Tough game awaits Essel's ICL event

Pakistani all-rounder Abdul Razzaq, who recently parted ways with the Indian Cricket League (ICL), is set to be the first cricketer to begin a new innings for his national team. But for ICL, the game may be all but over.

Promoted by India’s largest listed media group, Zee Entertainment Network, ICL officials are, however, confident that the next edition of the tournament will take place in November.

“We are not shutting shop. The League is on,” says a senior executive of ICL, which launched its ‘rebel’ cricket tournament — so called because it has been unable to gain recognition from the game’s world governing body, the International Cricket Council — in December 2007.

 

But the ground realities are different. ICL has already lost 79 players, or nearly 70 per cent, of its overall pool of players and over a dozen support staff to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which gave them amnesty.

Another 15 players have sent their request to the ICL’s top brass, seeking to be released from their contracts so that they can return to official cricket. That leaves just about a dozen, largely unknown, local players. Even in the best of times, ICL players were unable to attract eyeballs on Ten Sports and Zee Sports, the channels which telecast the matches.

The matches delivered ratings of less than 1 per cent as opposed to average ratings of 4 for the two seasons of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Media experts say it’s highly unlikely that advertisers would be interested in sponsoring a tournament which won’t even have yesterday’s stars such as Brian Lara, Inzamam-Ul-Haq or even Rohan Gavaskar — all of whom have been released by ICL.

The financials of the rebel league do not hold much promise either. If industry sources are to be believed, ICL may have invested close to Rs 180-190 crore since 2007 and got a return of just around Rs 35-40 crore. Of these investments, around Rs 20-25 crore went towards creating the infrastructure like stadium and related facilities in Panchkula near Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

A media consultant who tracks cricket said while infrastructure accounted for Rs 60-70 crore, production, broadcast, distribution and marketing of the event cost Rs 30-35 crore. The cost of the players worked out to another Rs 10 crore.

ICL executives declined to comment on the financials.

Compared with this, the IPL has been minting money since its launch in early 2008. Its telecast rights for the next nine years have been sold at Rs 8,200 crore to Multi Screen Media (Sony) and World Sport Group. As a television property, it has managed to generate over Rs 1,000 crore from on-air sponsporships and advertisements between IPL 1 and IPL 2, according to sources in media agencies. Besides, IPL teams are owned by industry leaders like Mukesh Ambani, Vijay Mallya, Shahrukh Khan and Ness Wadia, among others.

On the exodus of players, a senior Essel Group executive, however, said getting new players was not a problem and ICL would recruit fresh talent as and when the need arose. ICL still has 40-50 players on its roster.

The executive said it was significant that former Indian skipper Kapil Dev, who is the chairman of ICL’s Executive Board, and former Test wicketkeeper and Chief Selector Kiran More have still not severed their relations with the League.

But the going will still be tough. Former India all-rounder and coach Madan Lal, for example, told Reuters in an interview that he had quit as an ICL coach and felt the league could collapse due to a lack of matches and official approval.

“If you don’t play for six months, it is not good. And if you can’t play any other form of (official) cricket, how long can you just keep doing physical fitness?”

Apart from players, ICL also had a team of around 150-plus officials in various departments like marketing, broadcasting, events and finance, among others. Most of them have been either asked to go or have been absorbed internally in other arms of the Essel group, says a former ICL executive, requesting anonymity.

The executive said ICL had access to at least three cricket stadiums in Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad in which it organised its tournaments — including ICL20-20 World Series, ICL 20-20 Domestic tournament and ICL 20-20 Indian championships — between December 2007 and February 2009. It hopes to use these for the next edition of ICL as well.