Marketing first class cricket: BCCI should adopt two-pronged approach

India are not the top team in the official ICC rankings for Tests and ODIs. Nor are Sri Lanka for that matter. Yet a huge wave of near-spontaneous publicity flooded the media when these two teams clashed in a recent one-day series. An appreciable level of popular interest surrounded the outcome of the remaining matches even after India had wrapped up the series in the first four.

The recently completed Test series between the same sides was decidedly more competitive to begin with. After the Lankan dominance in that drawn 1st Test at Chennai the least I was expecting was an appetising publicity across the media for the remaining Tests. I didn’t see much of that, ocular soundness notwithstanding. Test cricket once again got a go-slow from the BCCI.

It may be relevant to first make a couple of specific observations here regarding preferences of general cricket-loving folk of India. Things would perhaps not be fetched too far if these preferences are extended to the sub-continent or the ‘new world’ Test nations in general.

Old world cricketing nations, England and Australia in particular, had soaked in numerous decades of competitive first-class cricket and quality Test cricket before the One Day matches arrived. On the other hand new teams like India, Pakistan and New Zealand started making their presence felt in the 60's and early 70's, an era when the new form of the game was gaining ascendancy. The love for ODI's (or the even shorter form, by recent accounts) is immense in these nations as many of them sealed their arrival in world cricket mainly through success in one-day cricket. The story is same with cricket following in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Criticising or reprimanding people of these countries for the ‘offence’ of treating the shorter version as their darling would not go down as the finest display of sensitivity.

From an objective point of view though, Test and first class cricket could do with organisational and commercial fillip in these parts. On this issue I can speak only about the situation in India. The first class game here - both at international and domestic levels – is not exactly languishing. Even so it is like the promising elder son who is not allowed to work by the proud patriarch of the family in some strange, strange pretext that its younger brother is bringing in enough meals for the family.

Any suggestion of Test cricket’s popularity here is an easy full toss to dispatch with that customary "people don’t lap it up" retort though followers of Indian cricket should know better. From personal observation I am willing to stick my neck out and say that Test matches too are not suffering from any great lack of interest in India these days. I have talked to a lot of people having passing interest in cricket and they do keep track of the progress whenever a Test match is on.

But the real-life instance stated above tells another story. Essentially that Test (or first class) cricket is not perceived to command the craze associated with one-dayers. The secondary status of Test matches and first class cricket has another serious implication. Since 2-innings cricket is not made to acquire further popularity it must be actually losing ground. And not necessarily to other forms of cricket. Details of the phenomenon are best explained here. This is where pro-activeness becomes the buzzword.

BCCI have done significantly well in popularising the game in India mainly through ODI’s. Not much to predict doomsday there. But somewhere along the line they may have missed out on investing long term in the infrastructure of first class cricket. They have mistaken it for a 'lost cause' or at best a ‘break even’ venture rather than a veritable high-return sector.

One of the keys to successful commerce, any self-employed friend of ours would say, is to identify the performing potential of any apparent (and unavoidable) liability and invest a bit on it in a bid to make it an asset. BCCI should plan a two-pronged attack on the ‘perceived’ problem.

First should be elimination of the root of this vicious circle – a widespread lack of respect for the local game. For starters we in India can take pride in the first class records of our local boys as the traditional cricket-playing nations like Britain and Australia are. Some of our erstwhile top cricketers made the highest level and then put domestic runs and wickets in the line of fire by labelling them as ‘easy’. These records now struggle to earn spontaneous accolades when not accompanied by some international stats. That impression has to go. Proposed solution: phasewise planned promotion of the game on multiple lines – pitches, training facilities, pay packets, stadiums, talent hunts - from the bottom-of-the-chain unit, i.e. club cricket. All forms of cricket, present and future shall reap benefits of this investment.

From another angle, the scarcely-profitable (?) nature of the longer version can be improved if a whole generation of viewers is gradually induced to flock to the media (TV/ newspaper/radio/website/grapevine/whatever) and egg on their local cricket heroes when they slog it out in prestigious Ranji and Duleep trophy clashes. Just as they do when their country plays international ODI's. And for that we need big-time coverage of these matches by all media, pricipally television. That is the second line of attack.

Cricket is the ultimate television sport and first class cricket is to be taken to the waiting millions through television. Well-marketed competitive first-class matches can be telecast live for this purpose. People can see for themselves where Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Syed Kirmani, Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid came from.

The present first class format may not be exactly palatable to the 'ODI-trained' modern Indian consumer. A well-planned modification of the indefinite first-class format at domestic level (*) will help bridge the perceived gap of consumer volume for the two versions of the game. Returns due from implementation of this ‘consumer-friendly’ first-class cricket can be siphoned back in full (younger brother one-day cricket already takes care of other basic needs:) to further raise the standards of domestic cricket right at the club level.

This effort is potentially money spinning and should be lucrative even from a purely commercial point of view. It may go down the drain, but so can any new business development drive by a professional concern.

In the least the BCCI should get a bird's eye view of Test cricket's untapped potential in India through extensive market research and feasibility study.

If a breathtaking one-day match is a frolicking holiday then watching a fine first-class match, even in some modified format, should be the equivalent of living a good life. Kapil's Devils invited a sporting-success-starved people on the holiday 22 years back. Now the cash-rich BCCI need to show them the first-class life, modern fast life and other distractions be damned. The trick for the BCCI is to first start believing in the magic of the 120-year-old wine that is Test cricket before opening a pub for the unsuspecting millions.

Try prohibiting the Indian public from drinking the longer version after that....

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Afterthought: I thought I heard you asking about the prospect of ICC allowing national boards to tamper with the first class format. Well, it is the biggest rabbit that BCCI may have to pull out of its hat for this campaign. However the bottom line is survival of a vital format of cricket. ICC too is driven by market forces and should see that survival can be ensured only through marketability. Most of all they need this to create competition for spectators among various versions of this unique sport, rather than lose vitally precious airtime to other sports.

[* The idea of modifying first class cricket to over-limit cricket may sound sacrilegious but I have no shame to admit that like many Indians of my generation who went into their 2nd decade of life post-1983, I too graduated to Test matches long after I started loving the family’s favourite form of cricket first - which was just one-day cricket those days to my elders.]