The week that changed cricket forever

The extraordinary sale of international players at an auction in Mumbai on Wednesday marked a new era in which rewards will start to rival those of footballers

'Without a doubt our objective is to be bigger than the English Premier League' - Lalit Modi, Indian Premier League chairman and commissioner
'What is sad is that within five years maybe international cricket will no longer exist because of the IPL' - Kapil Dev, Wisden India Cricketer of the 20th century
Midday, New Delhi, 20 February 2008. Kapil Dev drinks sugared coffee in his plush apartment in Greater Kailash, an affluent part of the Indian capital. The only man to captain his country to victory in cricket's World Cup cannot stop glancing at the television screen blinking away in the background as it relays news of the extraordinary auction of Indian Premier League players at a Mumbai hotel.

Kapil is the public face of the Indian Cricket League, the country's first Twenty20 competition, and detested rival of the IPL. The player who beat Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar to the accolade of Wisden's best Indian cricketer of the 20th century is supposed to be talking up his T20 competition this morning, and looking forward to its second edition, which begins next month. He makes an admirable attempt. Yet, after an opening tournament before Christmas that included England players Paul Nixon, Chris Read, Vikram Solanki and Darren Maddy, the ICL has become a footnote, at best. And Kapil, however much he twinkles, seems to sense it.
Instead it is the IPL that is transfixing India's cricket-crazy population of 1.2 billion. The eight-franchise T20 league was launched by a furious Indian cricket board [BCCI] in reaction to the creation of the ICL by Subhash Chandra, owner of Zee-TV - one of India's biggest broadcast companies. Now, while Kapil feigns indifference, on Mumbai's waterfront Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta and billionaires including Vijay Mallya, owner of the Force India Formula One team, are haggling over some of sport's most elite flesh.
By the day's end, 78 of the world's best cricketers have passed under the gavel of Richard Madley - an English auctioneer more used to punting cricket bats - and Khan and Zinta's press conference has added a further sprinkle of stardust.
Kapil's successful leadership of India's 1983 World Cup campaign did much to ignite the love of the shortened game on the subcontinent that began the shift of power in world cricket to this region. Stadiums sold out for one-day internationals, bringing massive revenues in advertising and sponsorship. When Kapil's countryman Jagmohan Dalmiya became president of the ICC in 1997, cricket's new order was firmly in place. It is the fruits of this transformation that would seem to have been fully realised on Wednesday.
But now Kapil has fallen out seriously with the BCCI. Once accused of match-fixing by an Indian board official, Kapil had the pension he receives as a former India player suspended because of his involvement with the ICL, whose players are banned from representing India.
Despite all the acrimony, Kapil cannot hide his fascination with the waterfront action. 'I don't know what's going on down there with this auction,' he says with a grin. 'I just cannot tell.'
What Kapil and the watching millions witnessed was a day that changed cricket forever - one that could also have serious implications for the future of sport in general over the coming decades. Attended by a media scrum described by one BBC correspondent as more frantic than the day Britain decided to go to war in Iraq, the auction raised enough for £21m to go straight into the players' pockets for a maximum of 44 days' work. India's captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, was the biggest winner, pulling in around £750,000. Sri Lanka's Chamara Silva, the least valued player, still earned himself £50,000 despite having played only nine Tests.
All this was for a competition that, until it actually begins on 18 April, no one can know exactly how it will be received by its core constituency, the Indian public. But Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner who masterminded proceedings, is more than confident.
'Oh, I'm extremely happy,' he tells Observer Sport when the media frenzy has moved on to issues such as which teams have been the shrewdest spenders - Hyderabad with Adam Gilchrist and company, apparently - and a rumour concerning clandestine meetings between Modi and some of the franchise owners on the eve of the bid.
'It has gone beyond our expectations and is so exciting to see. We have the right building blocks of the right bodies, right format and right players,' says Modi, a man of considerable private means having been born to a wealthy family. 'The next step is to make the competition a good experience for the fans. We researched it properly and studied the right models and structures and got powerful people to buy into it.'
Modi is also the BCCI's vice-president and marketing director and his delight is hardly surprising when considering the sums he has engineered. The broadcast rights were sold for $918 million (£450m) for the next 10 years.
In its 44 days of competition - run on a league format - there will be 59 IPL games. Each yearly instalment of six weeks, then, has gone for around £45m.
The current four-year deal for the total broadcast rights to English football's Premier League was £2.7bn, around four times what Modi pulled off. But the football season is six times longer than an edition of the IPL. And, it took the Premier League 15 years to build those figures.
Suddenly America and Europe, sport's traditional powerbase, have a new challenger. 'We studied the English Premier League, the European football leagues and American sports,' says Modi, 44, who spent much of his youth in the US learning about sports marketing, 'and took a piece from each. But the IPL is based primarily on the English Premier League. Except the EPL does not have player caps [limits on wages and transfer fees], which has advantages and disadvantages. The IPL does. We're starting a new product and wanted to ensure that all teams are strong, and not too small beforehand.
'Sure, some players will earn a lot. And some not so much. But there are opportunities for local players and youngsters will get their chance,' he says of a rule that dictates no more than four overseas players can play in a match. 'In [this kind of weighting] there is a similarity to how the National Football League organises itself. But the EPL is gigantic, that's our model - we want to have a solid footing over the next three years.'
Modi is confident all of the IPL investors will be rewarded. While Sony, the broadcaster, has to sell a 10-second advertising slot for £3,250 to recoup its outlay, Modi calmly states: 'I hope the club owners can make money from this.' These are led by Khan and Zinta, who, respectively, part-own Team Kolkata and Team Mohali. The remaining six franchises are controlled by an array of Indian corporations, and the tycoon Mallya, who also owns the I-League football clubs, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan.
'The owners receive 80 per cent of the broadcast rights, 60 per cent of sponsorship, 87.5 per cent of merchandising and all of the gate receipts and team sponsorship amounts,' Modi says.
The total paid for the franchises was $756m, which is about £45m a team. A low-ranking Premier League club free of debt would probably be satisfied with that valuation, which Modi has created in less than 12 months. He is certainly candid about the ambition of the IPL. 'Yes, the English Premier League earns lots of money,' he says. 'But there are over a billion people in India and then there are all the other cricket lovers around the world.
'Our objective is to be bigger than the EPL, definitely. This is not just about the Asian community in India or elsewhere. My son's favourite football team is Manchester United, so why could this not happen the other way round?'
On Friday, The Times of India offered one answer. 'Harbhajan Singh has enjoyed almost demi-god status while playing in Mohali,' it said, 'but will the local crowd be supportive if he dismisses Yuvraj Singh while playing for Mumbai?'
Alongside accusations of greed, it is this claim of a lack of tradition that forms the main argument against Modi and the IPL - that an artificially created contest between players whose loyalty is only to their immense salary will be reflected in disappointing crowds unsure which local hero to cheer.
Modi, though, hardly seems to care. In a further indication of just who now holds the power in world cricket, he was dismissive of the ICC's proposal, tabled on Thursday, that an official window for the IPL should not be created in the international calendar. This is due to be ratified next month, but Modi is not moved. 'I'm not concerned. Most countries' season ends in March, apart from the West Indies and England,' he says, apparently dismissive that English cricket's pre-season will prevent Kevin Pietersen and company playing unless an official window is created. 'Our time of year [for the IPL] has traditionally been free, it is a natural window - and I'm sure that will stay.'
And what of the ICL, which was created when Chandra's offer for the rights to India's internationals was refused by the BCCI? 'The ICL was created for profit, and for television. Not for fans,' Modi says. 'It has no infrastructure [all of the first competition was played at a single ground], whereas the BCCI owns stadiums all over India. It is owned by one man who can only do so much. We have eight owners who will want to win all the time.'
So what, then, are the true implications of this past week in India? If the power of world cricket is now firmly in India and in the hands of tycoons and corporations, what of the future for the game's traditional forms? Asked if success for the IPL might lead to 'Test' matches between the franchises, Modi does not completely rule out the prospect. 'We will try and play exhibition matches. But the IPL is a Twenty20 competition. So I don't think so,' he says.
Yet what is revealing is that Modi now considers himself to be in a position where he can seriously consider such a question, which should surely be enough to send a shudder through the ICC.
It is inevitably reminiscent of Kerry Packer's breakaway World Series Cricket in the 1970s - the first important wresting of power from the old guard. Brett Lee, who cost Mohali around £400,000, agrees. 'If we look back in 10 years this is going to be a massive landmark - like when the World Series started,' the Australia fast bowler says.
Will it, then, ultimately be the end of the ICC? 'It is not part of their mandate. Theirs is international cricket, this is a domestic league,' Modi says, again seeming to rule nothing out. 'India didn't have a good domestic competition with international players. This will.'
Kapil Dev is not sure. 'One should first [want to] represent one's country because that is the most important thing. I would never want to see the boys come out and say, "I play for my club, not my country."
'The thing now is to watch. What will happen over the next five years?' he says, pointing at the television. 'This could be the end of international cricket. Who actually, really, knows?'