Revolution blues

Predictability thy name is cricket. The build-up to the Indian Premier League player auction has attained such heights of hype, humbug, hypocrisy and hysteria, especially from ex-players in rose-tinted glass pressboxes, a visitor from Mars, or even Manhattan, might reasonably imagine it to be an event of vast significance to Planet Earth. The truth is both far more humdrum and infinitely more interesting.

So, let’s get to what Frank Zappa called the crux of the biscuit. So a few tours and Tests might have to be rearranged to accommodate a couple of events, one of which is ICC-approved and the other surely destined to fail? How can anyone who cares about the game’s future not be delighted that the upshot, properly handled, might be millions of additional apostles and disciples? Similarly, how can one not be intrigued as to the size of the slice the ICC is presumably taking from the IPL pie?

On all but one count, comparisons with the advent of Kerry Packer’s Flying Circus are surely too convenient and too ill-informed, too invidious and odious. Packer’s venture was catalytic on three counts. It demonstrated that international cricketers deserved a suitable wage and that an antique pastime could be adapted to foot the bill, principally by staging performances at sociable hours. It was also a landmark in sport’s televisual age, ultimately giving massive clout to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and hence paving the way for ventures such as IPL and ICL, both of which are merely mining an already proven seam.

If Packer can be regarded as a Marconi, Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Bollywooders fronting those eight IPL consortia are equivalent to the backers of pirate radio: a necessary diversion on the road to freeing the airwaves. Yet World Series Cricket and this latest chapter in the game’s evolution are united in one significant respect: player victimisation. For Mike Procter and John Snow read Shane Bond and Chris Read.

I’m delighted Read’s participation in the ICL will earn him at least some of the rewards he missed by dint of being a man out of time, a wicketkeeper less valued for his glovework than his (in)ability to score sufficient runs. That cheque may even serve as compensation for Geoff Miller’s recent assertion that he has disqualified himself from national selection. I’m even more delighted Bond will, by the same route, elicit some tangible reward for his family to compensate them for the disgracefully callous way his New Zealand contract was terminated with such extreme prejudice. By the same token, the fact that the IPL signatories are making themselves available without fear of any such vengeful retribution does not obviously strike one as bearing much relation to fairness or justice, much less the alleged “Spirit of Cricket”.

Along with Tony Greig, Packer's key conscriptor, Procter and Snow were the litigants when World Series Cricket met the Test and County Cricket Board in the High Court 30 years ago; their successful restraint of trade case, helpfully and properly, was bankrolled by Packer. If they have any shred of honour or principle – which, admittedly, may well depend on whether or not their thunder has already been completely stolen by the IPL - the ICL organisers really ought to follow suit. If that proves unfeasible, the ICC should ensure that all punishments are rescinded.

I’m also chuffed that the players evidently see the IPL as a way of quitting the international arena as their sell-by dates approach: the better to bow out on a high, the better to spare us the waning and the whingeing, the better to stave off public boredom and allow the next generation to refresh us. It is difficult, nonetheless, not to harbour one other major misgiving.

The figures are not exactly discouraging. According to the Sunday Times, the IPL has secured £35.7m in media revenue for this year, a shade more from the sale of the eight franchises. Throw in £5.2m from title sponsorship and you have a not-unhandsome total of £77.5m: the Indian board’s revenue for 2006-07 ran to just £6m more. If this is the future, the days of 50-over ODIs may be over sooner than we’d dare have wished. But in the name of what? Turning on, or even up to, a match to see Glenn McGrath re-cross swords with Sachin Tendulkar will be all well and good, but who, beyond India, will care whether they play for Mohali or Mumbai - let alone who wins? Even in India, persuading the public to care about a team’s fortunes, that barest of necessities for a spectator sport, may prove an insuperable hurdle.

Post-Packer, it has become fashionable to declare that the future of county cricket is city cricket: for Middlesex and Surrey read London; for Warwickshire and Worcestershire read Birmingham; for Lancashire Manchester, for Yorkshire, Leeds. This may yet come to pass, and far sooner than many might fear, though the rebranding of Sussex as Sharks and Surrey as Lions has kept the tide at bay with remarkable and surprising efficiency. Internationalism, though, still counts for more in cricket than any other sport. Once barely discernible, then merely Grand Canyonesque, the gulf between national and state/county/province audiences, moreover, is now of Persian proportions. For better or worse, national identity, so increasingly and rightly irrelevant in other walks of life, remains cricket’s currency-in-chief.

Which is why the ICC should stop pussyfooting about. Why not go the whole hog? Why not formally join forces with the IPL, rebrand it as the World Cricket League, invite city-based teams representing all the major cricketing nations, enabling Australians, Sri Lankans and Indians to play side-by-side, and leave the other 46 weeks of the year free for Tests? Sadly, it would be too late for Bond and Read, but at least it would prevent further victimisation.

Who knows, it might even excise the word “burnout” from the players’ dictionary. Who knew how easily the prospect of a quick killing could reignite so many stale appetites?