Before 1986, the big battles of Indian football among sides like East Bengal, Mohammadan Sporting and Mohun Bagan used to be the rage. At Delhi’s Ambedkar stadium - invariably full to the brim with spectators screaming at the top of their voices - even some below par football and average set of footballers from this holy trinity always threatened to acquire the aura reserved only for international stars.
That was till the World Cup featuring iconic Maradona, and over 50 live matches, was telecast in the summer of 86.
The quality of football took the whole generation of impressionable age by the storm. The attendance at domestic matches, in most parts of India, suddenly plummeted. They had seen real football!
One can expect similar thing when the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s brainchild Indian Premier League (and Champions League) take on the Indian Cricket League.
With top international stars and club teams vying with each other to be a part of the IPL, on paper, Zee’s Indian Cricket League stands no chance.
Surely, in Glenn McGrath versus Dinesh Mongia, or Ricky Ponting versus Rohan Gavaskar, the battle for the eyeball is always going to be one-sided. It will be naïve to expect anything else. While ICL may still attract some viewership due to local interest and DTH platform, it will be more or less a loss-making venture, and Subhash Chandra is a businessman who is as much interested in profit, as in cricket.
Saving ICL
After the latest development, only one route remains for the ICL. And that is to challenge the authority of ICC, not just the BCCI. It will desperately need to launch a different set of national teams, united by an apex international body along the lines of ICC. The latest development may have left it with no other alternative.
Nothing motivates people like watching their national teams in action, and domestic cricket is simply no good. Check out the attendance at Ranji matches even involving teams like Mumbai, Punjab, Delhi and Karnataka, and compare that with an ODI between India and Kenya! So ICL simply can’t survive without spreading the movement beyond India. If they do not expand, they will perish
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