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The lights will come on at 7pm Friday at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore to herald a new era in the history of cricket. It will be a period in the game worth noting – when not the sport but the marketing of it will generate attention.
The last time such a thing happened was when a non-conformist millionaire called Kerry Packer introduced cricket under lights and made the cricketers wear coloured clothing. His marketing catchphrase was coined thus: ‘Big Boys Play At Night’. The game was transformed.
Since then cricket has made boundless strides, especially in the areas of commerce and marketing. The sport has been put through a series of litmus tests and repackaged today, not as a game but as pure entertainment.
The Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa proved to be an indicator of things to come. It was then that the Board of Control for Cricket In India (BCCI) announced their plans for the Indian Premier League (IPL), an eight-team franchise, consisting of cricketers who have been auctioned off to the highest bidders that would play in the game’s first professional Twenty20 competition.
Nothing but the biggest and the best would do for the BCCI and its marketing genius Lalit Modi. He has squeezed out the brightest stars in the game from their immediate commitments (even retirement for some!) and made them commit to the IPL. The players didn’t flinch. If it was a debate of money over principle, for some money won at the end of the day, thanks to the mega values that were put over their heads by owners.
It hasn’t just been the cricketers who have been stopped in their tracks either. The cream of the Indian corporate world and Bollywood has also been impressed. Megastars Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta, among others, have realised that they can now make more money from cricket than from films.
And the first ball has not been bowled yet!
And so the game moves forward.
Stadiums across India will host these much-hyped battles. Stadiums which until a few months ago did not provide proper drinking water for the paying spectators, or adequate safety standards or worse still even a bathroom to go to. These venues have still not been given a facelift but Modi means change.
Privatisation is the buzzword in India today. Which essentially means that you have to pay to visit the loo. But there’s always TV. The rights have been bought up for a staggering
$1 billion (Dhs 3.6bn). This means that we can all stay at home, curl up in front of the TV and watch the way the game changes.
Perhaps forever.
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