Champions League T20 - a "useless" tournament resulting from a flawed concept

The participation of Indian players

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Whether the other cricket boards like it or not, India is the nerve centre of the cricketing world and although the de Villiers and the Gayles carry star power, the power of super stardom rests with the likes of the Kohlis, Dhonis, Rainas and of course, the Tendulkars.

Cricket, unlike football, is still more about the cricketers than the team itself. Take the example of the Mumbai Indians – one of the most followed IPL sides; people who do not belong to Mumbai also support them because it houses the biggest superstar in cricket, Sachin Tendulkar.

Virat Kohli has a similar effect on the Royal Challengers Bangalore fans, Sourav Ganguly‘s exclusion from Kolkata Knight Riders turned Kolkata fans into Pune supporters while the charisma of MS Dhoni alone pulls the fans from all parts of India to paint them in canary yellow.

Add to that, the presence of the Bollywood stars. More than half of Kolkata supports the Knight Riders because of the starry presence of Shahrukh Khan while Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta boosts the support for their respective IPL franchises.

However, the Indian superstars do not go around the world turning out for different T20 outfits like a ten Doeschate or a Kieron Pollard. So, the leagues outside India lack the gloss of the IPL and hence fail to generate the hysteria that IPL does.

The scheduling of the CLT20

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However, the biggest problem of the CLT20 seems to be the scheduling of the tournament. While the UEFA Champions League constitutes a major chunk of the football calendar, the CLT20 is squeezed in around the month of September.

The inappropriate scheduling not only lowers the value of the league but there have been instances when certain franchises have sent in their not-so-strong sides as their bigger stars were away on national commitments.

For example, teams from England didn’t turn up for the 2010 edition as it clashed with their series against Pakistan and the county season. This year too, the CLT20 misses out on the county teams owing to their domestic championship, thus alienating a chunk of audience from one part of the cricket world.

The scheduling of the matches, during the tournament, also plays a huge role in the success of the tournament. The CLT20 pits two sides from different parts of the world in front of the audience of a third country, where the crowds hardly know their eleven players.

What do people in Ranchi have to do with a match that features Brisbane Heat and the Perth Scorchers? How do the organisers expect the crowds to throng the stadiums when unknown sides, with funny names, play a game? How does one guarantee a full house in a match at Ahmedabad featuring Naushua Titans and Otago Volts?

In contrast, the UEFA Champions League scheduling lets the sides play each other on a home and away basis which encourages the home fans to back their sides and as a result, the stadiums are jam-packed. The sequence is followed throughout the tournament with only the final being played at a neutral venue.

All said and done, it isn’t easy for cricket to follow the lead of their European counterpart. The entire concept of CLT20 is flawed because cricket focusses more on international fixtures and the ICC has to maintain a pre-decided calendar.

So, cricket franchises travelling to and fro from one part of the globe to another, to play home and away games throughout the year, isn’t a very plausible scenario.

That’s why the CLT20 needs to find its own relevance and its own audience. Although the concept is borrowed along the lines of the popular UEFA Champions League, the blueprint of an European football tourney doesn’t really fit in the cricketing landscape.

The governing bodies need to sit together and figure out what exactly they want from the tournament and then have a plan to build its popularity through stages. The CLT20 is a very young tournament and it requires better marketing and acceptance in the cricketing world in order to survive.

Otherwise, it would be one of those “useless” T20 tournaments that act as an audition for young cricketers around the world hoping to bag a lucrative IPL contract before it meets the fate of the Champions Trophy.