Understanding the biz

For a popular and lucrative phenomenon, the business of cricket in India hasn't been adequately recorded and analysed. True, there are regular media reports about one deal or the other - whether signed by a cricketer, by the BCCI, or an IPL franchise. Yet where is the big picture? What do these dazzling and bewildering numbers add up to?

This book tries to answer those questions. Its conclusions are decidedly limited, and it will need many similar books to adequately complement it. Nevertheless, it is a start and one for which the authors needs to be thanked.

The book is trapped between three stools: explaining cricket as a vehicle of marketing and explaining the marketing of cricket; explaining sports marketing; and explaining the business of cricket and the development of properties such as the IPL, which is a story that goes beyond merely sports marketing. Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam make an honest and purposeful attempt to weave all three threads into their narrative. However, the reader does sometimes wonder whether too many themes are being packed into one volume.

Even so, in describing the evolution of cricket and cricket marketing in India, in tracing the history of cricket icons - from Sunil Gavaskar in the 1970s, Kapil Dev in the 80s, Sachin Tendulkar in the 90s, to somebody like MS Dhoni in the first decade of the 21st century - and attempting to parallel India's economic growth and the changing urges of the Indian consumer, the authors make some valid points.

Perhaps too much space is devoted to scrutinising and telling the story of individual ad campaigns and what aspect of which cricketer was highlighted in each. There are also some pat conclusions. Talking of Imran Khan's appearance in an ad for Cinthol soap some 30 years ago, the authors write: "The Cinthol campaign widened the appeal of cricket to include women, for obvious reasons - Imran's star/sex appeal. As women are the primary decision-makers in the purchase of consumer goods such as soap, this was very significant."

There is a contradiction here. The Cinthol ad did not bring new women fans to cricket; it brought women who could already identify Imran as a cricketer, to Cinthol. It did nothing to enhance and increase the interest of cricket-agnostic women in the sport. On the other hand, say, the IPL is specifically geared towards making a form of cricket attractive to female audiences. There is a difference between the two approaches, and on occasion this book seems to confuse them.

The Business of Cricket makes some telling observations. It correctly points out cricket's commercial viability and popularity are not the function of some conspiracy against all other sports, especially India's official national game, hockey. Rather, they are a reflection of fairly regular success on the field, and of performance.

Everybody loves a winner, whether a team who win or an individual who wins in a personal contest - Kapil versus Richard Hadlee, to use an example wonderfully illustrated by the authors - within the context of a team experience. Since the 1980s, Indian cricket has delivered such episodes time and again, and this is the single biggest factor why its business graph has zoomed. The book emphasises this and does so persuasively.

Second, the authors quote ad guru Sam Balsara as saying, "It is not that Indians love cricket, the game; it is that we love to win." A few sentences later, this is linked to the IPL - "popular because an Indian team (with a majority of Indian players) wins every match".

This is so true. Indeed, one of the motivations for the launch of the IPL in 2008 was that Indian sponsors had burnt their fingers with the 2007 World Cup - Rahul Dravid's team were knocked out in the first round, losing to Bangladesh - and wanted a product/tournament that was world-class and yet ensured an Indian presence till the end.

The book is useful as a compendium of statistics related to the cricket business, and for offering some keen insight into an industry that should, really, have many more chroniclers. Balasubramanian and Santhanam need to be congratulated for opening the innings.

The Business of Cricket: The Story Of Sports Marketing In India
Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam
Harper Collins India, Rs 299