Why cricket should go the soccer way

The writing is on the wall: cricket's fulcrum is shifting from national contests to international leagues, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Think of how seldom you see Brazil's superstars playing for their country, busy as they are in Europe's soccer leagues, and neither the game nor players, sponsors or spectators are poorer for it.

The signing up of almost the entire Bangladesh team by ICL is therefore a continuation of a process that began with the launch of ICL and IPL and the signing up of international players of the past, present and future, setting cricket on an inexorable path towards a framework similar to that of Europe's famous soccer clubs.

Today it is Bangladesh, which has a poorly administered board, but even the stars from more established boards will weigh their options once the leagues get firmly entrenched in a year or two.

An already established player like Andrew Symonds, for instance, serving time out in the pen for indiscipline, could just retire early and take up league cricket full-time.

The trickle will then turn into a deluge, and there will be no stopping it. With or without permission from their boards, more and more players will be drawn to where the money is, and increasingly the money is being generated by ads directed at the huge TV audiences the leagues are attracting. This has to do with both the format and content of the leagues.

The Twenty20 format is clearly much better suited to the short attention span TV viewing of modern life. Whether one-day and Test cricket can also be moulded into leagues is a moot point. But the most important thing about the leagues is that you have a whole bunch of international players from different countries all playing in the same tournament.

That's a much more marketable proposition than a long Test series between two countries, especially one in which India does not figure. It's obviously great for the players too because of the lucrative options it opens up for them. But it's not just about the money. The cricket itself has gained an added dimension.

Anybody who watched the inaugural ICL and IPL must have experienced a lightness at not being burdened with nationalism. It's made it just as easy to appreciate a Mohammad Yousuf or a Shane Warne as a Virender Sehwag or an Ishant Sharma. And although the clubs quickly built up loyal fan followings, there was less fanaticism and more appreciation of good cricket by anybody.

Another obvious positive was the quick emergence of a host of new players with great talent and potential to share the spotlight with the established stars, something that years and years of the traditional contests failed to achieve.

And this applied to players from all nations, not just India. Look at the meteoric rise of a Shaun Marsh who had been relegated to the boondocks of Aussie domestic cricket for several years.

Even when it comes to globalising the game - the pet theme of its administrators - the leagues are more likely to do it than getting the minnows to play one-sided demoralising series against teams like Australia, as Bangladesh just did.

Get an Irishman to play in the league, for instance, and you'll quickly start building up a following for the game in that country. The point is Ireland may be not be able to field a team that can compete with the best consistently, but it can certainly provide talented players for the leagues and thus help spread interest in the game.

People like Steve Waugh, crying themselves hoarse for the inclusion of Twenty20 cricket in the Olympics, might therefore have been better served by promoting the Twenty20 leagues for the sake of spreading the game's popularity. I have nothing against cricket in the Olympics, except that it would further clutter up an already crowded calendar.

The cricket boards will in fact soon be forced to reassess the traditional tours considering the conflicting claims on the players from the popular leagues, the World Cups, Champions Trophy, and perhaps the Olympics. Already they're struggling to fit in the postponed Champions Trophy in next year's chockful schedule.

The administrators have to understand that the audience is no longer in the stadium but in the living room. That's what gets money into the coffers of the boards and pockets of the players. That's what will sustain the game and possibly spread it.

So it really doesn't matter where you play the game, all you have to do is get the best talent together. It makes eminent sense therefore to make the leagues the staple, while contests between nations are confined to events like the World Cup. That will be good for the game, the players and the spectators, just like in soccer, basketball or baseball.

c_sumit@dnaindia.net