IPL: The Fun has gone [to South Africa]

IPL : THE FUN HAS GONE [to South Africa]
by Prayaag Akbar
(cover special, Covert Magazine)

At 9 p.m. on 20 April, outside the Members Entrance of the Sahara Newlands Stadium at Cape Town, a thick swarm of teenage girls of Indian origin stand with autograph books and pens poised. A flutter passes through the crowd every time the thick panelled door is opened by an attendant to release another of the group of dignitaries who have travelled to Cape Town for the second edition of the Twenty20 Indian Premier League. In the background brothers and boyfriends hold cameras and mutter disconsolately, while the younger girls are accompanied by mothers who can barely conceal their own excitement. The movers and shakers of India’s financial and sporting firmament walk out of the door, but the Indian immigrant community of South Africa, most descendants of indentured workers brought to the continent in the 19th century, cares little when they realise it is not the one they wait for. They stand in the drizzle for one man alone — Mr Shah Rukh Khan.

It is not clear how much of the success of Lalit Modi’s pet venture [and the enforced globalization of the IPL in its second year has perhaps cemented its success] is down to Modi’s shrewd capitalisation on the extraordinary draw that Bollywood holds for Indians in India and abroad. Even cricket-loving white and black South Africans, whose knowledge of India’s film industry remains minimal, seem further drawn to it because of the glamour it is already associated with.

After all, purely from a cricket perspective, in the swinging, cloud-covered conditions in South Africa, the players’ displays in this smash-bang version of the game have often been some distance from exhilarating. Modi will be aware that the allure of the league rests on the subliminal thread that has wrapped the IPL and Bollywood together. Every day, local newspapers feature huge photographs of Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta, Akshay Kumar, and indubitably the biggest of all, Shah Rukh, their eyes shaded from the intermittent sun by huge glasses, waving the flags of their teams or sporting their colours. This is not to suggest that the cricket has taken a backstage in this sports-mad country. It is just that by inviting Bollywood to the party, cricket is no longer the biggest show in town.

But Modi, Niranjan Shah, I.S. Bindra and the rest of the tournament’s promoters will not be complaining, because in its second season the IPL already looks an unstoppable force, ready to revolutionise the sport both domestically and internationally. The IPL already generates substantially more revenue than any six-week international tour could ever manage — see below for detailed figures — and there is no denying the possibility of further encroachments on an already packed international calendar if it continues in this vein. If Modi and BCCI supremo Sharad Pawar figure out a way to adequately compensate foreign players and the national boards of the major cricket playing countries, this cricketing super league only stands to grow and grow, carrying this truncated version of an age-old game on its back.

CIRCUS OLE: INDIA’S ANSWER TO FORMULA 1

The luminescence of the league can be judged by the size of the moths it draws: on the opening day of the tournament, seated in the magnificent President’s Box at Newlands, are some heavy hitters indeed. The owners of various teams drift in and out of their personal boxes, an inventory list of industrialist scions and Bollywood power brokers: Mukesh Ambani walks by in a surprisingly casual outfit, rubbing shoulders with Ness Wadia, Dabur heir Mohit Burman, Daredevils’ owner G.M Rao’s son-in-law Sreenivas Bomidala. The Indian film industry, of course, is out in full force. Shah Rukh has brought his family and assorted retinue. Preity Zinta is there, accompanied by two massive security guards, whose primary duties seem to be holding her umbrella when it is raining and waving the Kings XI flag when it is not. Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra are also there with their families — they get to the stadium and back in a flaming orange Lamborghini Gallardo, just one of the luxuries that team owners are according themselves. As one BCCI functionary sitting in the box proudly says, “Vijay Mallya is the only one who has not made it for the opening day, and that’s because Force India has a race this weekend. He could not make it, but everyone else is here. He’ll be there for their next game.”

One consequence of Bollywood’s involvement is their domination of camera time in between balls and overs. When a Kings XI Punjab batsman hits a six, or a Kolkata Knight Riders bowler takes a wicket, the natural reaction of the cameramen and producers is to pan to Preity or Shah Rukh to capture the delight or dismay of one of India’s beautiful people. The other owners do not quite hold the same pulling power. One of the owners of a team sent his bodyguard to have a quiet word with the television producer to make sure he was accorded an adequate share of screen time. It seems even the rich and successful are subject to the vagaries of vanity.

With so many of the glitterati around, it is no wonder that the nightlife that surrounds the IPL does not slow down even in South Africa. Just as in Formula 1, where a huge cast of owners, drivers and technicians travel to a different spot on the globe every two weeks, what happens on the field during the IPL is the precursor to a whole lot more. Last year it was a succession of private parties, where every night owners would throw lavish affairs where the cricketers and administrators could let their hair down after 20 strenuous overs in the field. This year, perhaps because of the recession, perhaps because it is in South Africa and every company associated has sent only the bare minimum of staff, private parties are no longer the norm.

Now the nightclubs of South Africa are filled with cricketers, primarily of the English and Australian variety. The Indian players venture out from time to time, but despite pretences, South Africa is still divided along a gaping racial fault line. In most exclusive nightclubs in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, brown and black faces are not customary. Even during the IPL, these clubs are filled predominantly with shining blonde hair. The younger Indian players, who are usually the ones seen out at night, mostly stand around looking awkward. It is the owners of the teams and their friends who come home every morning as the rooster crows.

MONEY TALKS AND CRICKET WALKS

Compare the incentives that Modi is presenting to Pawar, the BCCI and everyone who makes their money from cricket with what they were earning before, and you understand why the former chief of the Rajasthan Cricket Association has been able to weather allegations of financial impropriety, ally Vasundhara Raje’s removal as the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, and various other controversies that might have shipwrecked less hardy voyagers, to emerge as cricket’s great new hope. For the BCCI alone, the revenues pulled in through the tournament are enormous. The television deal with Sony Entertainment Television alone provides Rs 900 crore; Rs 150 crore is channelled into their coffers via central sponsorships; a further Rs 300 crore is paid to them in total each year from the eight franchisees. That is Rs 1,350 crore for six weeks of the BCCI and the Indian national team’s time. Before the IPL the BCCI’s revenues already dwarfed the revenues of the other national boards like America’s GDP dwarfs the GDPs of the rest of the world. Still, they would only generate about Rs 750 crore in an entire year. The arithmetic is simple, and Modi is now seen by sport officials around the world as the herald of cricket’s brave new dawn, just as the promoters of the English Premier League were seen as the men who revolutionised football in England and consequently the world.

The figures discussed here, of course, are only the direct revenues generated for the BCCI by the IPL. Then you have to count the money being made by the gamut of institutions that constitute that essential periphery of the sport: television channel partners, event management companies, sports marketing agencies, advertising firms, airlines, shoe manufacturers, security agencies and travel bureaus. Modi’s venture is making all these people a whole lot of money. As a result, his vision for the game is slowly being accepted as the vision of the game.

Though the majority of the money for the IPL derives from television, Modi is shrewd enough to know, this year’s election induced aberration aside, in the future the league’s matches must be played in India. The screaming passion of teams playing in front of their home audiences adds the vitality that is missing from this second edition. Dhoni and Tendulkar have both said that playing in South Africa has resulted in a diminishment of the charm of the league. Some reinvention will also be required if the league is to continue to be as successful every year. The playing rosters of some of the teams are a whisker away from elderly — players like Sanath Jayasuriya, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath and Saurav Ganguly might all not be there next year. The chat surrounding the Kolkata team is not only about the alarming rate at which Ganguly is losing his hair, but also about whether he retains the ability to perform at this level. Most important, however, is that the circus returns to India, for cricket’s biggest circus it most certainly is [¼]