They've taken the challenge but have to prove themselves

The Indian Cricket League has always earned a second glance from every cricket fan, connoisseur and analyst. So what is the situation? What is to be done? How good is this innovation?

The Zee Group’s boss, Subhas Chandra, over the years has been known to go in the right directions for business. In India, from the young boys to the grannies, everyone wants to know whether Sachin got his century. Here, the point is, if Sachin does not do so often, he has another opportunity to perform – in the ICL. A point to be noted here is that Sachin Tendulkar is a reputed player for the BCCI side led by Rahul Dravid. They are only playing for the BCCI and not India (even in legal terms.)

But the same issue could prove to be a disadvantage to the ICL. In the end, the ICL faces the danger of becoming but a retreat for players who were not able to perform on the other and currently bigger stage. To an extent, it is already a bit like that. Many players like Dinesh Mongia, etc have chosen to go to the ICL. Also, the foreign players who’ve joined the ICL have joined after they have retired (Boje and Cairns) when they cannot find a place in the side (Klusner,) or simply for political reasons (Yusuf and Razzaq.)

This is not a good sign. The ICL’s aim - or so it seems - is to run a parallel system so as to provide an opportunity for the players to avoid the extremely political setup which already exists. As far as I can see, only Ambati Rayudu has used the ICL for this purpose. Rayudu – with age still on his side - played for Hyderabad for a few years. He was then picked for the Indian under 19 side and performed. He almost got his place in the national side – which he richly deserved. Unfortunately either or both luck or big men were not on his side.

The ICL will find it difficult to draw crowds in their early stages. Their group of players primarily consists of the players of the genre discussed earlier. They are faced with lack of resources – both in the form of players and grounds - although Laloo Prasad Yadav has guaranteed to permit the ICL to use all the grounds owned by the railways around the country (which if I remember right, are 55 in number.)

If the ICL work hard, they may be able to grow big enough to actually compete with the other setup. They are already a major threat to the BCCI – who is so primitive that being the richest cricket board in the world opened their own website a only month ago which still is not completely operational and is very disappointing. The Indian Cricket League’s website has already been launched with the League itself being launched just two days before this article was written.

How should they work hard? The players from around the world, who already play for various teams, need to have a reason to come to the ICL. The ICL should really be able to impress and draw the attention of players around the world to the league. I believe that one of the best ways to do this would be complete and absolute transparency in all operations. The telecast of the matches should also be well presented. It would be nice to see the advertisements not showing complete disregard to play out in the middle and a group of good commentators. What happens to the umpires and the umpiring examinations? Is the ICL going to conduct them themselves or will the umpires have to take the BCCI’s examination? These are some thing to look at for the ICL. An extremely tough task ahead for them.-BS