Cricket Premier Leagues – the Franchise Format.

Change is the name of the game !

World Series Cricket (WSC) was the first ever parallel professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979. Organized by Kerry Packer for his Australian television network, Channel Nine it was a break away tournament that laid seeds of modern cricket.

The matches were organised in competition to established international cricket due to the differences in allotment of telecast rights between the Australian Cricket Board & Channel Nine.

The teams were formed as 1.WSC Australia XI, 2.WSC West Indies XI & 3.WSC World XI. World Series Cricket drastically changed the perception of the game which stands even today.

Cricket is a game predominantly invented by the British and more or less all formats have begun with their authoritative stamp on it. The same applies to the advent of 20-20 cricket as the English & Wales Cricket Board introduced the world's first professional T20 league in the year 2003.

The inaugural season carried a very apt slogan, 'We don't like Cricket, We love it'.  After a series of sponsors having changed hands over the years, currently the tournament is conducted as the Vitality Blast.

The Essel Group is a large media group in India headed by Mr.Subhash Chandra Goel akin Kerry Packer's Channel 9 in Australia. The Indian Cricket League (ICL) was a private cricket league between 2007 and 2009 funded by Essel’s Zee Entertainment Enterprises. The league comprised of four international teams viz. the World XI, India, Lahore Badshahs of Pakistan and Dhaka Warriors of Bangladesh. It was complemented with nine domestic teams representing major Indian cities. The league came to a halt owing to lack of recognition from the BCCI & the ICC alike.

Spelling doom for the ICL, the BCCI gave birth to The Indian Premier League (IPL) which secured an exclusive window in the ICC Future Tours Programme. The IPL opened on a huge canvas in its first edition itself with the franchises getting sold out for a total of 723.59 million USD. The league's format was similar to that of the Premier League of England and NBA in the United States. The long tournament is played in a double Round Robin League and playoffs format.

The brand value of the league was estimated to around INR.475 billion in the last financial year. Given its share of controversies, the league has created a strong foundation and is all set to soar high year by year as an exclusive sporting league around the globe.

Counted amongst the top ten domestic sports leagues in average attendance, the Big Bash League (BBL) joined the T20 franchise caravan in 2011. Women's BBL was also annexed to the main tournament since 2015. Legends like Kiwi Stephen Fleming and Daniel Vettori are gunning for a Kiwi team to be included in the format and make it a Trans-Tasman affair as a part of the expansion programme.

Incorporated in 2012, the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) has a flavour of its own. Played on slow spinning tracks, it is the only franchise cricket tournament which churns out low scoring thrillers providing a different flair to the audiences. Owing to some disagreement between the BCB and the franchise owners, the 2020 version may not see franchise names competing with each other. Instead, it would be teams selected by the board vying for the coveted trophy.

The Inter-Provincial Twenty20 competition in Sri Lanka was replaced by the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) in 2012. But the tournament failed to take off after the inaugural year owing to poor response by sponsors.

The Caribbean Premier League or the CPL comes with a history of it’s own with the Stanford 20/20 being held in 2008. The current format is formalized since 2013. It is probably the only overseas Premier Leagues where Indians are present in some capacity. While Trinidad based Trinbago Knight Riders is related to the KKR franchise owners, stalwart Robin Singh is the head coach of St.Kitts & Nevis Patriots.

Incorporated in 2015, the Pakistan Super League scores a peculiar distinction of conducting the tournament out of the home country for the first five years. As opposed to the auction system for player recruitment, a draft system is put in place for player recruitment which is similar to North American professional sports leagues.

One of the late entrants of this cricketing frenzy are the Proteas with the Mzansi Super League making the cut in 2018. Initially, this tournament by the South African Board of Cricket was to get underway as The T20 Global League which was nipped in the bud.

Ironically, a Global League did take off in the northern hemisphere with the Global T20 Canada. ICC scored some brownie points in popularising the game by approving a league to be conducted in a country who is not a major cricketing nation. This league also has Indian representation in the form of Yuvraj Singh as the captain of Toronto Nationals and India’s 2007 T20 World Cup winning coach Lalchand Rajput as the coach at Winnipeg Hawks.

What the common cricket fan fails to understand is the non participation of Indian cricketers in premier leagues around the world. It’s high time BCCI stops it’s hypocritical policy and allow our domestic stars to shine on the global horizon. Now that the old guard is done and dusted, all eyes are on the enterprising Sourav Ganguly to take a fresh guard on the issue.

Well… that is Cricket. It teaches us to Think Big, Think Tall, Think Wide…. !