Cricket, capitalism, culture

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When the legendary Arthur Morris, key member of Don Bradman’s invincible team of the 1940s, was asked what he got out of playing cricket, his answer was startling. Morris negotiated the question with a single-word retort, “Poverty.” With the onset of a cricketing revolution courtesy the Indian Premier League, starting today, contemporary cricketers will have a radically different answer to a similar question. Most, it can be conjectured, will suggest with a welcome smile, “We became millionaires.”

One billion dollars in TV rights for a 10 year period, 12,700 advertisement slots on Sony for the 59 games between April 18 and June 1, most of which are sold, hitherto unthinkable players earnings, $3 million in prize money, $5 million for title sponsorship rights for five years, and possibilities of a full house in more than half the venues, what the IPL drives home is that the nerve centre of cricket has firmly shifted to the subcontinent.

There’s little doubt that April 18, 2008, will go down in cricket history as the date when cricket changed forever. If the IPL fails to deliver, possible if its economics go haywire, it will have proved beyond doubt that cricket sans nationalism is not a lucrative market proposition. If it succeeds, however, it will have transformed the once village sport everlastingly.

Modelled on Major League Baseball and the National Football League, IPL comes at a time when the Indian economy has opened itself to global riches and the big corporates trying to make India their home are in search of lucrative investment platforms across the country. IPL, for many, is the ideal answer. At one go, it gives them a foothold in a market of a billion plus and generates eyeballs that millions spent on ads won’t get.

Add to the above the fact that for a billion plus cricket fans, filling stadiums should hardly prove difficult with proper marketing and hype. With celebrity owners like Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta doing their bit in earnest, fans have more than cricket on offer for a couple of hundred rupees. A great evening out at a reasonable price. And with fans thronging the ground or picking their seat in front of the TV set, sponsors will queue up and pay millions for a 10-second slot on Set Max, on instadia hoardings or on team apparel.