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Mukesh Ambani (L) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni: The latest impact of the Indian business world on cricket will have lasting reverberations in the future.
The NFL, MLB, NBA, English Premier League and the NHL, the world’s most lucrative sports leagues, centred in both the USA and Europe, could only provide a cue at the moment where our great old game of cricket will be heading in the near future after the advent of the IPL, the franchise based league form of the sport.
It was only last month that the New York City based ‘Forbes’ magazine, which is renowned for its billionaire lists, published a list of the World’s Top-Earning cricketers (fortunately, sans any Sri Lankan in that!).
"While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it's played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL was launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift," said Peter J. Schwartz and Chris Smith of ‘The Forbes’ on Aug. 27 under a sub-heading ‘The Indian Premier League has lured the world's top players with big hype and bigger paychecks.’
Lalit Modi
During these days where politico-economic gurus and pundits talk about a possible Indo-China economic super power in future, it could be interesting to ponder why the said native place of cricket, England, didn’t come up with a so timely ploy of introducing an international cricket league before Lalit Modi of the BCCI got away with the copyright for such a path-breaking concept and discovering a mine of wealth in cricket.
"The IPL was conceived in 2007, near some hallowed ground for sports: in London’s Wimbledon suburb. There, Lalit Modi, representing the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the governing body of Indian cricket and Andrew Wildblood, an executive at sports management powerhouse IMG, discussed the disconnect between cricket's worldwide popularity and the lack of commercial success of any domestic league. Their solution: a franchise ownership structure modeled after top U.S. sports leagues. Since then, the league has grown at breakneck speed."
- ‘The World's Hottest Sports League’ by Peter J. Schwartz, The Forbes, Aug. 27.
The article also revealed: "Two years ago, IPL cricket was a pipe dream. Now it's the fastest-appreciating sports business on Earth."
Indo Businessmen in cricket
Mukesh Ambani, the largest shareholder of Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector enterprise and Lakshmi Mittal, founder, Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal and the richest person of the United Kingdom, are the two richest men in India now and are also the seventh and eighth respectively in the list of world’s richest people (‘The Forbes,’ March 11, 2009). Ambani is the owner of the IPL team Mumbai Indians. The Delhi Daredevils owner G. M. Rao of GMR Holdings is the 21st richest man in India with a wealth worth US$ 1,470 m.
In spite of being affected decisively by the global recession of recent times, the Indian tycoons have done smartly to make a great impact in the last decade or two in world business. And many of them, significantly, have started to see cricket as a money spinner, especially after the sport was introduced as an international league format by Modi and Co.
Vijay Mallya of UB Group, Venkat Ram Reddy of Deccan Chronicles which owned this year’s title winning team Deccan Chargers, N. Srinivasan of India Cement, Ness Wadia of Bombay Dyeing, Karan Paul of Apeejay Surendera Group and Indian Bollywood celebrities like Shahrukh Khan, Judhi Chawla and Shilpa Shetty, all make part of the group of wealthy billionaires owning a team in the IPL. Modi successfully turned these business giants’ heads towards cricket.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s estimated earning of US$ 10 m of endorsement income over the last year is more than, according to Forbes, the top baseball players Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard’s, combined income. No wonder, Dhoni, the Indian skipper, is the top in the highest earning cricketer’ list of The Forbes published last month.
There is Sachin Tendulkar (worth US$ 8 m and No.2 in the list), Yuvraj Singh (US$ 5.5 m and No.3), Rahul Dravid (US$ 5 m, No.4) and Saurav Ganguly (US$ 3.5 m and joint No.6) who are the rest of the three Indians among the top 10.
The new Indian mysticism
The subcontinent kings who were once praised for their stupendous mysticism inculcated to the colonial sport, is now turning the game rhetorically on its head.
After this latest Indian intervention, or – more apt to say — siege, cricket will no longer be a sport with its traditional layout. The US professional leagues, NFLs and NBAs, will provide better clues on what cricket really will be in the near future.
