The Future of Twenty20 Leagues

[Verified Enigma]

What do you feel about the future of the new Lankan Premier League? Is it sustainable?

I've edited this post slightly to make it a more logical topic starter - Aislabie​

 

[Na Maloom Afraad]

NM"A" what do you feel about the future of this league?

sustainable?

Hard to tell after just a game, will come back to this in a couple of weeks.

They need a McCullum-esque knock to get people talking for sure.

 

[Bevab]

NM"A" what do you feel about the future of this league?

sustainable?

This isn't the first time Sri Lanka has tried a T20 league. At least they managed to get it up this time.

I think there are loads of domestic talents in Sri Lanka, you would only have to look at the sheer number of clubs they have as proof. However that is also their downfall as most players are rumoured to be complacent, lazy and barely work on their fitness and skills properly. You do have the occasional gem like Karunaratne or Lakmal who work on their skills to make them better in other formats and unfamiliar conditions but the vast majority barely do that. There is also the ridiculous pitch doctoring that turns any average or mediocre spinner into prime Murali, pacers barely bowled in the last few years (and no wonder they break down or struggle when they're called up nationally due to them being unused to the workload in SENA countries). Not sure how the pitches are these days but it wouldn't surprise me if they were still the same. And I haven't even got to how corrupt the Sri Lankan Board is...

 

[Aislabie]

What do you feel about the future of this league? Sustainable?

Honestly, I'd say it's no more or less sustainable than any of the other "Mini IPL" styled T20 leagues. Afghan Premier League, Bangladesh Premier League, Caribbean Premier League, Mzansi Super League, and so on and so forth. They're pretty much all exactly the same product, none of them make any damn money and they're all trying to fellate the Indian market without getting any real marketable Indian players in.

None of these leagues is actually trying to build any kind of loyalty or legacy, they're just trying to grab cash.

The real winners of the early T20 era are Australia (if they can ever stop tinkering with their product that is), India (they have a huge captive market, and a monopoly over most of the world's talent) and Pakistan (they've got a fantastic domestic market, and the fans don't already have loyalty to certain teams).

But the mini-IPL model isn't the way forward. The winner of the next T20 era will be the first country to realise that they can create a larger season-long T20 league like other sports have. Look at the football Premier League and the rugby Top 14 as examples of what a successful sports league looks like. Bangladesh has their Dhaka league teams, England has their counties, Sri Lanka has their clubs; these are the countries that would be best suited trying to make cricket's Premier League; of those, England has the infrastructure and Bangladesh has the fanbase. Sri Lanka though has very established clubs that are ready-made to be put into a cricket league system.

That's my view - a Sri Lankan league would be sustainable but they're going at this the wrong way.

 

[Verified Enigma]

season-long T20 league

the main issue for this is,

Motive of a t20 league is viewership which comes via audience and sponsors

and a long tournament will work against it, they will struggle more as star players wont play much considering int. commitments.

 

[Aislabie]

the main issue for this is,

Motive of a t20 league is viewership which comes via audience and sponsors

and a long tournament will work against it, they will struggle more as star players wont play much considering int. commitments.

This is the fallacy of all these mini-IPL leagues though. They rest on the assumption that people won't give a shit if top players aren't there, but that's not the case at all. I was at Wantage Road before the pandemic and it was packed to the rafters for a Northants-Derbyshire game where the biggest names on each team were Faheem Ashraf and Ravi Rampaul respectively.

The difference is that people support their team, not some snazzy international signing. If the Basnahira Cricket Dundee struggled to get people through the door in the first Sri Lankan tournament, maybe it's because they had no attachment to the franchise as opposed to not having big enough names (Tillakaratne Dilshan and Brad Hodge)

 

[Bevab]

Honestly, I'd say it's no more or less sustainable than any of the other "Mini IPL" styled T20 leagues. Afghan Premier League, Bangladesh Premier League, Caribbean Premier League, Mzansi Super League, and so on and so forth. They're pretty much all exactly the same product, none of them make any damn money and they're all trying to fellate the Indian market without getting any real marketable Indian players in.

None of these leagues is actually trying to build any kind of loyalty or legacy, they're just trying to grab cash.

absolutely spot on! I've seen these leagues have their timings best suited to ensure that the Indian audience manages to watch their games. Can't blame them when we have international boards trying their best to do the same too.

No wonder the BCCI doesn't allow Indians to participate in other leagues too, even without their stars all it takes is a Sanju Samson who is wildly popular in Kerela and several other parts of the country signing up to 'dilute' their precious league in their minds. I don't share that view at all, I believe having overseas Indian players means that we get their own fans interested in our league rather but hey this is how the BCCI sees it and it isn't going to change anytime soon unless someone with massive courage to stand up and argue legally comes in.

As for your idea on a long carnival though, I beg to differ. The reason is the very duration of a T20 game and the quality of it. Rugby and Football for example don't last beyond 90 minutes usually. The early T20s were the quickest and they would be wrapped up in 180 minutes at best. The current ones with all the ad breaks, 'time-outs' and whatnot take 210 minutes at the least to end. It is a tough sell basically unless you have massive interest to do it consistently to broadcasters and fans. And from what I've noticed of the BBL when the main Aussies are missing and some of the overseas players depart for their tours, the grade cricketers look heavily out of place in the format.

In test cricket, if I see a batsman or a bowler struggling I notice them trying their best to survive in this harsh format battling against all sorts of external elements right from physical and mental demands and that causes the intrigue and appeal to me. In T20s, most players who look like a fish out of the water just appear pitiable and lacking in quality to me. That naturally just makes me less interested in the game to put it one way. T20 is a format meant for entertainment, if players struggle to offer entertainment due to a lack of quality then there is no point in the format. Every dropped catch, umpiring blunder, mishit, misfield, edge or rank delivery is entertaining for the first few times in the BBL but after one point things just become saturated as T20 IMO is the one format that is most punishing for a lack of quality and entertainment.

The second issue I see is the non-availability of talented players resulting in less interest naturally at the start of any such attempt. As you did mention leagues that would be best equipped to deal with this would be England with their historic counties or Bangladesh with their fanatic support. Even they would struggle at a point to avoid the saturation that I mention though. The main reason for the success of two of the leagues you mentioned is them coinciding with the holiday seasons in India and Australia as the traditional summer sport. The reason why the BCCI has till now not expanded their league is also due to the same, there is always the risk of killing the golden goose by extending it beyond the point of saturation (and they did attempt this and wisely pulled away back then) as the Aussies have done with the BBL.

If we are to have a year long league of cricket, either the new format needs to be less time intensive (a wild Hundred appears accompanied by the hipster's T10) or international cricket has to dwindle to the point that we have these stars available quite regularly. I don't see the latter happening without these smaller boards putting up a big fight and even then the issue of 'too much T20s' will always remain around the corner. I do think it is inevitable that club cricket becomes a bigger factor in the future but the exact mechanics of how that happens still continues to be a mystery to me.

 

[Verified Enigma]

I was at Wantage Road before the pandemic and it was packed to the rafters for a Northants-Derbyshire game where the biggest names on each team were Faheem Ashraf and Ravi Rampaul respectively.

The difference is that people support their team, not some snazzy international signing. If the Basnahira Cricket Dundee struggled to get people through the door in the first Sri Lankan tournament, maybe it's because they had no attachment to the franchise as opposed to not having big enough names (Tillakaratne Dilshan and Brad Hodge)

Europe or rather UK works differently than the sub continent

down here in the sub continent, for the vast majority, its the big stars which attracts the crowd

why do you think a sandeep sharma who has been giving results about at par with bumrah and rabada in IPL, but no one bats an eye for him? because he doesnt have a big persona.

if he were playing in an english county, things would have been different.

its the subcontinent market here, and remember, here, majority viewers, who are not ardent cricket fans like us, expect big names, glamour, entertainment, flashy banners, trashy gimmicks, etc for them to enjoy a game. they dont give a blip about the actual cricket. for them, the game is all about everything but cricket.

 

[Bevab]

Europe or rather UK works differently than the sub continent

down here in the sub continent, for the vast majority, its the big stars which attracts the crowd

why do you think a sandeep sharma who has been giving results about at par with bumrah and rabada in IPL, but no one bats an eye for him? because he doesnt have a big persona.

if he were playing in an english county, things would have been different.

its the subcontinent market here, and remember, here, majority viewers, who are not ardent cricket fans like us, expect big names, glamour, entertainment, flashy banners, trashy gimmicks, etc for them to enjoy a game. they dont give a blip about the actual cricket. for them, the game is all about everything but cricket.

I actually agree with @Aislabie here. Once you've built up the brand or attachment, stars don't really matter. The Indian Super League is the best example for it. My issue with the non-availability of stars is that the quality plummets down beyond a point and T20s are simply not entertaining when you've got teams and players without quality.

 

[Verified Enigma]

Guys, I guess you need to look it from an organisers point of view as well and not just cricket's point of view.

while the cricket board of a nation thinks and makes decisions about different domestics leagues within the county to improve overall cricket.

T20 leagues on the other hand are designed as money making entities right from the start, and for that, there is no way any board will think for bigger schedule or what all you guys are suggesting, ofcourse, if they do so, it will make a few ardent cricket fans like us more happy and we will indulge more with these leagues and applaud the organisers, but it will come at a big cost and risk of losing that majority market, who watches cricket for 'FUN'

that is even the case for 'IPL'

here in india go ask any random 100 people who watch IPL. chances are 95 to 98 people have no idea about the game, they just watch it for entertainment, and that is why IPL is a hit, as it was successfully able to grow the audience to the non-viewers of cricket by bringing in that FUN factor.

so the motive for these t20 leagues is making sure "majority target audience" gets what it want

and not that cricket in these leagues should improve

 

[Verified Enigma]

from the cricketing stand point, @Aislabie and @Bevab both of you are absolutely correct, but my pals, there is another world of marketing, finance, operations which exists today, and THIS IS BUSINESS.

Put yourself in place of an organiser, he doesnt only have to think about cricket, but all the other factors too, add everything up and i am pretty sure you will realise, there is more to this than just cricket

 

[Aislabie]

I actually agree with @Aislabie here. Once you've built up the brand or attachment, stars don't really matter. The Indian Super League is the best example for it. My issue with the non-availability of stars is that the quality plummets down beyond a point and T20s are simply not entertaining when you've got teams and players without quality.

I think you might be overstating the risk of quality plummeting a little bit. The Global T20 Canada was the closest I've seen to that on TV, and even then the issue wasn't anything to do with the Canadian players not being good enough (Rodrigo Thomas, Ravinderpal Singh, Nitish Kumar, Saad Bin Zafar and Dillon Heyliger were all excellent) - the issue was with big-name players dialling it in for teams that didn't mean anything to them, in a venue that was not equipped to hold such an event.

If that had been a proper sports league, given the chance to establish itself, then there would have been far more love from fans for someone like Anton Devcich who visibly gave 100% than for someone like Dwayne Smith, who visibly didn't.

And as for @Parth D saying about Sandeep Sharma, the reason he doesn't have a core group of fans like the "bigger names" is because holding a Super Auction every few years where teams can only retain the very biggest names creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where fans see all other players as transient. Jasprit Bumrah has played for only one IPL franchise; for Mumbai fans, he's their player.[DOUBLEPOST=1606422163][/DOUBLEPOST]

THIS IS BUSINESS.

NONE OF THESE BUSINESSES ARE MAKING ANY MONEY.

 

[Verified Enigma]

NONE OF THESE BUSINESSES ARE MAKING ANY MONEY.

and that is because their board of directors, the CFO, CMO, COO, CTO, all are not working efficiently.

I definitely agree with you that they are just trying to copy the IPL model and that is where the trouble is happening.
But the solution isnt just changing the cricket, that wont guarantee success and profits. solution lies in something else, they need to change their strategy and positioning

it is not the cricketing inefficiency, it is the operating inefficiency

 

[Bevab]

I think you might be overstating the risk of quality plummeting a little bit. The Global T20 Canada was the closest I've seen to that on TV, and even then the issue wasn't anything to do with the Canadian players not being good enough (Rodrigo Thomas, Ravinderpal Singh, Nitish Kumar, Saad Bin Zafar and Dillon Heyliger were all excellent) - the issue was with big-name players dialling it in for teams that didn't mean anything to them, in a venue that was not equipped to hold such an event.

If that had been a proper sports league, given the chance to establish itself, then there would have been far more love from fans for someone like Anton Devcich who visibly gave 100% than for someone like Dwayne Smith, who visibly didn't.

And as for @Parth D saying about Sandeep Sharma, the reason he doesn't have a core group of fans like the "bigger names" is because holding a Super Auction every few years where teams can only retain the very biggest names creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where fans see all other players as transient. Jasprit Bumrah has played for only one IPL franchise; for Mumbai fans, he's their player.

Gotta agree on the quality thing now that I realize that as long as the playing field remains uniform, there wouldn't be quite that much of an impact as long as you've got necessary compensations in place (shorter boundaries and all of that stuff). The mega-auction also does not help either, Chennai is a franchise that usually retains their players which means that we've got overseas pros like Hayden, Murali, Hussey, du Plessis, Bravo and Morkel all well regarded and loved for the most part. This is without mentioning the local players who've got even bigger stays with us. Sandeep Sharma for example is a Punjabi local, he could have very well been their Bumrah if they had retained him. Instead, they believed that post-injury he wasn't the same force and let go of him.

 

[Bevab]

from the cricketing stand point, @Aislabie and @Bevab both of you are absolutely correct, but my pals, there is another world of marketing, finance, operations which exists today, and THIS IS BUSINESS.

Put yourself in place of an organiser, he doesnt only have to think about cricket, but all the other factors too, add everything up and i am pretty sure you will realise, there is more to this than just cricket

You're missing the point where in none of these leagues are actually profitable. Heck, the IPL wasn't profitable in the first few seasons too. It took quite some time for the return on investment to pay off. And this was the biggest league that started first with the most backing, glitz and pizazz. Imagine a league in another country where the demand is not even the same.

To point out an example, the Mzansi Super League which was the brainchild of the CSA was at first an abject failure that did not even get a name in it's first attempt. The second one was the MSL. And I don't think it received a proper broadcasting deal which meant that it was put on Free-to-air TV without CSA receiving any money. The latter actually resulted in it garnering some interest locally in all honesty. The league was also postponed this year because they did not have the finances to conduct it in this year. That should tell you how financially unstable the entire operation is, what every one of these leagues are doing is trying to get in interest early with massive investments so that it pays off later at a future date. I'm not sure if you've read it, but if you haven't you ought to read Cricket 2.0 which explores this concept in greater detail. Most of these leagues simply are hemorrhaging money on an unsustainable basis that they hope pays off one day.

And this isn't just the end, due to this there are people involved in these leagues who frequently are paid late or underpaid/not paid at all. Sometimes even the cricketers aren't paid properly which is when they resort to fixing attempts under the table. The latter hasn't been reported yet in the higher profile leagues but with the current pandemic affecting finances, it is only a matter of time before we get such reports from the higher levels of cricket too.