Lalit Modi: how we made the IPL happen
June 4, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under IPL, Indian cricket, News
Lalit Modi, chairman of the IPL, and Andrew Wildblood, Senior Vice President of IMG, the sports management company that helped make the IPL happen, sat down in Johannesburg with SPIN’s Nick Sadleir.
Lalit, you seem to have been at almost every IPL game this year…
Lalit Modi If there are two games on the same day in different cities, I leave the one game 20 minutes before it ends and I get to the other one twenty minutes after it starts.
Andrew Wildblood Lalit doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of commercial travel.
There must have been plenty of unknowns, shifting venue at such short notice…
LM Everyone told me it would be impossible. They said I was wasting time and money. I said, ‘Well, we are going to do this’.
AW Lalit called me at five in the morning one day and asked what the hell I was doing sleeping when there was work to be done. He said that the IPL couldn’t happen in India. I told him if we could do it in India, then we could do it anywhere!
He told me to meet him in Johannesburg the next day. So he came in his plane and I came down on a BA (flight).
LM We landed here, met the agencies, got Etienne de Villiers [until recently the head of the ATP tour] and Francios Pienaar [Saffer rugby legend, still very influential in SA sport and business] on the case. Etienne and Francois have been with me every single day for over two months – they moved out of their houses and into my hotel and have come with me everywhere.
You spent a lot of money advertising in SA…
AW Yes, Lalit uttered the immortal words – “I don’t want share of voice, I want all of voice.”
To pretty much sell out 59 games during the South African rugby season is good going….
LM The advertising agency gave us a budget of $3.5m. They said that was what they thought was appropriate and that it was probably the biggest advertising expenditure by any brand at any one particular time. Of course they expected us to cut it because all clients cut the budget. So I told them to multiply it by five. They told me I was wasting money on trying to fill the stadiums. I told them they should worry about the campaign and I will worry about filling the stadiums.
Andrew, when were you first involved in the business side of cricket?
AW In 1989, when satellite broadcasters were first finding their feet. I come from a generation whose only live football match in a year was the FA Cup final. In those days, sports revenues were driven by gate. The concern was that if you put everything on TV then you would diminish the value of the ticket revenues. We at IMG started to realise that the value could actually be in the television and not in the gate.
In 1990 England were touring the West Indies and the West Indies cricket board came to see us and said, “We are the most successful cricket team in the world, yet we are bust. What can we do?” When we told them that they could put this series on television they said they had approached the BBC who had said it was impossible – because the logistics of getting a production crew between the islands was too expensive. We said we could do it, sold the rights to Sky, and every ball was broadcast live.
So the IPL is not the first time you have turned cricket on its head…
AW I then went to India where a similar situation existed because their television infrastructure was not suitable to creating a level of coverage that was consumable internationally. They didn’t have the equipment or the people to do it at that time. So we took a huge quantum leap. But even in 1990 our broadcast in the West Indies was only filmed by seven cameras. Here we have at least 36 cameras in each game.
Throughout the 1990s we covered almost all the international cricket in the West Indies, India and Pakistan. We organised the Sahara Cup in Canada and the World Cup in Pakistan…
Has IPL been hurt by the global recession?
LM I would have said it is pretty recession proof.
AW I think a combination of uncertainty in world economics, Indian elections and the move to South Africa meant that we did not sign two other official partners. We had had some good conversations going on that started to die when the uncertainty came in as to whether this year’s event would happen or not.
What this guy (Modi) does unbelievably well, is to not let anything get in his way. One thing I have had to learn about Lalit is that differences in opinion are nothing personal – they are just for that moment. We get things done, move on and are then friends again. Without that energy, drive and commitment, and without the backup of IMG, then this wouldn’t happen.
LM I have the vision and I know what I want. And when it comes to implementing that, these guys (IMG) are the very best.
So, IMG runs the show?
LM Yes, they run the show.
How has the IPL transformed Indian cricket?
AW We realised that in order for the tournament to be respectable then we had to do something that benefited Indian cricket. So we implemented a minimum number of under-23 players, and a maximum number of foreign players, in each side. There must be at least seven Indian players in each team. That makes at least 56 Indians who otherwise would not be exposed to international cricket.
So it is unlikely that we will see the cap on international players increased from four, as called for by Kolkata’s John Buchanan?
LM No no, it’s not going up, it’s not going up!
AW People bully him about it all the time.
LM It’s not going up, it’s not going up! Not while I’m the commissioner. They can remove me and take it up, if they like.
It seems a lot of money is wasted on international stars that can’t get a game.
LM It is not wasted. Their experience counts for a lot. Look at Glenn McGrath sitting on the bench and giving pointers to Dirk Nannes…
AW The irony of it is that McGrath is coaching the guy who is keeping him out of the team! [Laughs]
What do you say to people who accuse you and T20 of killing off the old game?
LM If you do a survey around the stadium at an IPL match, you will find many people who have never watched a match before. They are getting a taste for the game, and many of them will graduate to Test cricket. They will then watch their stars performing in every version of the game. We are only increasing the base. The base is small and is quickly becoming bigger. Twenty20 is going tohave compounding effect on all parts of cricket.
Lalit, did you know that there was such a large and cricket-crazy Indian population in South Africa before this tournament?
LM No… But we do now!
Is it true that a senior television person in India told you that he had little interest in screening Test matches?
AW Yes, Kunal Dasgupta (then CEO Multi Screen Media, Sony) told me that and it was then that I realised that something had to be done about Test match cricket, to shake it up. But no one has ever done anything about it except the Australians, who took it from a 2,5 runs per over to a 4 runs per over game. That made it a lot more exciting and greatly increased the chance of getting a result.
Would you support night Test matches?
AW Funnily enough no – I think that would fundamentally change the brand. What I would support is: four day Tests with 100 eight ball overs a day, massively punitive fines if you don’t deliver your overs. There is a lot of stuff you can do without messing with the fundamentals of the game.
If you have eight-ball overs the amount of time you save is huge. An over is only six balls long because that is half a dozen. Don Bradman was a huge advocate of eight ball overs and who are we to argue with him?
Ali Bacher told me the other day that twenty five years ago he received a five page document from Bradman on why he supported eight ball overs and Bacher hugely regrets throwing it away.
World’s top cricketers pick up tiny new bat
May 22, 2009 by Duncan Steer
Filed under Editor's Blog, Featured Content, Features
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News that some of the world’s top cricketers are considering using a bat that is 33 per cent smaller (yes: 33 per cent smaller) than the standard will be filtering onto the wires today.
I first heard about the Mongoose back in February when I met its inventor Marcus Codrington Fernandez. I’ve been following his progress ever since as he looks to persuade the world to use a bat that’s effectively six inches ‘too short’. We have a four-page feature on his mission in the July issue of SPIN, coming out on June 5.
The theory is this: 1) batsmen hardly ever use the very top part of their bat – and certainly not to play attacking shots and score runs with. 2) If you take all that ‘wasted’ wood from the top part of the bat, you can use it further down in the blade, making the (shorter) blade as thick as a brick and more powerful. 3) In having a longer handle, the blade has more ‘whip’. Though the bat is more powerful, it is the same overall weight as a conventional bat – but in effect feels lighter, because the longer handle offers greater leverage.
Codrington Fernandez and his partners at Hunts County bats have also devised a way to not have the splice within the blade – so the blade of the Mongoose is pure hitting area, pure sweet spot. Tests at Imperial College have shown all this, apparently, to be true.
Reaction within the game – as Codrington Fernandez has trawled the off-season county grounds showing his wares to players – has been generally positive, despite pockets of scorn. Pietersen, Flintoff, Mascarenhas and Yuvraj Singh have all seen it, as have representatives of at least one major IPL team.
Bat deals are complicated (and expensive) yet Codrington Fernandez has two of the world’s top one-day players on board for his launch at Lord’s this morning, namely Stuart Law and Lou Vincent, as well as the England women players Laura Marsh and Ebony Rainford-Brent. (He thinks the bat could revolutionise the women’s game.)
Law is already using a version of the Mongoose in one-day games for Derbyshire – not quite an extreme a version as the headline product, it’s true, but still a bat with a blade that is an inch shorter than usual, and no splice within the blade. He hit 95 with it against Essex the other week.
“People will see this as a gimmick – until they actually use it and feel the difference it creates,” Law told me last week. “If you look at a lot of the slower pitches around the world, places like the sub-continent where the ball doesn’t really bounce above waist high. The guys over there, like MS Dhoni, increase their bat speed with massive heavy bats. Well, this is going to double it.”
The bat has been approved by the MCC and has its official launch at Lord’s this morning.
It is understood Codrington Fernandez is in advanced stages of talks with a player to use it in the men’s ICC World Twenty20 tournament. Law, meanwhile, has committed to using it in at least some part of his innings against Durham in the Twenty20 Cup on Tuesday.
Despite the surge of publicity – with an appearance on BBC Breakfast News and the Today programme – Mongoose is a cottage industry and is not geared up with thousands of bats in stock. Rather, initially, each order will be custom-made which, at a price of £159, is a deal that compares favourably with other top-of-the-range bats.
We’ll have a full feature on the development of the Mongoose and Marcus Codrington Fernandez’s mission in the next issue of SPIN.
Subscribe to SPIN magazine today and get a FREE copy of the 2009 Cricketers Who’s Who, worth £18.99
Atul Sharma debut on ice – for now
It now appears unlikely that Atul Sharma will make his debut in the current IPL.
The 23-year-old fast bowler, who has come to attention by winning a contract with Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals, despite not having played a competitive game for seven years, has been sidelined by a shoulder injury throughout the tournament.
Ironically, despite Sharma’s unusual, javelin-inspired training and speeds of up to 100mph, the shoulder injury was sustained after a fall during fielding practice.
Remarkably, Sharma has remained in the Rajasthan squad for the duration of the tournament, despite being an injury doubt; while other name players such as Mohammad Kaif were omitted when the parties were cut back to 16.
Sharma’s innovative action was given the okay by Australian Institute of Sport boss Greg Chappell, after an extended net session with the Royals’ Shane Watson last December. Thanks to his reported ability to bowl faster than anyone in the world, the young fast bowler has attracted a lot of buzz on Indian fans forums, since his signing for the Royals. He has given no media interviews until his seven-page exclusive in the current issue of SPIN magazine.
However, intriguingly, Rajasthan Royals have recently announced a charity Twenty20 challenge match against English T20 champions Middlesex Panthers, at Lord’s on July 6. The game is in aid of the British Asians Trust.
If Sharma’s return to full fitness, as expected, is a matter of weeks away, the fixture would provide a high-profile setting for his debut.
Yuvraj Singh, new balls and waking up Daniel Vettori: my latest week at the IPL
May 14, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under Features, Uncategorized
Last Thursday at Supersport Park, Centurion, something most unusual happened. Yuvraj Singh hit the biggest six of the tournament and in doing so, lost the match for his team. In a rain reduced match against the Chennai Super Kings, the Punjab Kings XI were chasing 185 runs in 18 overs, a daunting 10.3 runs per over. After a couple of wickets and a slow start, the asking rate shot up to 13 runs per over.
And then the fireworks began. Simon Katich hit three consecutive sixes before holing out on the boundary. Yuvraj Singh was joined by Mahela Jayawardene at the crease and their partnership quickly mushroomed as they continued to keep up with the intimidating asking rate. But when Yuvraj hit the monster of all sixes, measuring 119 metres, he lost the slippery wet ball that was coming so readily onto the bat and over the boundary.
The replacement dry ball allowed Chennai captain, MS Dhoni, to put spinners Muralitharan and Suresh Raina on for a few economical overs, thereby winning the game. As in any other form of cricket, the prevailing conditions are never in one’s control.
As Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood megastar and co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals outfit said in Cape Town at the start of the IPL, “It is the unpredictability of cricket that makes it the best game there is.”
East London, nicknamed “slummies” for obvious reasons, is a coastal city in the Eastern Cape. I went to boarding school 100 miles away in the far smaller town of Grahamstown. Bunking out to the big lights of East London ten years ago offered such great excitement and I hadn’t been back to “slummies” since those exciting weekends away from school, where I remember seeing such fantastic things as indoor laser games for the first time.
And so I decided to visit East London last Friday for an IPL cricket match. On arrival I couldn’t help realise what a small and sleepy town it really is. Not much happens in EL and when it does, it happens slowly. The Xhosas, who make up most of the Eastern Cape population, are a very laid-back people and schedules run on the quintessential African time.
There are no taxis at the airport and the airport to hotel shuttle minibus stopped seven times during an hour and a half journey before dropping me at my hotel, just 15 miles from the airport. To their credit, Neil Mckenzie and Ramiz Raja, didn’t complain once as our driver stopped to run errands and wave at his girlfriends. One of five Wisden cricketers of the year in 2008, Mckenzie, helped a wheel-chaired lady in and out of the minibus and then carried her grandson’s bag to the foyer of their hotel. Mckenzie, who is commentating on the IPL, hadn’t been recognised by the couple, he’s just a great guy.
I had a few hours to kill before watching the Delhi Daredevils thrash the Mumbai Indians so I enjoyed a delicious fillet steak and a pint of castle draught at the Blue Lagoon hotel deck. I shared the deck with a pair of dassies (rock rabbits), who moved slower than the Xhosas as they soaked up the sun. I was contemplating the fact that this obscure animal’s closest living relative is the elephant when a charming Xhosa brought me my bill.
The total damage was R49, roughly a third of the price of the equivalent meal in a Johannesburg or Cape Town hotel. No wonder Lalit Modi and the BCCI chose cities like East London over the original London town when the Indian government decided it would be unable to provide the appropriate levels of security for the tournament.
The cricket ground, Buffalo Park, is only 150 yards from the sea, without a stand in between, and boasts the largest grass bank I have ever seen. Stretching hundreds of yards up a hill at an awkward angle, the bank affords spectators an awful long range view from which to watch the cricket as the offshore wind blows their picnics away. I guess the locals don’t know any better.
Not that many aeroplanes come and go from East London and when I boarded my plane the following morning I found that my aisle seat was next to Mr Daniel Vettori’s. His wife and two month old son, James, were by the window. He recognised me from my asking lots of questions at press conferences and he congenially said hello but he clearly wasn’t after a good old chinwag.
I guess the New Zealand captain and highly economical spin bowler, who is ranked number four in the world ODI bowler’s rankings, didn’t want me to ask him why he played in only the first few matches this season. He has sat out of the next seven matches.
When I looked up the Reliance Rankings, as they are now named, I saw another Kiwi’s name at number two. Kyle Mills is apparently fit as a fiddle and desperate to play for the Mumbai Indians but he is yet to be given a game.
The amount of money wasted on cricket player’s salaries for this tournament would be enough to put a dent inn the battle against world hunger. Consider the fact that Mashrafe Mortaza from Bangladesh receives a salary of 600 000 US dollars per season from the Kolkata Knight Riders and has never even played a match for them.
So I was sitting next to Vettori when I thought I would stretch across his sleeping body and lift up the blanket covering his son’s face to get a good look at the little tiger, only to find the baby breastfeeding. Vettori senior awoke at this delicate point in procedings and I quickly looked the other way.
However East London is a bustling metropolis when compared to Kimberley. The stark beauty of the North Eastern Cape landscape surrounds the airstrip where my 40-seater twin-propeller South African Airways plane landed on Monday. My father calls it mamfa – miles and miles of fuck all!.
The old diamond town was a British stronghold where rogues like Barney Barnato and Cecil John Rhodes found their fortune was famously besieged by the Boers for 124 days over the turn of the 20th Century, during the Boer War. The town is famous for the big hole; a seriously deep crater dug by hand that yielded 15 million carats of diamonds.
I arrived at the De Beers Oval nice and early for the match and mine was the fourth car in the queue to enter the media car park. Amazingly it took forty minutes – the same amount of time Bangalore yesterday took to score 110 runs – to enter the car park. Each car and bag inside it was thoroughly searched and then searched again before it could progress up a ramp so that my car’s underside could be checked for explosives. Fifteen policemen handled the operation and I missed the toss.
The Deccan Chargers posted a formidable 166 runs with newcomer Andrew Symonds making runs for the second time in as many matches at that ground. But it was the Calypso batting of West Indian Dwayne Smith that earned the player of the match (what was wrong with saying man of the match?) award.
The Rajasthan Royals put up a poor fight as they were bowled out for 113 runs. But their biggest potential loss of the evening was that their captain, Shane Warne, pulled a hamstring and may spend the final ten days of the tournament on the sidelines. Warne would prefer to be in the thick of the action but it would allow him more time to play poker and womanise.
The first impressive performance this season by a New Zealander took place last night as the under pressure Kolkata captain, Brendon McCullum, smashed 84 runs from 64 balls to help his side post 173 at Centurion. It looked a winning total but could the side that has won one match from eleven defend it on a pitch that offered assistance to both swing and spin bowlers?
Of course they could not. John Buchanan, who coached Australia in their glory years, is an awful T20 coach and McCullum is a pathetic T20 captain. The relatively unknown Sri Lankan, Angelo Matthews was preferred to Charl Langeveldt, probably the best death bowler in South Africa and Mccullum’s bowling changes were inexplicable.
Mystery spinner, Ajentha Mendis was given the second over when the ball was swinging like a banana. David Hussey was given only one over and that over was during the powerplay. Ganguly, the most economical bowler of last year’s tournament and a bowler that is most effective when the ball is swinging wasn’t given even one over.
Bangalore required 14 runs an over with four overs to go when another Kiwi, Ross Taylor launched his assault on Ishant Sharma, aged Ajit Agarkar and inexperienced Angelo Matthews. Taylor’s 81 came from 33 balls – an astonishing strike rate of 245.45 runs per 100 balls – as he struck seven fours and five sixes and outdid his fellow Kiwi, McCullum, winning the match with four balls to spare.
The Kolkata Knight Riders are the only team of eight that cannot qualify for the semi-finals. Delhi looks safe at the top of the table and Chennai and Deccan look relatively safe just behind. So it looks most likely that Mumbai, Bangalore, Rajasthan and Punjab fight it out for that highly coveted fourth spot. But, of course, it’s not yet as clear cut as that!
Atul Sharma exclusive interview and pics in June issue of Spin magazine
May 6, 2009 by Duncan Steer
Filed under Editor's Blog, Features
Buy the June issue of SPIN featuring an exclusive seven-page interview and photo shoot with Atul Sharma, here.
The new issue of SPIN magazine is in the shops on Friday (May 8). We’ll have full info here from Wednesday but I just wanted to flag up one story that I think is going to make a bit of a splash.
This is my interview with Atul Sharma. UK-based cricket-watchers will never have heard of him at all, I shouldn’t think; while, among Indian supporters, even the biggest devotees of fansites will know only a little.
No use Googling Atul Sharma or looking at cricinfo either. Because they don’t have anything on him.
The thing is: Sharma has never played a senior game; in fact has not played a competitive game of any kind for seven years – and yet he is in the Rajasthan Royals IPL squad, alongside Shane Warne, Dimitri Mascarenhas et al.
The story that explains these two apparently contradictory facts is – and I don’t think I’m overegging it here – one of the most remarkable in modern sport.
Sharma, now 23, has spent the last seven years teaching himself to bowl at speeds in excess of 100 mph. He’s trained with US Olympic javelin coaches and built the body of a power-athlete, rather than of a traditional fast bowler. He’s also worked with the English fast bowling coach Ian Pont, a firm believer that pace and control need not be mutually exclusive – indeed, that the two are both influenced by the same factors.
Anyhow, I’ve had a very long and enjoyable chat with Atul in which he has told me his full story – including overcoming injuries that threatened to stop him playing at all. I found his story unique and genuinely inspiring – he has not been involved with any official academies or coaching set-ups; he’s funded everything himself, just following a teenage hunch with complete single-mindedness.
Not that I want to hype him(!). I think getting a pro contract at 23 having never played a game is remarkable enough in itself, even were he never to take a wicket, or to bowl at ‘just’ 85 mph. But he does seem to be on the verge of being India’s and possibly the world’s fastest-ever bowler.
We’ve also had some beautiful pictures taken of him training in South Africa – showing his innovative action step-by-step – by the top snapper Jurie Potgieter.
The whole package runs across seven pages of the June issue, out in the UK on May 8.
Buy the June issue of SPIN featuring an exclusive seven-page interview and photo shoot with Atul Sharma, here.
Against the odds, a huge success: the IPL’s half-time report
May 5, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under News
We are now at the half-way point of the double round-robin stage of the second season of the IPL. 28 matches have come and gone and as much as I expected South Africa to host the tournament adequately, I believe the organisers have outdone themselves.
I laughed when Lalit Modi fibbed to us that 90% of tickets for the IPL had been sold within a couple of days. Doing the sums in my head, that is not far off a million tickets. But almost every game has indeed been packed to the rafters. In particular, the South African Indian community has embraced the tournament, turning up in large numbers at all six of the venues used so far.
The two venues that are yet to hold a game are Kimberley and Bloemfontein, both small and predominantly Afrikaans speaking cities. When I initially heard that these two cities would be hosting the Indian Premier League, I guessed that they would struggle to attract more than a few hundred schoolchildren at each game.
Bloemfontein is the capital of the Free State, a province in which Indians were not allowed to sleep a night until the late 1980s. Ghandi was imprisoned there in 1913. The idea of the big Indian cricket jamboree coming to town seems something of an ironic joke.
But after seeing how South African cricket fans have taken to the tournament across the country, I have no doubt that even Kimberley and Bloemfontein will join the party. The IPL is not only boosting South Africa’s cricket and tourism industries; it is also highlighting the extent to which the country has moved on from the days of apartheid.
I first had this thought a few days ago at a match in Centurion, Pretoria, where the press box seats are in the grandstand and not a glass box. The ground was full and as usual, boundaries were met with extremely loud music, fireworks and shooting flames. Much of the music was of the Bollywood variety and much of it was in Afrikaans. The DJ continued to alternate between the two and the crowd continued to go bananas. It was terrific.
On another matter altogether, it was pointed out to me that there has been an alarming number of golden ducks in the IPL so far. An explanation I can offer is that South African pitches are very very fast. Middlesex’s Dirk Nannes has looked like Alan Donald at Centurion and the Wanderers. Add this to the fact that Indian batsmen are used to slower pitches, and you get some cheap wickets.
Of course, not all the golden ducks have come from quick pitches. Kevin Pietersen was out LBW to the first ball he faced from Muttiah Muralitharan in Port Elizabeth. He got in trouble for showing dissent to Simon Taufel, who had made the correct decision. KP effected a golden duck himself when his Bangalore side had Brendon McCullum, of the hapless Kolkata Knight Riders, caught at point with the first ball of a match in Durban.
It was also in Durban that I was lucky enough to witness a live hat-trick for the fourth time in my cricket watching career. I will never forget the first of those when I saw Brett Schultz rip through the old Transvaal at the Wanderers where, aged 11, I sold scorecards. Yuvraj Singh took a hat-trick returning figures of 3/22 before top scoring with 50 runs from 39 balls, in vain, as the Kings XI Punjab lost to the resurgent Bangalore Royal Challengers.
After last night’s upset nine wicket win by Bangalore over the Mumbai Indians at the Wanderers, things really are heating up on the table. Four teams have eight points, three teams have seven points and the Kolkata Knight Riders languish at the bottom of the table with three points.
Last night’s match saw Jacques Kallis prove that there is a place for him in the shortest form of the game. He smashed 69 runs off 59 balls at a jam-packed Bull Ring, thereby cementing his place in the South African Twenty20 World Cup squad that was announced today.
It was the very same Wanderers strip where South Africa scored 438 runs to beat Australia in an ODI and, boy, it was a cracker. Any bat on ball races to the boundary but there is always something for the pace men too. Bangalore debutant, South African Dillan Du Preez, had veteran Sachin Tendulkar out with his third ball. He had Ajinkya Rahane caught in the off-side with his next ball. The double wicket maiden wicket over was followed up with the prized wicket of JP Duminy in his second over to round off the perfect start to an IPL career.
In their pursuit of 150, Bangalore’s Kallis and Uthappa added a record breaking 126 unbeaten runs for the second wicket. Uthappa walloped 66 of those runs off 42 balls against the side for whom he played last season. A straight inter-season swop between himself and Zaheer Khan had taken place during the transfer window period. Khan pulled up with a shoulder injury two overs into his spell.
Cricket is not usually played after the autumn in South Africa and at the Wanderers the press box is again outdoors, on the top floor of the highest stand. Johannesburg winter days are lovely and warm but the nights can be bitterly cold, and last night was no exception. At the highest press box in the world, I managed to contract a cold. I don’t think it is that swine flu hogwash because no-one in the press box has recently been to Mexico. Given the pace of T20 cricket growth, the game might arrive there before H1N1 gets here.
I have put in a request to the Wanderers for a tender to sell jerseys, scarves, gloves and blankets at the ground. The revenue will surely far exceed that of writing about cricket and I will be able to stay safely on the ground floor. I have heard it said that tickets for the final on 24 May are trading hands at five times their face value, but there is a very real threat the cold winter puts some fans off coming.
John Buchanan, coach of the Kolkata Night Riders, has said that the maximum number of foreign players in each starting eleven should be increased from four, the status quo. Doing so would no doubt increase the standard of play on the field. Paul Collingwood and Owais Shah returned home without getting a game for their franchises and players like Dale Steyn and Daniel Vettori are consistently being left out of theirs.
Each team is allowed up to ten international players and good money is being wasted to pay these chaps to sit on the bench while inexperienced Indian players drop catches and struggle to get bat on ball.
IPL: the show goes on, in soggy SA
April 22, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under Featured Content, Features
The Indian Premier League is in full swing in the not so sunny South Africa, where rain has fallen on the covers at some point during each of the first four days of the tournament.
Not that the weather has stopped me from savouring the high quality action from the warmth and comfort of the press box.
Watching Shane Warne weave a masterful web around the Bangalore middle order on day one was certainly a highlight. And I could feel the anger that still exists between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds as they did battle at the most beautiful ground in the world, against the back drop of Table Mountain.
It does seem ironic that billboards across the country advertise the IPL with the slogan, “The heat is on!” as we go into the South African winter. But at all three grounds thus far it has been evident from my chats with fellow spectators that they are enthralled by the extravaganza that is the IPL.
Considering South Africa was preferred to England on weather grounds as the replacement tournament host, the fact that the weather in England has been lovely and sunny over the same period makes for a good chuckle.
Frozen toes and soggy blankets are a recipe for a poor day out, no matter the quality of the cricket on show. And do spare a thought for the scantily clad cheerleaders in tight wet spandex outfits. [Don't worry about that – Ed]
Only one of the first eight matches of the second IPL season has been called off without a result: Mumbai and Rajasthan shared the points in a match in Durban on Tuesday without a ball being bowled.
Another thing about miserable weather is that it is not conducive to high scoring matches. This does not suit the IPL and its big talking boss, Lalit Modi. Modi is the kind of guy you either love or hate. He has boasted that his tournament will bring lots of runs and 2 billion rands (approx 200 million US dollars) worth of revenue to the South African economy.
Modi has also told us that 90 per cent of tickets for the out of cricket season tournament have been sold out, so – to judge from the empty seats at some of the games – it is probably prudent to take his claims with a pinch of salt.
Modi is a marketing whiz with a colourful background. He is a US dollar billionaire with friends in high places. Modi’s energy and ambition to get huge things done represents the antithesis of what he have come to expect from cricket administrators.
The Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has seen its revenues grow seven fold since Modi joined its ranks in 2005. A good whack of this extraordinary growth in revenue comes as a direct result of Modi’s power broking in the sale of media rights for the IPL and the Champions League for 2 billion dollars and 723.6 million dollars respectively.
Whilst there was rain around, it did not interrupt proceedings at the opening double header in Cape Town on Saturday. However, Bruno, a black labrador did slow things down as he toyed with umpires, players and officials for 11 minutes mid way through the opening innings of the tournament.
Bruno turned down a game of fetch with the cricket ball, resisted dives from several players who attempted to make difficult catches at various fielding positions and was fed a bag of biltong by an IPL official. Fortunately for the groundstaff, Bruno eventually trotted off without dropping a DLF Maximum on a length.
It was a long day at a chilly Newlands but the near-capacity crowd stuck it out to the end, despite the impressive opening ceremony, which took place – of course – after the first two matches, finishing 90 minutes behind schedule.
It was surprising that there was nothing Indian about that ceremony but I must say that the combination of Cirque du Soleil and big bosomed African drummers looked bloody marvellous under all the lasers, fireworks and smoke machines.
There has been a mixed response to the seven and a half minute “tactical breaks” that happen half way through each innings. Another brainchild of Mr Modi, the breaks are nothing but an opportunity to increase advertising revenue in the style of American sports.
On the second day in Cape Town a 12-over match was subjected to this break even though the day was again running over an hour behind schedule. The breaks are boring for all concerned, especially on double-header days. Furthermore, they negatively impact on the momentum of the batsmen at the crease.
The good news is that matches at the four highveld venues are highly unlikely to be affected by rain. They are also guaranteed to produce some high scores. But as a good friend pointed out to me today, the IPL and Cricket South Africa should have ensured that they have two super soppers in working order at each of the four coastal venues. At both Cape Town and Durban there has been only one in semi-working order. Possibly, in South Africa in the autumn, this is a basic error, when there is so much money at stake.
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