Date:25/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/25/stories/2008052559721900.htm

Sport - Cricket

‘IPL could be the biggest reality show’

— FILE PHOTO

Lalit Modi.

In an interview with CNN’s Talk Asia, Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi discusses IPL’s genesis, its probable impact on international cricket, and Harbhajan Singh’s ban.

(Excerpts):

How did you go about taking a game that is so traditional, and turn it on its head to say, let’s do this another way and make sure that it works?

I didn’t go out actually and design the game — the game was designed by somebody in England. What happened is that we in India, had never embraced it and many countries around the world hadn’t taken it on. A year ago, when we were searching what we must do to survive domestic cricket, we said why don’t we look at a Twenty20 format?

The sceptics then said that Twenty20 is not a cricket format that anybody is going to follow, it’s not something that the public is going to embrace, it’s just gimmicks and bells and whistles and we did a lot of research and we found that if we took this three-hour format, it’s like a movie. And it’s probably going to be the biggest reality show if we are able to really make it competitive.

The IPL uses players from other countries. How does that fit in within the whole sort of Indian patriotism of this game?

This was a big question. One of the key factors for success of the IPL was, in my view prior of launching the IPL, was if you could see an Indian icon player getting out by a foreign player — for me that will be the test, a litmus test to decide whether the IPL worked and we saw that, Rahul Dravid the ex-captain of India came to play in Mumbai, he was booed by the fans. I didn’t think personally it would happen in the first season. I thought it would take a few years for that to develop, but it happened instantly and that too, is the biggest surprise.

Are people like Harbhajan Singh, repeat offenders, not giving the game, and by extension India, a bad name?

Yes they are and that’s why we took a very, very harsh step of doing what we did in terms of the penalties that we imposed on him (after the slapping incident). The BCCI gave him a further ban of 5 matches so they have reprimanded him very, very strongly.

They’ve (ICC) warned their players not to try and get out of scheduled tours so that they can play IPL. Are you worried that this might just be a passing fad for them (international players)?

Not really. Number one it’s the richest paying tournament to all the players. They make more money playing over a 6 to 8 week period than they make in probably 5 years for their country. And secondly this is an off-season tournament (for) most cricket boards apart from England.

And as far the ICC is concerned, and when you say that they’ve warned, it’s not ICC. ICC consists of its members and we are one of its members too. We all feel that there is no reason that we should cut back from our international tours and play the IPL or any other tournament. And I’m a big proponent of that myself because for me, I also am responsible for the BCCI’s marketing of the international tours and that for us is a golden goose.