Are Australians taking IPL away from its core?

Indian Premier League today is not what it was 3 years ago. Yes, it has got better, has more glamour and glitz today. But is it what it meant to be? Is it moving away from its core? If yes, who is responsible? And most importantly is this shift good?

In 2008, Lalit Modi came with a brand IPL with a proven equation involving bollywood and cricket that was expected to take business of cricket to a new level. Expectedly, the expectation was proved to be right. There was never a doubt that IPL is about money. BCCI is known for its ways of milking money out of cricket and IPL was just another way. But the core of the concept was the contest between city based clubs/teams; a concept which is immensely popular in sports like Football. As the IPL model was built on this concept, teams were created for major cities around the icon player of the city or the region. The objective was to groom local players by giving them chance to play along and against the top cricketers of the whole world. The idea was to have strong fan base for a local team using the charm of the local icon.

Modi's Brand IPL

In 2011, we see a completely different scenario. Except Sachin, no local icon is playing for the local team. And Sachin is in Mumbai‘s team just because he wasn’t in the auction pool. Who knows which team’s No. 10 jersey he would have been donning had he been in the player auction? A Bangalore team has no Dravid. Harbhajan or Yuvraj don’t play for Punjab. In Kolkata’s team, the biggest Bengali cricketer playing is Manoj Tiwari. So will the local fans just connect with teams because the names of their cities associated with it? Perhaps, they will. But surely not the way they would have loved to support the local team in case the local icon had played(or just associated like Kumble is being used by RCB) for the team.

Though there is nothing wrong cricket or business wise, it is certainly shifted from the core. And the reason? The Australian coaches. The coaches are rigid and strict and highly performance oriented. That suits the business and that is why 8 out of 10 teams are coached by Australian coaches now. Let’s analyse its effect.

While being performance oriented is good, ruining player value in the process isn’t right. Some players must be given the respect they deserve. Young lot must also be handled with care. Sometimes high handedness of coaches become difficult to bear. Secondly, the look of the team changes. Take a look at the teams and their prominent players. Except Mumbai and Chennai, the top players (on whom the team depends) of the team are not Indian. And it can’t be just co-incidence that only Chennai and Mumbai are not coached by any Australian coach. And this is what defies the core concept of IPL. Though cricket wise this is perfect, the flavour of IPL is somewhere lost. There is another drawback of having Australian coaches which is not so prominent at first look. When Australian performance is at all time low and the Australian team itself has doubts about its own youngsters replacing its ageing seniors, the Australian players were the gainers from the auction. A classic example is that of Daniel Christian. A player with just 3 T20s’ experience, Christian got a contract of USD 900,000 from Deccan Chargers. He himself admitted that his links with Deccan chargers’ coach Darren Lehmann brought him such a deal.

As already pointed, though these decisions don’t make difference cricket wise, the flavour of IPL is lost. The core objective to groom Indian young players also seems to be not so successful. What do you feel? Is IPL shifting from its core? Tell us in comments.