricket’s Read more…

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