The story behind English Counties bid to host the IPL - Cricket's very own Super League scandal

Is there a sport more steeped in tradition than that of cricket?

Certainly, its history and etiquette are, at least in my mind, unmatched by any other sporting contest around the globe and let's not forget that cricket matches are governed not by rules but by laws, a feature that seems to add to the permanency with which we view the game.

And yet in many ways, there is no other sport that can claim to have been as innovative as cricket has been.

Look back to the turn of the twentieth century and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a game of football then and a match taking place in the Premier League tomorrow or a fixture in the NBA vs a basketball match a hundred years ago.

Similarly, other global sports like golf and tennis which have rich histories in their own right haven't really changed much over the intervening years.

Sure, the athletes that compete in them have become bigger, faster and stronger as a result of modern training methods but the fundamental building blocks of these sports have stayed the same whereas cricket is ever-changing and evolving.

It's these opposite and seemingly contradictory forces that shape the way people think about the game of cricket especially in England where the traditional values the sport inspires are perhaps most keenly felt.

On one hand, this country is home to Lord's the spiritual home of cricket and the sanctuary of the MCC, an institution that holds the essence of everything we think we know about the traditional game of cricket. On the other, English cricket was the first to truly embrace the idea of the sport's latest incarnation, T20 cricket, which it delivered to the world not long after the turn of the 21st century.

Perhaps no one could have foreseen quite how successful this new short format of the sport would become in the couple of decades that have followed and a little bit like a new variant of Covid-19, it is fast becoming the dominant format of the sport as it sweeps across the globe in an unstoppable wave.

That of course doesn't please the traditionalists much who view the 120 ball game as a sideshow as opposed to the sport that they know and love and this summer it seems likely that these two opposing viewpoints are due to meet head-on in a clash that could determine the immediate and long-term future of the sport in England.

The Indian Premier League (IPL), king amongst the T20 franchise leagues and a tournament already worth billions of dollars a season is looking for a new home after the latest wave of Covid left India's society crippled and the 2021 season only half completed.

The likelihood of the season restarting in India this year seems remote given the crisis the country finds itself in and so the IPL is once again looking to move abroad. Previous versions of the tournament have taken place in the UAE and South Africa but it is now England's counties that are looking to seduce the BCCI and 8 IPL franchises into staging the remainder of the 2021 contest in the UK.

The reason as to why they may want to do this is a pretty obvious one - money!

After a season and a half of either no fans or very few fans in stadiums, all of the English counties, as well as the ECB itself, find themselves strapped for cash and the prospect of hosting games where some of the biggest names in the sport will be strutting their stuff is just too good an opportunity to miss.

Indeed, we forget in the UK how fortunate we are in terms of still getting people through the gates to watch cricket matches in person and the chief revenue earner, particularly for those grounds that don't host international games, is the T20 cricket which on balmy English summer nights will see sell-out crowds at even the most dilapidated of County grounds.

Like it or not, therefore, T20 cricket is an essential part of the game for no other reason than it funds the longer formats which certainly at a domestic level in this country are not financially viable.

However, there is more to this story than just the immediate cash injection that hosting the IPL in England would bring and that is what any potential deal between the ECB and BBCI might signal in the medium to long term.

Ever since the birth of the Indian Premier League back in 2007, Indian players have been forbidden to take part in any other domestic T20 competition around the globe. The price for jumping ship to another league is essentially to have your registration as a first-class cricketer in India cancelled preventing you from playing any level of professional cricket there.

With India being a country of a billion people and cricket being the number 1 sport in that vast nation the reason for the BCCI being so unwilling to share their prize assets is clear - they want to keep India's cricket-loving audience solely focused on the IPL which they control and which they profit from, a tactic which is paying dividends!

However, there is a very real chance that the BCCI's stance on the matter is beginning to soften when it comes to the ECB's new franchise league The Hundred.

As noted above, while English cricket gave birth to the T20 format it has since then been one the slowest to really look to cash in on the game by creating a franchise league. Again, we are caught between the 2 opposing forces of traditionalism on one hand and innovation and progress on the other. The domestic T20 game in this country has remained as a county game involving all 18 first-class sides.

While, the likes of India, Australia, the West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have all moved towards franchised T20 leagues, England has remained steadfast in its opinion that domestic cricket must be played by its traditional 18 first-class counties. What the future of some of these counties is and how long they can continue to operate is another question in its own right. Suffice to say that while the marketing and money men bashed their heads against the wall of centuries of tradition, the franchise leagues of the IPL, BBL, CPL, PSL, etc, etc have surged ahead of England's T20 Blast competition.

Then someone at the ECB had the bright idea that the way to breach this impasse was simple, innovate again, create a new format and this time don't give it to the counties at all, just go straight into a franchised league! Out of this was born the bastardised child of T20 cricket, The Hundred!

Is The Hundred a good idea? I'm not particularly convinced by any of the arguments that I've heard from a cricketing or even a fan perspective that it will provide a better spectacle than we already have with T20 cricket. So why go ahead with it?

It seems clear to me that the reason once again is money, and more specifically Indian money!

There are already rumours that the ECB has held talks with the BCCI about the potential of Indian players playing in The Hundred. On the face of it, this would seem a great idea and opportunity until you understand that the price for the involvement of the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah would be for either partial or total control of one or several of The Hundred's franchises by Indian investors.

This is a not unprecedented move of course with the CPL already containing The Trinbago Knight Riders, a franchise owned by the same Indian based investors who control the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL.

When you consider that these kinds of talks have already taken place before a ball has even been bowled in this new format then the reason for the ECB creating The Hundred becomes more apparent and that is to attract that Indian investment in the first place!

The challenge of Indian broadcasters and advertisers is, of course, to keep cricket on television screens 12 months of a year and in that respect, only England provides high-level cricket between about June and August. You can expect India or the IPL to be playing cricket for the other 9 months of the year but except when the national team tours England which occurs about once every 3 years there will remain a couple of fallow seasons where TV schedules need to be filled - The Hundred could well help to plug that gap.

Equally, the fact that the ECB have opted to shave off 40 balls from the original T20 format also makes sense when you consider the challenge of meeting the 4 and half hour time difference between the UK and India. Most IPL matches start at 7:30pm local time in India and often continue on to midnight. However, a T20 game in England that starts at 6:00pm in the UK (10:30pm in India) and could last until 10:00pm (2:30am in India) was never likely to gain the necessary viewing figures to make it particularly attractive. The Hundred's shortened playing time though would pull it well back into those peak viewing times in the subcontinent that would surely be a must before any serious Indian investors would likely get involved.

It seems then in a slightly more subtle way that English cricket is about to face the same kind of strains and stresses that football's recent failed attempt to create a European Super League has seen.

The BCCI has recently made a request for the Test series between England and India to be shifted to allow for a gap in their schedule to finish the aborted IPL 2021 season. It is thought that the ECB is willing to consider this request if the BCCI plays those same IPL matches in England.

Such a move would signal that the ECB now officially rates T20 cricket as more significant than English Test cricket. Longer-term and assuming that the IPL being staged in England proves a success, it will almost certainly accelerate the ECB's plans to sell-off part of their new franchise league.

The bottom line then is that much as was the case with football's proposed European Super League, the interests of local, traditional fans are being traded for a potentially larger and more lucrative global audience while simultaneously the sport's financial pyramid that has sustained the traditional County game is also likely to be reshaped as foreign investors with no interest in English grassroots cricket come in to take their slice of the pie.

It looks then that English cricket could well be in for a summer of discontent.