IPL and the world it will create

The Indian Premier League has produced some fascinating cricket in its fourth edition. Though it has not been as exciting as the previous ones, it has provided good quality cricket, especially in batting. As the IPL draws to  a close, one needs to ponder over the impact of league cricket as a whole. IPL has produced great young talent over the last few years. There are no two ways about it. The day-to-day intense pressure of the IPL has ensured that the youngsters are good enough at handling pressure situations. It showed in the World Cup victory. Moreover, it has ensured that cricket as a whole has transcended into households more than ever. But it has created its own set of problems too. One of the major issues is the club vs country row. The fact that players such as Chris Gayle and Pollard are playing in the IPL while the West Indies are struggling against Pakistan reflects the priorities of most players. [caption id=“attachment_14401” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“IPL is doing a lot of damage to international cricket. AFP”] [/caption] The fact that Sehwag chooses to play for the Delhi Daredevils by postponing his surgery and forgoes the West Indies tour speaks a lot. As the years go by, the importance attached to playing international cricket is likely to dwindle. The money at stake in the IPL is too big a temptation. The ICC is doing precious little to address the situation. Neither is it taking concrete steps to avert the problems created by the IPL (unlike in football where FIFA intervenes to ensure sanity) nor is it willing to create a separate window for the IPL. The lack of a proper mechanism to ensure priority to the country may end up compromising Test cricket. This is not a phenomenon affecting foreign players only, it affects India too. Rising stars of Indian cricket such as Praveen Kumar, Vinay Kumar, Paul Valtathy, are reported to have signed lucrative deals to play for the Sri Lankan Premier League which falls in July just ahead of the England tour. Paul Valtathy and Manish Pandey have never played for India. The rest of the entire gang has barely played for the country (less than 50 ODI’s) with most of them having ODI appearances in single digits. If the report is true, it is appalling that these stars have chosen to drain themselves in  SLPL rather than focus on the domestic circuit. Different countries having their own versions of the IPL squeezes the already cramped schedule of our cricketers. Wouldn’t the presence of such T20 tournaments further reduce the time for Test cricket since its the least economically productive among all the formats of the game? Secondly, if they play so much T20 cricket, won’t they be physically too tired to play for India? Wouldn’t it curtail the potential of a long career for these youngsters? Adding to all this is the money involved in these tournaments to lure away youngsters from national duty. In the cases above, the ICC looks clueless. I just hope 40 years down the road, the future generations don’t ask us what the term ‘Test cricket’ means.