Editorial: Milking the cricket cash cow
Former cricketers have been warning the BCCI for years that the prominence given to slam-bang events like IPL was putting feeder tournaments in the shade but no heed was paid.
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CHENNAI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah’s stern reprimand to top cricketers for giving short shrift to first class cricket while prioritising the more lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) is welcome but it smacks of shutting the stable after the horse has bolted. Former cricketers have been warning the BCCI for years that the prominence given to slam-bang events like IPL was putting feeder tournaments in the shade but no heed was paid.
Domestic tournaments continue to wane even as the board puts it mouth where the money is. If Jay Shah’s admonishment to top cricketers for missing the less glamorous tournaments sounds insincere now, it is because BCCI is itself guilty of not reining in its own avarice.
Shah’s letter to centrally-contracted India players warns of “severe implications” if they ignore domestic cricket and serves up a word salad of noble sentiments that might gladden the heart of a cricket purist. Domestic tournaments are “the backbone” embodying “the values of Indian cricket”; however, “a trend has started to emerge” of players prioritising IPL over domestic cricket, “a shift that was not anticipated” and so on. This is lip service and insincere.
The first casualty of BCCI’s coddling of IPL has been the Ranji Trophy, not to talk of the plethora of feeder tournaments that have vanished from the nation’s mindspace. This is no new trend nor was it unanticipated. Since the launch of IPL in 2008, India’s cricket ecosystem has rearranged itself to cater to the new beast. The coaching programmes of state associations have withered away, ceding place to private academies which school their tuition-paying wards on the craft needed to win an IPL contract rather than the nuances of long-form cricket. Worse, right under BCCI’s watch, academies have captured state selection processes, school tournaments be damned.
To be fair, Jay Shah’s letter does highlight the unfairness that has crept into the system. In recent weeks, some of the younger contracted players preferred to train with IPL squads than play for their state teams while tried-and-tested older players like Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane turned up for the Ranji Trophy grind in Tier-3 towns. This is such a contrast with the Gavaskar or Tendulkar eras when even senior players reported to the Ranji team straight after a Test match or ODI tournament.
In England and Australia, cricketers left out of the playing squad on the first day of a Test match are required to rush back to their county teams. Had the prestige of first class cricket been maintained, it would not have taken Sarfaraz Khan three years of Ranji Trophy toil with an astounding average of 70 to make it to the international team, which he did with such aplomb in the third Test match against England last week. Contrast this with a few others who walked into India’s international team after a few spectacular innings under IPL cameras.
It is not enough for Jay Shah to read the riot act to a few star cricketers, who are only taking advantage of a system they had no hand in shaping. The BCCI must prove its commitment to the “true values” of Indian cricket by restoring the Ranji Trophy’s eminence. Cricket is a cash cow that needs to be nurtured just as much as milked.