english sour grapes

the english response to the ipl has been rather predictable, as i mentioned on this blog a couple of days ago. take a look at this from the english cricketers association.

when india sets up its own t20 competition, then its being predatory. whilst the author doesnt say as such, he is implying that something that belongs to the english is being stolen from them, by these agressive predators:

Some would say the Indian approach to setting up these leagues has been predatory. The country's financial control of the international game has just been given a further cash injection that benefits the Indian board and its ICC-sanctioned IPL. If it was predatory before, how would the Indian board behave if it wanted to pick off England's leading players?

but, if the english were to do the same thing, then they are simply maximizing the opportunity offerred to them by the northern hemisphere summer (when the rest of the world's cricketers arent involved in domestic comps) as well as enhancing the "appeal" of the broadcasting rights they can sell. and, at the same time, this would act as a righteous shield against those predators from india, protecting england's top cricketers:

This means the vast majority of international players from other countries are potentially available during our season. If we could use this advantage alongside and create the leading domestic Twenty20 tournament in the world, then we have a commercial opportunity that would enable us to take advantage of the huge appetite for cricket in Asia.

In short, this could reduce the threat of losing our top players to India during our season; we could attract the finest international players to our shores; and we could significantly enhance the appeal of our broadcasting rights on offer.

the big fear in england is the loss of broadcasting revenue:

Our domestic game relies on the substantial revenues of the broadcasting deal. Should events in India threaten this, then our game has serious problems that would affect all professional cricketers and the investment in grass-roots programmes. Losing top players to India would lower the value of any future broadcasting agreement.

but nonetheless, the cool hypocrisy evinced in this article is staggering. the ecb and people connected with english cricket have expressed their bitterness in the last few weeks about the success of the ipl. their sense of entitlement is particularly offensive. simply because they invented the format, it does not mean that every other country has to wait for them before setting up their own t20 competitions.

i think what rankles them even more is comments by their own players expressing their wish to play in the ipl. suddenly, county cricket has been relegated to a second class citizen, as all the players talk about playing in india. even english captain paul collingwood has said that he and many of his teammates would like to play in the ipl. i can understand that it is very difficult for english cricket to standby and watch all of this. but it does not excuse their blatant double standards and veiled condemnation of indian cricket and the ipl.