Scores of questions over new leagues, but no answers

MUMBAI: In what appears to be a classic case of left doesn’t know what right is doing, the International Cricket Council (ICC) suffered a highly unusual bouncer last week. It came to the knowledge of many in the world governing body only recently that Anil Kumble, the chairman of their own technical committee, was hired in an ‘advisory’ role at Euro T20 Slam — a tournament being co-hosted by Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland and Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond.
The last of the three happens to be the governing body of cricket in the Netherlands.
Many would’ve had an idea and many didn’t — about Kumble’s association with the league. What the ICC can’t digest internally though is that its own events monitoring group — a body formed by the world body to “study” the recent sprouting of unregulated T20 leagues around the world — had no idea of Kumble’s participation.
“He (Kumble) may have followed the necessary protocols for all you know. But the thing is, the events monitoring group could’ve certainly benefited from the intelligence. They didn’t have an idea,” say those in the know.
The Euro T20 Slam was unveiled on Friday and Kumble, a board member of their advisory committee, said: “It will be good to see Indian cricketers participating in the various (T20) leagues in the future and hopefully BCCI will give NOC to more players”.
The BCCI officials claim to have no idea whatsoever about the league.
The events monitoring group of the ICC is a committee that’s been set up to “study” the various, unregulated T20 leagues that have been sprouting lately. The governing body won’t admit on record yet but it is mighty worried that if left unattended, these unregulated leagues might just be the “right pickle to draft the recipe of a disaster” — in the words of a top ICC official — going forward. The Euro T20 Slam is one. Another league on similar lines is coming up in Canada. There’s the Afghanistan Premier League that’s already in trouble of sorts. As late as on Monday morning, news came in that the Hong Kong T20 Blitz is soon waiting to be cancelled and so will be the fate of Hong Kong Sixes.
The ICC has scores of questions and no answers whatsoever.
Do these leagues have a business model? Have television rights for these leagues been sold? Have the teams been sold? Have the players been sold through an auction or draft process? Are the vendors monitored? Did these leagues seek ICC approval? Does the ICC have a system in place under which these leagues can function?
There are no answers for all these questions at this point of time, but that’s only half the story. The other half is that the world body has little idea or none about how to control this growing mess. “Honestly, if something is not done about it, this could turn out to be pandemic in multiple ways. Nobody who is in charge of running these so-called systems in place has an idea of who is behind the inception of these properties,” a senior cricket executive associated with the world body at various levels over the years tells TOI.
Sources in the ICC say there are those in the governing body busy crunching serious data on these leagues. “And it all boils down to two questions that nobody has answers to. First, who is putting money into these leagues? Second, who is earning from these leagues? There’s no answer to both these questions and that’s what is dangerous,” sources add.
A rough examination of these unregulated leagues that’s been carried out until now suggests the following: Most individuals associated with these leagues are either second or third tier builders from Delhi or diamond merchants from Mumbai.
“There are several such individuals from these sectors who are part of these set-ups. Their names won’t pop up on Google searches. They’re rich but not famous. That’s exactly how they prefer to be. They’re everywhere. And sorry to say, almost every second name you hear is from India,” sources add.
The ICC wants to do its bit and appears to be trying except that it doesn’t know where to begin. The question they’re asking right now is ‘if it’s too late already’. TOI tried to reach Kumble for comment, but he did not respond.