Year two, week one
The ICL's second season has some improvements over the first, but there's a fair amount of work left
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The big question is why the ICL hosted the tournament at the same time as the India-Australia series. "We thought about it long and hard. Test match cricket does not clash with our cricket. The evenings are free," Tony Greig, who is on the ICL's executive board, said. "We tend to play in the back end and in the front end of English season."
The tickets have been priced at Rs 100 each. The opening day, obviously, had the biggest audience: 20,000 people packed into the Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium.
The organisers claim that, according to the rating agency TAM, the opening game registered a rating of 0.76, which jumped to 1.9 for the close game between Hyderabad and the Dhaka Warriors. Himanshu Mody, the ICL's business head, is looking to reach a rating of 3, but without star power, it remains to be seen how that is achieved.
"The best teams in the ICL will finish mid-table in the English County Championship," says Paul Nixon, the former England wicketkeeper who plays for Delhi Giants. It's a fair assessment. The average innings scores are rising slowly.
The IPL has bigger stars, which was reflected in the TRP ratings last year. The ICL has tried to offset that disadvantage by introducing teams like Lahore Badshahs and Dhaka Warriors, thus trying to position it as a battle between nations.
The overseas pros have shown impressive commitment. Players like Jason Gillespie, Shane Bond, Craig McMillan, Chris Harris and Damien Martyn have led from the front. They have thrown themselves around on the field, encouraged the local cricketers, and taken their mentorship role very seriously. The coaches, like Steve Rixon and Michael Bevan, are working hard too. The practice sessions have been intense and purposeful.
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There's no cause for complaint with the infrastructure in the team environment. Every side has professional coaches, physios, trainers, masseurs, the works. "The local Indian cricketers have relied too much on natural talent. Now it's a leap from amateurism to professionalism," says Deep Dasgupta who plays for the Royal Bengal Tigers.
In Hyderabad there were giant TV screens suspended from the roofs at different points in the stadium, apart from a huge, centrally located screen. However, after a couple of games these just became advertising screens.
The promotion spend has been increased to Rs 500 million. There are more adverts and billboards, and large pullout spreads have been booked in many newspapers.
Aging stars are usually considered a negative for a tournament. In this case, though, watching them made for a pleasant experience. Perhaps because this is the only place, barring the odd county game, that you can see these players in action anymore. Watching Saqlain Mushtaq, Gillespie and Bond bowl, or Inzamam-ul-Haq and Martyn bat has been a nostalgic experience.
Sriram Veera is a staff writer at Cricinfo