Published: May 28, 2011, 11:40 AM (IST)
Edited: Sep 04, 2014, 10:58 PM (IST)
By Akash Kaware
Lalit Modi might have gone (at least for now), but it seems there is no shortage of wannabe Commissioners of Twenty20 leagues around the world. Foremost among them seems to be a little-known Australian, Mike McKenna, the head of marketing for Cricket Australia and the project owner of the proposed Big Bash League (BBL). I must confess, I’ve heard of this man only recently, and I know next to nothing about him. But from what I have read about his ‘plans’ for the BBL so far, it seems me that he is from the league of marketing men who hate the very product that they are trying to sell, in this case, cricket.
Not all his ideas are radical. The Big Bash, until last year, was a T20 tournament which still had teams from the six Australian states that compete in their first-class structure. It will now feature eight franchises from six cities (Sydney and Melbourne will have two teams each). Most fans will be able to live with that.
Now come the really scary parts. If he has his way, the BBL will feature a designated ‘Super Over’ in every innings, in which the runs scored by the batting side will be doubled. This will ostensibly allow teams ‘to get back into the game’. There is also a proposal to allow a 12th man to enter the batting order as a pinch-hitter, essentially making it a 12-man game.
Scared yet? That’s not the end of it! He also has a proposal to allow only one fielder outside the 30-yard circle in the first five overs, two between overs 6 to 10, three between overs 11 to 15, and four between over 15 and 20. Also, as with the no-balls right now, even a wide will allow a batsman a free hit off the next ball.
And finally, McKenna also believes that the skill of maintaining a ball through an innings, a skill bowlers and fielders pay considerable attention to, is irrelevant. So every time the ball is hit into the crowd, the crowd will be able to keep it, and the bowler will be given a new ball.
Lalit Modi was not the purists’ darling by any stretch of the imagination. But to his credit, he never meddled with the basics of the game. The changes he brought to the game through the IPL were peripheral and related to its presentation and its economics. The players now make a fortune, which is good for them. The fans can live with the silly team names, the cheerleaders, the strategic time-outs because such things do not meddle with the basic tenets of the game. These are distractions outside the boundary which fans can choose to enjoy or ignore, depending on their disposition. But if McKenna’s proposals see the light of the day, then the tweaking of the rules of the game to ‘spice it up’ would go a bit too far.
My question is: Why does the game need to be spiced up using such artificial measures at all? Is the battle between bat and ball not exciting enough by itself? Aren’t the innate intricacies of the game, even the adrenaline-charged T20 version, not enough to attract viewers? If the answer is ‘No’, then I doubt gimmicks like the Super Over are going to change that answer and bring people to the stadiums in droves.
And why do the powers-that-be around the world think that the crowd only comes to watch sixes being hit? All the changes proposed for the BBL are scripted to tilt the game even more in the favour of batsmen. (Oh yes, there’s also proposal to increasing the limit of bouncers to two per over as well. Fast bowlers will see a ray of hope in that, but what about the spinners?) Hasn’t anyone realized yet that the roar from the crowd that greets a six can be dwarfed by the roar that emanates after a fall of a wicket? Give us cricket fans some credit, we are not completely stupid! We understand a little bit about cricket. We know that a low-scoring slugfest can be just as exciting as a high-scoring slog-fest, if not more!
The packaging of a product is something the marketing men pay special attention to, and deservedly so, but only a brave man will try to tamper with the product itself, especially when the product is a sport which has a large base of faithful followers who will turn up at the gates even without such gimmicks. In such situations, the cricket boards would do well to tell the marketing gurus to sell the product they have, not the product they wish they had! If cricket is tinkered with too much in an attempt to attract new fans, all it will do is alienate the real fans.
Left to men like McKenna, it seems that day is not far away. I hope for the sake of the game, that his proposals remain just that, proposals. And I also hope that no one at IPL gets inspired by such ideas!
(Akash Kaware is an Indian IT professional, who would’ve been a successful international cricketer if it hadn’t been for an annoying tendency to run towards square-leg while facing tennis, rubber or leather cricket balls hurled at anything more than genuine medium-pace! Watching Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid convinced him that breaking into the Indian team was not going to happen anytime soon and hence he settled to become an engineer and MBA, who occasionally wrote about cricket. A few months ago, sensing his uselessness and constant use of cricket websites at work, his company banished him to Canada. His hopes of playing international cricket have, thus, been renewed!)
