Angered cricket fans add poll twist
By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - Elections in the world's largest democracy and "television's ultimate
reality show" have collided in a clash of big stakes and high drama peculiar to
the sub-continent. India's US$1.75 billion Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20
has suddenly been shifted to take place in South Africa, over security concerns
about overlapping schedules of next month's polls and the cricket league.
Hurried efforts at rescheduling the IPL tournament to be played on alternative
dates in India failed, as Delhi considered the general elections, from April 16
to May 13, and the IPL, from April 10 to May 24, as too big a double task for
the security forces to handle. The government already has had to commit forces
to protect 800,000 polling booths across India. South Africa, incidentally, is
heading for general elections during the IPL tournament.
Security has become a major issue following the terror attacks in Mumbai last
November, in which nearly 200 people were killed, and the attack on the Sri
Lankan cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore this month. None of the
players were killed in this incident, although several were injured.
The second round of the one-year-old IPL, Asia's richest and the world's
fastest-growing city franchisee-owned sports league, is now being outsourced
from the country that put outsourcing on the map.
The IPL embraces a shortened version of cricket. The traditional version is the
Test, which is played over five days and during which each team can bowl as
many overs of six balls each to the opposition team. In another version, played
over one day, each team bowls 50 overs. In IPL, the teams bowl only 20 overs
each, making for a fast and furious spectacle that lasts only a few hours and
which has captured the imagination of fans around the would, although purists
still have their doubts.
The inaugural 2008 IPL tournament started on April 18, 2008 and lasted for 44
days, with 56 matches played by eight teams which were created by franchises
being auctioned. A novel feature of the teams was that Indian players and
others from around the world were bid for - the best being secured for millions
of dollars for the duration of the "season".
The second season of the tournament is now expected to start on April 18, with
the venues in South Africa still to be announced. England was also considered
as an alternative venue, but was apparently ruled out because of its inclement
spring weather.
"I apologize to the people of India. But we're going ahead so they can at least
watch the event on TV," said Sashank Manohar, the president of the Board of
Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The switch is a massive bonus for South Africa, which will also host the 2010
World Cup soccer tournament and which is also due in September to stage the
Champions Trophy, that had been scheduled for Sri Lanka. Pakistan was
originally due to host the one-day cricket international competition last year,
but it was postponed over security concerns. It was then rescheduled for Sri
Lanka, but moved again over wet weather concerns.
Much as Indians will be dismayed at losing the IPL, which had instantly become
a hit tournament, South Africa has an estimated 1.2 million Asians - about 2%
of the total population - as well as long-standing cultural ties with India.
Mahatma Gandhi, the "Father" of modern India, for instance spent 21 years in
South Africa, from where his life changed from being a lawyer to that of a
national leader.
Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, is reported as saying that the South African
economy will benefit enormously from staging the tournament. Speaking at a
press conference in Johannesburg, Modi said the influx of players, coaches,
support staff, media and spectators would inject many millions of dollars into
the country's economy over the five weeks of the league.
"At any given point of time, we have 10,000 people working on this tournament.
South Africa will benefit a lot. We will be using 30,000 rooms in hotels and
10,000 airline tickets will be needed for the purpose of this tournament," Modi
said.
Possible South African cities being the unexpected hosts to matches between IPL
teams such as the Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils and
Kolkata Knight Riders could be Durban, which has the country's biggest ethnic
Indian population, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Benoni, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth,
Bloemfontein and Potchesfstroom.
While Cape Town, host to the IPL's opening ceremony, could be resounding to vuvuzele,
a one-tone musical horn, and a colorful sea of makarapas, construction
safety helmets turned into tribal party hats, the Congress, the lead party in
India's ruling coalition, is starting to pay politically for the loss of the
tournament. Media surveys showed 40% to 70% of respondents blamed the
government for the IPL leaving.
The government is now in damage-control mode right in the middle of the general
election campaign and opposition political parties, smelling blood as election
salvos heat up the Indian summer, have called the development a "national
shame".
A defensive Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram called the decision "hasty"
and claimed the BCCI made the move without consulting the government.
"It will be difficult to provide adequate paramilitary forces for election
purposes and for the IPL," said Chidambaram, a Harvard-educated lawyer and
former finance minister who took over the Home Ministry after the November 26
terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promptly blasted the government for
"surrendering to terrorists". The BJP, the main opposition party, is under
siege after one of its young leaders, Varun Gandhi, grandson of former prime
minister Indira Gandhi and nephew of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, was
censured by the Election Commission for making a crude hate speech against
Muslims. This took place in an election rally in his constituency Pilibhit in
Uttar Pradesh, a key electoral state.
The IPL controversy has given the BJP, which is trailing in opinion polls, some
timely ammunition to gain ground. "It has sent a message that India is not a
safe country," said Arun Jaitley, BJP general secretary and president of the
Delhi Cricket Association. He has called the IPL relocation a "governmental
failure to provide security".
The political explosion has left the Congress, which heads the ruling United
Progressive Alliance coalition, as the worst-affected. It was in a no-win
situation: now it is blamed for the hugely popular IPL leaving India, but it
would have been equally ripped apart if any violent incident had happened
during the tournament.
The IPL has become India's most popular international brand in just a year.
"TV's ultimate reality show," is how Sneha Rajani, executive vice president of
TV rights holders SET Max, described the tournament.
The IPL will be beamed out of South Africa at 4.00 pm and 8.00 pm Indian
standard time. Just under 100 million people out of India's total trackable 131
million TV audience saw the inaugural IPL edition last April, according to an
estimate in a leading news weekly India Today, including a record audience
among women and children.
Besides TV audiences in the Asia-Pacific, North America and Europe, such was
the pan-global popularity of the IPL in its first edition that Arab Digital
Distribution, a Middle Eastern pay-TV management company, has bought the
10-year TV rights for Middle East and African countries. This included the
United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman,
Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Sudan. It
was unthinkable two years ago that an Indian cricket tournament would have a
following in Libya.
"The IPL is unquestionably the world's richest cricket league, and
unquestionably the biggest sports concept launched anywhere in the world in
recent years," Modi told Asia Times Online last year - three months before it
started. "We expect IPL to have a greater following outside Asia than any other
sports league that takes place in the continent."
Modi and his close associate Inderjit Singh Bindra, an IPL council member and
the principal advisor to the Dubai-based International Cricket Council, the
game's governing body, were accurate in their gung-ho optimism. In April 2005,
Bindra told Asia Times Online that the BCCI would be worth $2 billion in four
years ( See Cricket's
home moves closer to the money Asia Times Online, April 23, 2005.) Both
Modi and Bindra have their chance now to further expand the IPL's popularity
outside Asia.
Besides the IPL TV audience of nearly 100 million, hundreds of thousands of
fans ecstatically packed stadiums in 2008.
This correspondent experienced the IPL wonder in Mumbai's Wankhede stadium, for
three matches, as house-full crowds were treated to high-quality cricket,
rousing music, drum-beating bands in traditional costumes, ushers showing fans
to seats, imported cheerleading teams and fireworks lighting up the night sky -
all in an enthralling three-hour package involving top international stars
playing together as team mates for the first time.
"IPL breaks heart of fans across the country," mourned the headline in the
Times of India, the largest-circulated English daily in the sub-continent. The
shift out of India was the front-page lead story in dailies and dominated TV
news channels, in the middle of the general election campaign.
The move to South Africa leaves millions of disappointed Indian fans -
translate them now as voters - and nervous franchisee team owners trying to
recover multi-million dollar investments.
The eight IPL teams each cost between the $65 million that Emerging Media - a
consortium that includes media baron Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan and Hollywood
star Russell Crowe - paid for the Rajasthan Royals team, to $111.9 million that
billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani paid for the Mumbai Indians as the most
expensive IPL team.
Other IPL team owners are a mix of top industrialists and India's leading movie
stars, such as Shahrukh Khan and Juhi Chawla who co-own the Kolkata Night
Riders, and Preity Zinta, co-owner of the Kings XI Punjab team.
But such was the astounding success of the first IPL edition that the Rajasthan
Royals, winner of the inaugural tournament, had its valuation more than double
in a year to $140 million in 2009.
"The IPL is recession-free," the private-jet owning Modi said in February,
after the second edition of player auctions saw two England players - Andrew
Flintoff and South African-born Kevin Pietersen - earn contracts worth $1.6
million and $1.2 million respectively for a possible six weeks of work and
play.
While the IPL move could be a blessing in disguise to boost its global growth,
the ruling Congress party-led coalition could pay dearly at the polls for this
perceived "national shame" and its "surrender to terrorists".
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