Elections in the world's largest democracy and "television's ultimate reality show" have collided in a clash of big stakes and high drama peculiar to the sub-continent. India's US$1.75 billion Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 has suddenly been shifted to take place in South Africa, over security concerns about overlapping schedules of next month's polls and the cricket league.
Hurried efforts at rescheduling the IPL tournament to be played on alternative dates in India failed, as Delhi considered the general elections, from April 16 to May 13, and the IPL, from April 10 to May 24, as too big a double task for the security forces to handle. The government already has had to commit forces to protect 800,000 polling booths across India. South Africa, incidentally, is heading for general elections during the IPL tournament.
Security has become a major issue following the terror attacks in Mumbai last November, in which nearly 200 people were killed, and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore this month. None of the players were killed in this incident, although several were injured.
The second round of the one-year-old IPL, Asia's richest and the world's fastest-growing city franchisee-owned sports league, is now being outsourced from the country that put outsourcing on the map.
The IPL embraces a shortened version of cricket. The traditional version is the Test, which is played over five days and during which each team can bowl as many overs of six balls each to the opposition team. In another version, played over one day, each team bowls 50 overs. In IPL, the teams bowl only 20 overs each, making for a fast and furious spectacle that lasts only a few hours and which has captured the imagination of fans around the would, although purists still have their doubts.
The inaugural 2008 IPL tournament started on April 18, 2008 and lasted for 44 days, with 56 matches played by eight teams which were created by franchises being auctioned. A novel feature of the teams was that Indian players and others from around the world were bid for - the best being secured for millions of dollars for the duration of the "season".
The second season of the tournament is now expected to start on April 18, with the venues in South Africa still to be announced. England was also considered as an alternative venue, but was apparently ruled out because of its inclement spring weather.
"I apologize to the people of India. But we're going ahead so they can at least watch the event on TV," said Sashank Manohar, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The switch is a massive bonus for South Africa, which will also host the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament and which is also due in September to stage the Champions Trophy, that had been scheduled for Sri Lanka. Pakistan was originally due to host the one-day cricket international competition last year, but it was postponed over security concerns. It was then rescheduled for Sri Lanka, but moved again over wet weather concerns.
Much as Indians will be dismayed at losing the IPL, which had instantly become a hit tournament, South Africa has an estimated 1.2 million Asians - about 2% of the total population - as well as long-standing cultural ties with India. Mahatma Gandhi, the "Father" of modern India, for instance spent 21 years in South Africa, from where his life changed from being a lawyer to that of a national leader.
Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, is reported as saying that the South African economy will benefit enormously from staging the tournament. Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg, Modi said the influx of players, coaches, support staff, media and spectators would inject many millions of dollars into the country's economy over the five weeks of the league.
"At any given point of time, we have 10,000 people working on this tournament. South Africa will benefit a lot. We will be using 30,000 rooms in hotels and 10,000 airline tickets will be needed for the purpose of this tournament," Modi said.
Possible South African cities being the unexpected hosts to matches between IPL teams such as the Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight Riders could be Durban, which has the country's biggest ethnic Indian population, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Benoni, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Potchesfstroom.
While Cape Town, host to the IPL's opening ceremony, could be resounding to vuvuzele, a one-tone musical horn, and a colorful sea of makarapas, construction safety helmets turned into tribal party hats, the Congress, the lead party in India's ruling coalition, is starting to pay politically for the loss of the tournament. Media surveys showed 40% to 70% of respondents blamed the government for the IPL leaving.
The government is now in damage-control mode right in the middle of the general election campaign and opposition political parties, smelling blood as election salvos heat up the Indian summer, have called the development a "national shame".
A defensive Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram called the decision "hasty" and claimed the BCCI made the move without consulting the government.
"It will be difficult to provide adequate paramilitary forces for election purposes and for the IPL," said Chidambaram, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former finance minister who took over the Home Ministry after the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promptly blasted the government for "surrendering to terrorists". The BJP, the main opposition party, is under siege after one of its young leaders, Varun Gandhi, grandson of former prime minister Indira Gandhi and nephew of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, was censured by the Election Commission for making a crude hate speech against Muslims. This took place in an election rally in his constituency Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, a key electoral state.
The IPL controversy has given the BJP, which is trailing in opinion polls, some timely ammunition to gain ground. "It has sent a message that India is not a safe country," said Arun Jaitley, BJP general secretary and president of the Delhi Cricket Association. He has called the IPL relocation a "governmental failure to provide security".
The political explosion has left the Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition, as the worst-affected. It was in a no-win situation: now it is blamed for the hugely popular IPL leaving India, but it would have been equally ripped apart if any violent incident had happened during the tournament.
The IPL has become India's most popular international brand in just a year. "TV's ultimate reality show," is how Sneha Rajani, executive vice president of TV rights holders SET Max, described the tournament.
The IPL will be beamed out of South Africa at 4.00 pm and 8.00 pm Indian standard time. Just under 100 million people out of India's total trackable 131 million TV audience saw the inaugural IPL edition last April, according to an estimate in a leading news weekly India Today, including a record audience among women and children.
Besides TV audiences in the Asia-Pacific, North America and Europe, such was the pan-global popularity of the IPL in its first edition that Arab Digital Distribution, a Middle Eastern pay-TV management company, has bought the 10-year TV rights for Middle East and African countries. This included the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Sudan. It was unthinkable two years ago that an Indian cricket tournament would have a following in Libya.
"The IPL is unquestionably the world's richest cricket league, and unquestionably the biggest sports concept launched anywhere in the world in recent years," Modi told Asia Times Online last year - three months before it started. "We expect IPL to have a greater following outside Asia than any other sports league that takes place in the continent."
Modi and his close associate Inderjit Singh Bindra, an IPL council member and the principal advisor to the Dubai-based International Cricket Council, the game's governing body, were accurate in their gung-ho optimism. In April 2005, Bindra told Asia Times Online that the BCCI would be worth $2 billion in four years ( See Cricket's home moves closer to the money Asia Times Online, April 23, 2005.) Both Modi and Bindra have their chance now to further expand the IPL's popularity outside Asia.
Besides the IPL TV audience of nearly 100 million, hundreds of thousands of fans ecstatically packed stadiums in 2008.
This correspondent experienced the IPL wonder in Mumbai's Wankhede stadium, for three matches, as house-full crowds were treated to high-quality cricket, rousing music, drum-beating bands in traditional costumes, ushers showing fans to seats, imported cheerleading teams and fireworks lighting up the night sky - all in an enthralling three-hour package involving top international stars playing together as team mates for the first time.
"IPL breaks heart of fans across the country," mourned the headline in the Times of India, the largest-circulated English daily in the sub-continent. The shift out of India was the front-page lead story in dailies and dominated TV news channels, in the middle of the general election campaign.
The move to South Africa leaves millions of disappointed Indian fans - translate them now as voters - and nervous franchisee team owners trying to recover multi-million dollar investments.
The eight IPL teams each cost between the $65 million that Emerging Media - a consortium that includes media baron Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan and Hollywood star Russell Crowe - paid for the Rajasthan Royals team, to $111.9 million that billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani paid for the Mumbai Indians as the most expensive IPL team.
Other IPL team owners are a mix of top industrialists and India's leading movie stars, such as Shahrukh Khan and Juhi Chawla who co-own the Kolkata Night Riders, and Preity Zinta, co-owner of the Kings XI Punjab team.
But such was the astounding success of the first IPL edition that the Rajasthan Royals, winner of the inaugural tournament, had its valuation more than double in a year to $140 million in 2009.
"The IPL is recession-free," the private-jet owning Modi said in February, after the second edition of player auctions saw two England players - Andrew Flintoff and South African-born Kevin Pietersen - earn contracts worth $1.6 million and $1.2 million respectively for a possible six weeks of work and play.
While the IPL move could be a blessing in disguise to boost its global growth, the ruling Congress party-led coalition could pay dearly at the polls for this perceived "national shame" and its "surrender to terrorists".
No comments:
Post a Comment