India, Australia, England attempt to take control of Cricket

[Prince EWS]

Nah, in fighting is different than the "us vs them / evil westerners" fight. Everyone will band together and make it happen if push comes to shove through any compromise.

It would be in-fighting though. The BCCI pulling out of the World Cup doesn't necessarily mean India would have to. I'm sure there are thousands of organisations who'd jump at the chance to be the internationally recognised controllers of Indian cricket and the ICC effectively have the power to decide who that is. That's where the in-fighting would begin.

The reason the BCCI won the ICL/IPL war and the reason we aren't seeing dozens more ICL-like competitions isn't the fact that they were better run or had a better business model; it's the fact that the ultimate trump card lies in that national side. If the other nine Test sides had decided to start playing international games against the ICL India XI instead of the BCCI India XI then it would have ended completely differently. The marketing power doesn't lie in the BCCI itself but the Indian national side; the "toothless tiger" that is the ICC actually holds all the aces without realising, in that it could theoretically pick whichever organisation caved in enough to its whims to represent India.

It's not going to happen though, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's becoming clear that CA and the ECB are just as self-interested as the BCCI; they're more interested in forming a triumvirate with the BCCI as it furthers their own interests best. Secondly, all the boards are far too spineless in general to try such a thing anyway.

 

[Гурин]

It would be in-fighting though. The BCCI pulling out of the World Cup doesn't necessarily mean India would have to. I'm sure there are thousands of organisations who'd jump at the chance to be the internationally recognised controllers of Indian cricket and the ICC effectively have the power to decide who that is. That's where the in-fighting would begin.

The reason the BCCI won the ICL/IPL war and the reason we aren't seeing dozens more ICL-like competitions isn't the fact that they were better run or had a better business model; it's the fact that the ultimate trump card lies in that national side. If the other nine Test sides had decided to start playing international games against the ICL India XI instead of the BCCI India XI then it would have ended completely differently. The marketing power doesn't lie in the BCCI itself but the Indian national side; the "toothless tiger" that is the ICC actually holds all the aces without realising, in that it could theoretically pick whichever organisation caved in enough to its whims to represent India.

It's not going to happen though, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's becoming clear that CA and the ECB are just as self-interested as the BCCI; they're more interested in forming a triumvirate with the BCCI as it furthers their own interests best. Secondly, all the boards are far too spineless in general to try such a thing anyway.

Interesting paradox there: what would then be stopping BCCI (and their two falsely equal muppets) to create/recognize boards in those other 4-5 countries they might be interested to? A little dumping (like offering a boost in salary, something like x3) and I'm sure that more than a few players/officials will make the jump to the new BCCI-controlled cricket world.


I go back to my darts example to strenghten one point: is not a given that one board or the other would win in the end. Eventually, cricket fans might simple start following both leagues! A national and/or franchise based led by BCCI (and maybe the other two) and the national one led by ICC. It's not a zero-sum game, where a fan won by one of the two leagues must necessarily lose interest in the other. And this puts a whole new spin on that 'indian market' debate.



Anyway, nothing of this is gonna happen, but still, I find such a scenario quite interesting.

 

[YorksLanka]

cricinfo stating today that the bcci has threatened to boycott icc events unless the draft proposal goes through = another schoolyard tantrum...

 

[Agent Nationaux]

Interesting paradox there: what would then be stopping BCCI (and their two falsely equal muppets) to create/recognize boards in those other 4-5 countries they might be interested to? A little dumping (like offering a boost in salary, something like x3) and I'm sure that more than a few players/officials will make the jump to the new BCCI-controlled cricket world.


I go back to my darts example to strenghten one point: is not a given that one board or the other would win in the end. Eventually, cricket fans might simple start following both leagues! A national and/or franchise based led by BCCI (and maybe the other two) and the national one led by ICC. It's not a zero-sum game, where a fan won by one of the two leagues must necessarily lose interest in the other. And this puts a whole new spin on that 'indian market' debate.



Anyway, nothing of this is gonna happen, but still, I find such a scenario quite interesting.

Wouldn't this depend on who makes the first move? If the ICC grows a pair, bans the BCCI and quickly finds a replacement organisation to take over (before the BCCI can do anything), they can come out top and show the ECB & CA that they will not take insubbordination. And without the BCCI, the other two boards can't really do much.

 

[ganeshran]

This proposal is not going to go through. It's just muscle flexing by the richer boards.

Eventually the other boards, will in-principle agree to let the FTP be just a guideline document without it being binding on the richer boards. The proposals of two-tier system and unequal revenue sharing will be dropped

 

[Muloghonto]

Nonsense. Rights will still be sold to broadcasters that are in India and lots of Indians will still watch the world cup. The revenue the Indian team brings in is highly overrated by the BCCI.

Yes, there will be some scaling back, but it would hardly be the case of becoming bankrupt. Salaries of administrators and the cost of events will be covered quite easily.

Th revenue Indian cricket rights bring in, is close to 80% of the total revenue generated in cricket. That is not 'overrated', that is the decisive chunk of the pie.
Ca you tell me a single organization or entity that generates 80% of the revenue and is happy receiving 4% of the share ?
People love to rail on the BCCI being evil and all but all of us in BCCI's position would have genuine gripes. What does the BCCI get without having to go through the arduous process of negotiating with the other boards ? Its the money earner. Yet, it has no veto over the ICC schedule. It had to fight tooth and nail to get a window for its major income source- the IPL.
The mandate of the BCCI is to promote and expand Indian cricket. What they are doing, from the perspective of their mandate, is perfectly valid. They are looking out for their income and the forms of sport popular in India first. They are supposed to!

 

[Muloghonto]

Wouldn't this depend on who makes the first move? If the ICC grows a pair, bans the BCCI and quickly finds a replacement organisation to take over (before the BCCI can do anything), they can come out top and show the ECB & CA that they will not take insubbordination. And without the BCCI, the other two boards can't really do much.

There will be no replacement organization to take over before the BCCI can do anything. The fundamental rule of law is that unless we are talking criminal cases, in virtually all other types of dispute- propreterial, rights, etc. the side that has the more money has a far greater chance of winning. This is because more money equals more lawyers, greater ability to absorb the costs and re-petition every step of the judiciary. If the ICC tries to dislocate the BCCI from controlling Indian cricket, it will lose. BCCI will simply bury the ICC in every single court in every single cricketing nation at every single level and be able to afford it. ICC sans BCCI's income generation, will not.

ICC against BCCI in the courts is like me in court vs Microsoft in some anti-trust case. I may win eventually but i probably won't because i wont be able to absorb all the expenses for the next 5 years.

 

[Muloghonto]

It would be in-fighting though. The BCCI pulling out of the World Cup doesn't necessarily mean India would have to. I'm sure there are thousands of organisations who'd jump at the chance to be the internationally recognised controllers of Indian cricket and the ICC effectively have the power to decide who that is. That's where the in-fighting would begin.

The reason the BCCI won the ICL/IPL war and the reason we aren't seeing dozens more ICL-like competitions isn't the fact that they were better run or had a better business model; it's the fact that the ultimate trump card lies in that national side. If the other nine Test sides had decided to start playing international games against the ICL India XI instead of the BCCI India XI then it would have ended completely differently. The marketing power doesn't lie in the BCCI itself but the Indian national side; the "toothless tiger" that is the ICC actually holds all the aces without realising, in that it could theoretically pick whichever organisation caved in enough to its whims to represent India.

It's not going to happen though, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's becoming clear that CA and the ECB are just as self-interested as the BCCI; they're more interested in forming a triumvirate with the BCCI as it furthers their own interests best. Secondly, all the boards are far too spineless in general to try such a thing anyway.

There is a fly in your ointment. Its the BCCI, not ICC that holds the rights to ALL the players playing professionally in every level of cricket in India. They are BCCI employees. Not ICC. So unless you are going to 'recreate' team India with a bunch of 18 year olds, there is zero chance of any Indian player participating in an ICC event without BCCI consent. BCCI also owns every single cricket stadium in India. They are not owned by the municipality or the government, they are BCCI property, leased to their sub-national associations, such as Ranji state boards/IPL teams etc. So no BCCI equals ICC better come up with a couple of billion dollars right away to build a few new stadiums in India or petition UAE or Malaysia to host the Indian team, ala Pakistan.

The ICC arn't a bunch of fools, their team includes plenty of lawyers and people who realize that it is BCCI that is not only the major income generator for world cricket, it owns Indian cricket utterly.
And given the amount of money floating around BCCI, good luck getting anywhere trying to dislodge them. The BCCI has enough money to buy half of Indian parliament and turn it into a 'us vs the evil white man' issue, something that sadly has a lot of potential to be furthered in the Indian political scene due to the nascent nationalism & revisionism in Indian society.

 

[Muloghonto]

Beginning to think this is all a negotiation tactic to get an IPL window in international cricket.

I think so too. Standard haggling tactic is to overbid, so what you want is what would seem to be 'in the middle' compromise. If you want to pay 50 bucks for a jar in a hagglers market, you start at 20. The seller starts at 100 and you 'meet in the middle'.
Ultimately, this is about shifting the scene to what is the most popular form of the sport and the largest money earner. Which is the IPL.
People may say that it is only in India/subcontinent that is true, but what is true for the subcontinent, as far as trends go, is by default, what is true for cricket as a whole. Because the subcontinent's fanbase represents 90% of cricket's fanbase. If they like test cricket, then most of cricket fans like test cricket. If they like 20/20 most, then most of cricket fans like 20/20 more.

 

[Muloghonto]

Conversely, how often are India going to play against Zimbabwe if they push the new proposals in and they never ever have to again outside of World Cups (which Zimbabwe will also get significantly less money from under the draft)?

I absolutely think it's in Zimbabwe's best interests to oppose this unless they can get India to agree to play them once every two years for the next two decades, or maybe pay their players for them.

It's easy to say that India will buy off the smaller nations, but that'd defeat the purpose of the whole thing, which seems to be redirecting funds from the smaller nations to India (and Australia/England). Paying off Zimbabwe, West Indies and Sri Lanka to vote for a proposal so you can then take money away from Zimbabwe, West Indies and Sri Lanka just seems, a bit like the "two tiers but no league structure and no FTP" thing, contradictory and pointless.

As for the South Africa/Zimbabwe Test, a weird one. Zimbabwe were due to play Afghanistan in some ODIs and T20s this month but they cancelled it because their players won't play until ZC pays them. Unless CSA have slipped them a brown paper bag then it has very little chance of happening.

The primary concern of every board- particularly the smaller boards- is furthering the game in their nation and survival. Zimbabwe isnt going to complain about never ever playing India if BCCI doubles the revenue for Zimbabwe by creating an IPL window (and the trickle down effect of massively more funds to everyone). What they are going to care about, is that not playing India ever again in Tests equates to them not being broke, them being able to pay their players and not go extinct. That matters- or atleast, should matter- more to the Zimbabwe board than being able to play Test cricket vs other teams, 'improve their cricketers via international exposure' but not being able to pay them anything and risk losing a product you've developed (players).

 

[Muloghonto]

Except it destroys the whole system from the outset. No fan is going to take this seriously, or care about relegation/promotion. Its an insanely stupid move.

Qualify your statement with 'no non-India fans' are going to take it seriously. But the reality is, you or the average non-Indian fan doesnt matter as much as the Indian fans do.
Their fanbase is 1.2 billion and growing. All those who really do care about test cricket, aka the Aussie-Kiwi-Saffie-English bloc, amount to less than 100 million and they are a tertiary fanbase ( meaning, cricket is not the #1 sport in any of these nations, so their real slice of the fanbase is less than the hypothetical one, unlike India,Sri Lanka, Pakistan, where cricket is the primary sport).
It would be foolish for cricket to pander to the whims and wishes of these 100 million over those of the 1.2 billion.

For whatever system to work, it has to find acceptance amongst the Indian fans. If they say it works, it works. If they say it doesn't, it doesnt. That is the reality of a sport where 90% of the fans are from one team's fanbase.

 

[Muloghonto]

I haven't read the draft as I assumed it too depressing, but the two parts of the proposal don't match up to me.

To me, you can solve the "problem" of non-viable series in two ways:

1. Instigate promotion and relegation, ensuring Test cricket overall is regularly making money from matches between the top sides and isn't losing out of non-contests.

2. Remove the FTP and make each series live off its own bat.

If you're doing #2, then what exactly is the point of #1? Doing both makes no sense; a team could get itself relegated and just completely ignore it by not scheduling any games against the other teams in Tier 2 but regularly schedule them against Tier 1 sides. Promotion and relegation is completely irrelevant without some sort of forced league. What would actually change if you got relegated?

it doesnt matter, you cannot create a league out of test cricket. If you are really serious about relegation or promotion, it fails from the get-go unless every team plays the same number of matches. How on earth are you going to take a system seriously where one team plays 15 tests in a calendar year, racks up a 6-5-4 record vs another that plays 5 tests and racks up a 1-1-3 record ? Who dserves to get relegated ? So unless you are willing to consider a 3 test Ashes series or a 5 test series vs New Zealand and Zimbabwe, this relegation system is broken anyways, regardless of 'relegation-exemption' or not.

 

[Prince EWS]

The primary concern of every board- particularly the smaller boards- is furthering the game in their nation and survival. Zimbabwe isnt going to complain about never ever playing India if BCCI doubles the revenue for Zimbabwe by creating an IPL window (and the trickle down effect of massively more funds to everyone). What they are going to care about, is that not playing India ever again in Tests equates to them not being broke, them being able to pay their players and not go extinct. That matters- or atleast, should matter- more to the Zimbabwe board than being able to play Test cricket vs other teams, 'improve their cricketers via international exposure' but not being able to pay them anything and risk losing a product you've developed (players).

Zimbabwe care about playing against India because it's only source of revenue other than ICC grants. An IPL window would do absolutely nothing for Zimbabwe because it's not an ICC or a ZC competition so they receive literally no revenue from it.

 

[Prince EWS]

There is a fly in your ointment. Its the BCCI, not ICC that holds the rights to ALL the players playing professionally in every level of cricket in India. They are BCCI employees.

Quite. I did mention that. How many of them are contracted beyond the end of the financial year though? If the BCCI pulled out of a World Cup a week before it was due to happen then the ICC would only have two options - delay the tournament or play it without an Indian side. However if they pulled out 14 months before then a new organisation, backed by the ICC, could sign up all the players.

 

[Muloghonto]

Quite. I did mention that. How many of them are contracted beyond the end of the financial year though? If the BCCI pulled out of a World Cup a week before it was due to happen then the ICC would only have two options - delay the tournament or play it without an Indian side. However if they pulled out 14 months before then a new organisation, backed by the ICC, could sign up all the players.

Depends, all of them are signed till the next contract cycle. Some players at the state levels sign up to 3 year contracts to represent their Ranji sides. Those guys are BCCI employees for three years.
The idea of shafting the BCCI by signing up their players is a non-starter. It will never work for the ICC has to, at the very least, demonstrate that BCCI has been criminally negligent towards its duties. BCCI will easily be able to point out to all the new stadiums they've built in the last 10 years, the exponentially increasing fanbase and revenue due to IPL and hold on to its rights to be the boss of Indian cricket. You can't just disband an entity like the BCCI or any other sports governing body/team owners so easily.
And it'd have to go through the Indian court system. Which means don't expect a result for another decade, by which time cricket would be dead anyways in the protracted BCCI vs ICC struggle. BCCI will shut off the financial taps. ICC wont be able to hang on for a decade without it, which means an off-court settlement, which means BCCI wins plus ICC foots all the bills of the fracas.

 

[Muloghonto]

Zimbabwe care about playing against India because it's only source of revenue other than ICC grants. An IPL window would do absolutely nothing for Zimbabwe because it's not an ICC or a ZC competition so they receive literally no revenue from it.

BCCI will point out that a Zimbabwe vs India test series earns zero money, instead if the FTP was scrapped and series are organized bilaterally, we could easily return to the setup of the 90s, with triangular or multi-national one day or 20/20 tournaments, which will earn 100x more for Zimbabwe per visit than a 2 test, 3 ODI series.
Tough to see why the Zimboks wont say 'i'll take that' to the obvious...

Sorry, i was being obtuse in the post you quoted. The 'trickle down effect' is not due to IPL revenues being shared, it would be because the IPL would generate far more revenue for BCCI on an expanded schedule, enabling BCCI to buy votes from the other teams by using triangular limited overs tournaments as the carrot.

What the BCCI wants is obvious- a 15 to 20 team IPL league with a dedicated 4-5 months window for it. And it will get it, one way or another.

 

[Prince EWS]

BCCI will point out that a Zimbabwe vs India test series earns zero money, instead if the FTP was scrapped and series are organized bilaterally, we could easily return to the setup of the 90s, with triangular or multi-national one day or 20/20 tournaments, which will earn 100x more for Zimbabwe per visit than a 2 test, 3 ODI series.
Tough to see why the Zimboks wont say 'i'll take that' to the obvious...

Why would anyone want to visit Zimbabwe for a triangular multi-national one day or T20 tournament when they could visit South Africa instead though? Who's going to play Zimbabwe if they aren't obliged to?

 

[Muloghonto]

Why would anyone want to visit Zimbabwe for a triangular multi-national one day or T20 tournament when they could visit South Africa instead though? Who's going to play Zimbabwe if they aren't obliged to?

Zimbabwe gets to visit India in this triangular scenario. Remember those ODI tours in India back in the 90s, where 2 other teams would show up, play 2 ODIs vs each other, top two play a final ?
That setup earns Zimbabwe more money than 10 tests hosted by Zimbabwe in a calendar year.

 

[Cruxdude]

ICC should call BCCI's bluff. No way is the Indian public going to be happy with India not taking part in WCs.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

Th revenue Indian cricket rights bring in, is close to 80% of the total revenue generated in cricket. That is not 'overrated', that is the decisive chunk of the pie.

80% of the total revenue generated in cricket is from Indian cricket rights?

Can you clarify exactly what you mean by that? 80% of the revenue is generated from BCCI 'owned' events? Or is it that 80% of revenue is generated from Indian networks?

Can you also give a source for this 80% claim? I know it must be high, but that seems ridiculously high given how much money is generated from Ashes series and from TV rights in England and Australia, and presumably from Pakistan too.