Where Is Cricket Heading In The Eyes Of BCCI?
BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah had their say after the evaluation of the IPL media rights.
The beginning of the Indian Premier League was a revolutionary move in world cricket. It helped the BCCI to sell the entertainment part of the sport which eventually led to an increase in the value of the league.
The value of the league kept growing and in the last week, everyone saw how much the business people saw IPL expanding in the next five years. Businesses evaluated that the per match value of an IPL is more than INR 107 crores - only behind NFL in the per match value.
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The total value of INR 48,390.5 crore for the 2023-27 cycle is 2.96 times or 196% higher than the previous IPL rights deal (2018-22) of INR 16,347.5 crore.
On this mega IPL media rights deal, BCCI president and former India captain Sourav Ganguly was confident to invest the money in the growth of the game at the grassroots level.
"This is a big opportunity to further strengthen Indian Cricket. This will help the BCCI create even stronger infrastructure. The money needs to go to the grassroots This also allows the board to raise the player fees across age groups and genders," Ganguly said in an interview with Times Of India.
BCCI secretary, Jay Shah, was also quite happy with the kind of numbers achieved and watching the growth potential of Indian cricket.
"I am really happy with the kind of numbers that we have achieved. This shows the phenomenal growth potential of Indian cricket. The auction was always going to be exciting for every stakeholder. We have been able to realise the true value and the numbers in front of you is a testimony to that," Shah said as quoted by Sportstar.
Further, the BCCI secretary 'informed' that IPL will have a bigger official window so that more and more international cricketers can participate.
"Let me inform you that from the next ICC FTP calendar, IPL will have an official two-and-a-half-month window so that all the top international cricketers can participate. We have had discussions with various boards as well as the ICC," Shah said.
However, Ganguly was confident that international cricket won't get impacted despite the bigger window proposed by the BCCI.
"Bilateral tours will continue. The IPL is an Indian tournament. Bilateral tours are for the rest of the world to generate revenue. Players from other countries need Bilateral series. For the next two years, IPL will continue to have 74 matches. The next Future Tours Programme cycle will have to be carefully worked out," Ganguly said to TOI.
Even Jay Shah had similar thoughts of letting the smaller cricketing nations also earn revenue by playing bilaterals.
"Indian cricket will remain strong as long as world cricket remains strong. Let me assure you of this. The BCCI is committed to international cricket. And it's not just about India vs Australia or India vs England marquee series, we are committed to playing even the smaller nations. All bilateral international commitments across all formats will be honoured. We are playing Ireland in two T20 Internationals this month only. We want a strong robust international circuit and want to help the smaller cricketing nations by playing against them," he said to PTI.
The BCCI also has thought all about how the Indian cricket team will work in the upcoming years where a 50-player roster will be available and more than one team will play at the same time in two different series.
“I have had discussions with NCA head VVS Laxman and we will always have 50 players in our roster. In future, you will have a scenario, where the Indian Test team will be playing a series in one country and the white-ball team will be engaged in a series in a different country. We are going in that direction where we will have two national teams ready at the same time,” Jay Shah said.
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Even though this might look a bit complicated currently but looking at how BCCI has planned and promised things on such a large scale, the future of cricket is looking for a massive change that will not only help in the growth of sport and players but also businesses.
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