The ISPL will be India’s first tennis ball cricket tournament to be played in a stadium. The first edition of the ISPL tennis ball cricket tournament will be played over March 6-15. The idea is to provide young players from the grassroots level a national level platform. Six clubs—owned by the likes of Amitabh Bachchan (Mumbai), Ram Charan (Hyderabad), Hrithik Roshan (Bengaluru), Suriya (Chennai), Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor (Kolkata) and Akshay Kumar (Srinagar)—will compete in the ISPL.
The selection committee will select 350 players for competition. Interested players must enroll on http://www.ispl-t10.com and submit their professional, personal details along with performance videos, photographs or clips. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for city trials. Those who qualify in the city trials will move to the next level of trials to be held in Mumbai on January 20-21—96 players will be selected for the February 2024 player auction. BCCI will not be involved in the ISPL.
BCCI’s T10
BCCI is working its own T-10 league, which is scheduled to be launched between September and October 2024.
The board is yet to decide whether franchises for the new leagues should be sold through a separate tender process or if existing Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises should be given the right of first refusal.
This decision will impact the league’s ownership structure and its financial dynamics.
As per the board, the T10 format is chosen to further elevate the popularity of cricket in the country—the wildly popular T20 format IPL recently achieved deca-corn status, and thus there are questions that the BCCI must first contend with, such as whether there should be an age-cap for players so that it doesn’t cannibalise the IPL format and its popularity by having star players in the fray for auctions.
BCCI secretary Jay Shah is leading the development of this league, and there has been considerable interest voiced by stakeholders and potential sponsors, as per news reports.
Precedents of the two leagues
A 10-over league is not entirely a new idea. The Abu Dhabi T10 is a Ten10 cricket league held in the UAE, launched and owned by T Ten Sports Management. Each team plays a 10-over innings and the duration of a typical match is around 90 minutes. The tournament has a round-robin format followed by eliminations and the final. The International Cricket Council (ICC) officially sanctioned the league in 2018 as a semi-professional cricket tournament.
The league has posted significant year-on-year growth in viewership and financial value. The 2021-22 edition reached 342 million viewers through television and digital streaming and the league’s economic impact is valued at $621.2 million, as per media reports.
While there is no official tennis ball cricket tournaments in India, cricket is widely played in the country with the tennis ball. In fact, there is a website http://www.tenniscricket.in that offers information about tennis ball cricket players, their match statistics and a lot more.
Other cricketing nations, and advertisers
The proposed BCCI league has the potential to offer financial benefits to cricket boards worldwide struggling with limited earnings from bilateral series. A revenue-sharing model is on the cards to improve participation. That said, concerns persist about the potential impact on the traditional 50-over format, and how the board will maintain the balance between commercial success and the essence of the sport.
Some big advertisers on cricket have evinced interest in the BCCI league while ISPL is working to stitch up alliances. The BCCI league might give an opportunity to regional/smaller advertisers to also advertise in matches says Krishnarao Buddha, senior category head, marketing, Parle Products, the maker of Parle-G, Hide & Seek, and KrackJack biscuits.
Other stakeholders such as broadcasters are not so sure. General entertainment channels are more profitable than sports/cricket channels, and they wouldn’t want to cannibalise the GEC ad pool, they argue. Much will depend on “how creatively the league is organised, who the broadcast platforms are and what the advertising rates are like”, says a sports broadcaster.