Turning cricket on its ear

By Malcolm Kelly, CBCSports.ca

Last Updated: Thursday, May 15, 2008

It's loud, wild and fun.

There are cheerleaders, night games, music, fans in the millions and a pack of high-profile owners.

Television is constant, there's a reported 10-year, billion-dollar broadcast deal and players are being paid up to $1.5 million for 45 days work.

Team names include Royals, Knight Riders, Daredevils, Indians, Chargers and Challengers. And if the games go longer than three hours, penalties are imposed.

A competitor to the National Football League?

Nope, cricket. Honestly.

Twenty20 cricket, to be exact, and just five years since being introduced in England, of all places, this new, fast-paced, adrenalin-charged game is sweeping the world and sending traditionalists running for the cover of their pavilions.

And it has local adherents.

This weekend, Cricket Canada is jumping on the bandwagon by holding its first national championship under the new Twenty20 rules, sending "50 overs" cricket to the wayside. Eight teams from seven provinces will compete May 17-18 in King City, just north of Toronto.

They have a local cable television contract for the tournament with games called by the CBC's Nigel Reed, and a fair amount of media coverage.

It is, however, nothing compared to what's happening in India.

Sis, boom and a lot of bats

It was on April 18 of this year (a date that will live in infamy for cricket purists) that the Washington Redskins cheerleaders pranced onto the home field of the Bangalore Royal Chargers to get a crowd of over 30,000 up and dancing, ready to cheer the locals against the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Signalling the opener of the Indian Premier League's inaugural season, the event also let cricket fans everywhere know the game was never going to be the same again.

Eight clubs, some owned by Bollywood superstars (Shahrukh Khan is in the Kolkata group, for example) and others by Indian billionaires, and in one case a major daily newspaper, set out on a double round robin schedule that would see each play the other twice with the top four to the semifinals.

It would take 45 days to bring the thing to a close and as of this writing, the Rajasthan Royals led the pack nine games in with a 7-2 record for 14 points, followed by the Kings XI Punjab and Chennai Super Kings at 12 and Kolkata Knight Riders with 10.

Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan is the owner of the IPL's Kolkata Knight Riders. (Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images)

Rounding out the standings were the Delhi Daredevils, Mumbai Indians and, as every league needs bottom dwellers, the Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers with four points each.

Scores are high, power hitters rule and websites on the league and its stars are everywhere.

 

Like a trip to Bollywood

Atul Ahuja, CEO of the Canadian Cricket Association, was there for the opener, and it helped shape his ideas about how the game could be packaged.

"It's something new for [the Indian public]," he says. "It's like going to see a Bollywood movie, and more.

"What this gives you is live [action] and seeing your favourite stars from Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and India, right there in front of you, playing alongside each other.

"And you have this whole inter-city hype, like here in North America."

Indeed, everything about it is like professional sports on this side of the ocean, including the stars (each club can declare an "icon" player from India, and that means seven-figure salaries for Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Virender Sehwag), the television, the loud uniforms, tons of media coverage and, yes, those cheerleaders.

Some of the clubs are actually developing their own cheer squads.

Other key players include Jacques Kallis of South Africa (making a reported $900,000), Ishant Sharma of India ($950,000), Mahendra Singh Dhoni of India ($1.5 million) and Andrew Symonds of Australia ($1.35 million).

Cost of a franchise reportedly ranged from $67 million US to $111.9 million US, all done by bid.

"Stadiums are absolutely chock-a-block, it's being played at night, it's hot in India at this time and it's being televised globally every day, even here through Asian Television Network," Ahuja says.

The key for all of this is simple — time. Or rather, lack thereof.

Time for other pursuits

When Ahuja was a boy in Pune, India, he would go along with his father and sister to five-day cricket tests.

Dad would take his newspapers, Ahuja and his sister their homework, and out to the grounds they'd march, ready for a test of patience and their love of cricket.

"And we'd watch the game for about an hour and then there'd be a tea break and [Dad] would catch up on his reading and we'd do our homework," Ahuja says.

"And then the players would come back on the field and they'd be warming up [for a long time]. When I look back, it was almost quasi-comical. But that's just the way it was."

Not any more.

First there was the introduction of the 50 overs (300 balls) game in the early 1970s. That was poo-poohed by traditionalists then as "instant cricket," Ahuja says. He can't imagine what the old-timers of 30 years ago would think of the Twenty20 game and its rules:

• Twenty20 refers to the number of overs — each team gets one inning of 20 overs, or 120 balls, and that's it. Score as many runs as you can and then get off and let the other team try and catch you.
• No bowler is allowed to toss more than four overs, or 24 balls. That's creating all sorts of new tactical opportunities for when you use you pace bowlers, or your spin bowlers. It also behooves a team to hold back a star for the end, like using a closer in baseball, to wrap things up. Cricket managers no longer sit around chatting about the weather or last night's meal any more, they have to pace back and forth and think along with the other team's boss.
• If the fielding team doesn't get all of its balls across within 75 minutes, the batting side gets a six-run bonus for each uncompleted over.
• Wasting time by the hitting team can cause the umpire to give more minutes to the fielding club.
• A tie is broken by a bowl-out. Five bowlers from each side deliver one pitch at an unguarded wicket and whoever knocks down the most wickets wins.

There are other rules regarding where fielders can be placed and when, etc., but everything is arranged so television can show the game within three hours and the fans can come at night, have a good time and get home.

No homework.

The CBC's Reed, who grew up as a cricket fan in the southwest of England, admits the game is not for the purist, "but it sure is good entertainment.

VVS Laxman, captain of the IPL's Deccan Chargers addresses a press conference in Hyderabad, India during the team's unveiling ceremony. (Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images)

"It's obviously the ultimate in the quick fix for the cricket lover who doesn't have one day, three days or five days to sit in the sun and watch the game," says the broadcaster.

"Certainly I think it's obviously more palatable for a North American audience, that much is clear. It's over in three hours, and that makes it a more watchable event."

The IPL hasn't been without controversy, especially when dealing with national cricket organizations around the world that aren't too happy with their best players disappearing for 45 days at the start of the summer.

And not all of it is simply national pride. Australia and England are both seriously looking at their own Twenty20 tournaments, so hanging on to the players becomes more essential.

As for Canada, well, Ahuja has a dream. And it involves convincing the CBC or some other network that Cricket Night in Canada may be a timely idea.

That would mean a Canadian league with a limited schedule attracting players from overseas.

"I wasn't being facetious," he says. "Any sport grows on the back of how well it is marketed and how interesting it is from a technique, endurance and strength standpoint."

Twenty20, he believes, fits that bill.

A weekend professional Twenty20 cricket tournament involving top players from around the world playing along with the best Canada can offer is also something he'd like to see in the future.

"If we had a game starting at 9 a.m. here, that's 2 p.m. in England, 6 p.m. in the sub-continent," Ahuja says. "That's a half-billion potential viewers."

None of whom will have time to read the newspaper.