Since 2008, most of the top stars in the cricketing world have been taking a collective break from international and domestic cricket to take part in the Indian Premier League (IPL) that happens mostly in a two-month window between March and May. In short, during this time period, the IPL has been the cynosure of the cricketing world’s eyes at large. Looking back, even though it may seem inevitable that viewership in cricket would call for a shorter format, it wasn’t really obvious at the time. In fact, it seems rather incredible today that the BCCI and India were quite indifferent to T20’s charms initially. But what contributes to the enduring appeal of the IPL? What are the various factors that have made the league what it is today — the biggest commercial property outside international cricket (and quite likely to overtake it soon)? The answers lie in two major factors — timing and scheduling.
The first reason for the popularity of the IPL and T20 format, as it has been with many commercial products, has been the factor of timing. Around the turn of the millennium, the last bastion of spectatorship for the first-class game — England — had started witnessing lower turnouts. Especially, the younger generation was preferring to adopt other sports in favor of cricket. The marketing manager of the ECB, Stuart Robertson, suggested looking at a compressed format that was more in tune with current temporal demands. A year later, despite some opposition from the county chairmen, on the back of some last-over slogging, the format found a midwife.
International cricket didn’t take the format seriously — the first T20 international featured mirthful scenes, also featuring a mock red card to Glenn McGrath for impersonating the infamous underarm incident.
In a couple of years, most nations had played their first T20 game, drawing a mix of curiosity and bewilderment from their supporters. India was one of the last “big” nations to play its inaugural T20 game; its domestic version was a damp squib. “T20? Why not ten-ten or five-five or one-one?” thundered Niranjan Shah in the 2006 International Cricket Council (ICC) board meeting, before boldly proclaiming that India would never play the format. The rival Indian Cricket League, which had gained some momentum, was swiftly put out of business by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
At the same time, the ODI format had plateaued. Australia had sleepwalked to their third successive World Cup and was the standout team in a format with few surprises left; the ICC’s various attempts to enliven the game (supersub, superseries, experimenting with field restrictions, and so on) had failed to hit the spot. India, quite disastrously, got knocked out in the group stage, making the tournament less palatable to the various stakeholders. The farcical 2007 World Cup final served as a fine example of everything that had gone wrong with the over-milked cash cow that was the ODI format.
Source : (thehindu.com)