Aficionados of cricket love quizzes. Here is a question: What year did the Indian Premier League start?
Irrespective of your answer, it has revolutionized the game and continues to do so, challenging players’ loyalties and their relationships with national boards.
In the IPL’s first year, 65 overseas players were bought at auction. What proportion do you think were Pakistani and what proportion were English? Whilst you think about the answer, the proportion from other countries was Australia 26 percent, Sri Lanka and South Africa each 17 percent, and New Zealand 11 percent — for an aggregate of 71 percent.
The composition of the balance may surprise you, given how time distances the memory. In the IPL’s first year, 2008, it fielded a single English player born in England. This serves to rule out Kevin Pietersen, born to an English mother in South Africa. He joined the IPL in 2009. There is a connection in that Pietersen and the person in question, Dimitri Mascarenhas, both played domestic cricket in England for Hampshire, captained between 2004 and 2007 by Shane Warne. He signed up for the Rajasthan Royals from the outset, forming an emotional bond that is continued through his family.
Pakistani players accounted for 19 percent of those auctioned in 2008. Its leading players of the time, including Wasim Hafeez, the current coach of the team in Australia, were involved. The absence of English players was caused by a combination of skepticism and protectionism. T20 cricket had been introduced domestically by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2003. It proved popular, appealing to a different segment of the population. Perhaps blinded by this, the attitude of the ECB, along with much of English cricket’s establishment, was to deter contracted players from joining and question the viability of the IPL’s franchise model.
They could not have been more wrong. Not only did the IPL tap into a golden seam of commercial revenue, it also posed direct competition for the services of the ECB’s contracted players at a time when the English domestic season was in play.
A similar issue existed for the West Indies Cricket Board. Clashes were inevitable. In England, Pietersen, no stranger to controversy, was the lightning rod. In his own words, he danced to a different step. Such thinking led him to move to play in England at the turn of the century when targets for the selection of black players in cricket teams in South Africa were introduced. By 2005, Pietersen had become a star player in the English team, never far from the limelight, but a polarizing force.
Pietersen maintained links with South African players with whom he had played at home and against on the international circuit. He saw them pick up lucrative contracts for the first IPL. He saw the showbiz nature of the entertainment and decided that he wanted to be a part of it. Ironically, the 2009 edition that he joined was played in South Africa because of a clash with the multi-phased Indian parliamentary elections. Pietersen’s determination to join the IPL led to concerns over his workload and availability for England, as well as accusations of greed, a maverick nature and not being a team player. He held an ace card — for almost a decade, he was too good a player to be discarded.
Another player who was accused of similar traits was Chris Gayle of Jamacia and the West Indies. If one cricketer is synonymous with T20 cricket, it is Gayle. He was also successful in one-day and Test cricket in which he scored two triple centuries. In T20 cricket, Gayle was the first to score 10,000 runs, going on to amass over 14,000 runs. In 2008, he elected to play in the inaugural IPL, along with two other West Indians.
At the time, the WICB’s president expressed his deep concern about the future impact of leagues like the IPL on West Indian cricket. His concerns have never gone away, not helped by some restrictive selection policies. Ever since Gayle made his decision other West Indian cricketers have been regular performers on the franchise circuit, falling in and out of agreement with their board. Their T20 focus contributed to the West Indies winning both the 2012 and 2016 T20 World Cups.
Boards of other Test-playing countries have found ways around the issue. New Zealand, for example, took the view that it was better to keep their players on-side by not insisting that they should return home or join an overseas tour early if it meant missing IPL matches. This was evident as early as 2008, when players were allowed to travel to England only two days before the start of a Test. It was the sort of arrangement which Pietersen was arguing should apply to English players.
The all-powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India has never had such issues. It simply forbids contracted players to play in any other franchised league. There is little doubt that its players strive to represent their country.
South Africa has generated a unique issue. Its board has decreed that centrally contracted players must prioritize playing in its T20 franchise over representing the country. This has resulted in a squad to play two Tests in New Zealand in February that contains six uncapped players, including the captain. Without irony, the head coach said they should savor the honor of representing their country.
Then there is Afghanistan. Its board has sanctioned three players who opted not to sign central contracts by refusing them permission to play in franchise leagues for two years. It feels as if cricket is on the brink of another bout of recalibrating itself to the T20 behemoth.
Market forces were unleashed by the IPL. In its wake and those of subsequent franchises, both ODI and Test cricket are competing for oxygen. The desire of players to represent their countries in these formats still burns bright, but the edges are visibly crumbling under pressure from T20’s lure.