Yes to IPL, red flag for World T20: The changing dynamics of world cricket

We live in irrevocably changed times. A virus with putative provenance in China has ensured that the world is tackling a dystopic present. Doomsday might not be a terrible, futuristic concept but part of the near future, or, worse still, one lived every day.

While, like everything else, sports has been dealt a body blow by COVID-19, action across the world has slowly resumed after months of enforced suspension.

It is true that the livelihoods of millions around the world depend on sports and the return of the sporting juggernaut was inexorable, but the manner of the said return raises inevitable questions.

Today, the BCCI expectedly announced the return of the biggest T20 tournament in the world, the IPL, and once more brought to light the crux of the matter in a glaringly obvious manner.

Does contemporary sports engender the multi-billion dollar market around it or does the market determine the way all sports is conducted right now? Indeed, the former was how the world functioned in the good old days, but one can be pretty certain that the latter is the name of the game right now.

How else does one explain the cancellation of the World T20 set to be held towards the end of the year in Australia? That announcement on Monday, after a lot of dithering by the ICC, was followed by the immediate and gleeful revelation that the IPL will be held between September and November in the UAE.

ICC MEN’S T20 WORLD CUP 2020 POSTPONED - For more details, please refer here: https://t.co/bqjPHt0pP6

— ICC Media (@ICCMediaComms) July 20, 2020

IPL - The true big daddy

IPL

No moralistic stance should be taken about the IPL trumping the multi-nation world tournament. The stark realities of the market decide the fate and importance of any and every sporting enterprise right now.

Global football has been taken over by the club game long back. The UEFA Champions League has arguably become the most important football tournament in the world; the World Cup is still a prestige event but not the one that rakes in the moolah.

FIFA began a World Club Championship to form a truly global championship for clubs, but that is still an odd hybrid tournament which is neither here not there. But the future might see a truly global World cup of clubs that might take the shine off the quadrennial showpiece a little more.

The IPL is often preceded by the banal but true epithet cash-rich, that is possibly the best way to describe the glitz and glamour associated with the BCCI brainchild.

While the cricket on show in the IPL has often been sterling, it has never ever been an organic tournament. IPL was carefully curated and crafted from the very beginning, with the franchises formed around big cricketing centres of the country, and an icon player from the region associated with them to bag local support.

That concept has now gone out of the window, with hardly any local representation for any of the city teams, but the fan following of and excitement for the IPL has not waned one bit. Fans of the game and even the players have gobbled up gleefully the IPL that was initiated in 2008.

High-profile cases of disrepute that have led to players getting banned and franchises suspended have not managed to take the lustre off the glittering IPL trophy.

World T20 in 2020 - Too big a risk

It is probably a prudent decision to postpone the T20 World Cup this year, despite the unique naming opportunity going abegging. Australia is still facing a raging battle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and might be closed to international travel till 2021. It is also not feasible to hold a tournament that purportedly holds up national pride in empty stadiums; IPL, however, is free of that baggage.

Shoaib Akhtar's conspiracy theory and the inevitability of the IPL

It might be a bit of a stretch to buy into the claims of former Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar that BCCI orchestrated the cancellation of the World T20 to clear the decks for the staging of the IPL. But the BCCI, one of the Big Three cricket boards, did begin to seem a tad impatient when the ICC procrastinated about calling the tournament off.

Indeed, many experts had predicted that the IPL was inevitable and so was the deferral of the T20 World Cup. Is it a bit cavalier and slightly unnecessary to hold a domestic T20 tournament in a foreign country (albeit with less cases than other places) when a deadly virus rages across the world? From a health perspective, yes, from a market perspective, hell, no!

One might even see all the foreign stars congregate for the IPL in UAE come September despite the obvious impediments to travelling right now. Glenn Maxwell is already psyched about taking part in the tournament. The world will be psyched about MS Dhoni's much-hyped return.

In the hullabaloo, the poor World T20 will be duly forgotten because IPL, no doubt, is the bigger deal right now.