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To survive, cricket has embraced more changes in the last 20 years than it has in the 120-odd years before. Some worked, some didn’t. But what started on a macro-level at first—covering pitches, shaping the one-dayer out of a truncated game, building a World Cup around it and then shifting it out of England and into Asia under lights with coloured clothing—has now taken on a different dimension with the advent of Twenty20. Mere cricket matches where teams of 11 bowl and bat don’t cut it anymore. Try cheerleaders, timeouts, deejays and more that create an element of constant theatre.
An unapologetically gaudy television product, franchise T20 cricket strives to give us an adrenaline rush while appealing to those who don’t know what they want from the game. Question is: Has Indian Premier League (IPL) been innovative enough? Possibly not. The IPL will always be the first to show how it’s done. From flying in Richard Madley for the auctions to getting the Washington Redskins cheerleaders to perform during NBA-influenced commercially lucrative timeouts, the IPL was a heady cocktail of cricket, business and Bollywood that a billion-plus nation lapped up. In terms of affecting lasting change though—be it tweaking the playing conditions, spectator engagement or trying technological innovations—IPL has stayed a step behind the leagues that came after it, namely Australia’s Big Bash League and now, The Hundred.
IPL has taken to change only when it was inevitable. A good example would be the new playing conditions of the 2022 season that mandate a new batter to take strike irrespective of whether the previous pair had crossed or not at the point of a catch being completed. Changed by MCC earlier this month and effective in international cricket from the T20 World Cup in October, it’s a groundbreaking law that was trialled by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in The Hundred last year. While it may be contended that the tournament itself is a risky experiment, there is always scope for a bit of ingenuity or technological innovation at some level, as Big Bash has shown.
From interactive LED stumps and Zing bails to introducing helmet cameras and colourful bat wraps, the Big Bash became the first cricket league that tried to outsource the entertainment beyond the traditional means of bat and ball. Want to experience what it feels like watching a ball come at you at 90 miles an hour? Try the Helmet Cam. Coin toss doesn’t excite you? How about a bat flip? When there was a clamour for a format shakeup in 2019, Big Bash not only trimmed its duration by 12 days and scheduled more double headers but also widened the playoff pool into a five-team event. Further change unfolded in the form of three new rules—Power Surge, X-Factor Player and the Bash Boost (see graphic)—in 2020 though not all have been well received. The only area where the BBL has slackened terribly is in the delay in introducing the Decision Review System (DRS) that began in IPL in 2018 but in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) in 2017.
When it comes to spectator involvement, the Big Bash—and also The Hundred to a great extent—think on a scale the IPL hasn’t even begun contemplating. Big Bash has partnered with Warner Brothers, offering a family trip to Gold Coast by simply attending matches where players turned out in superhero-themed apparel, like in 2015 when Perth Scorchers and Sydney Sixers wore Batman and Superman playing gear at the WACA. The farthest IPL has gone is arranging fan parks in smaller towns. In 2019, Big Bash collaborated with Big Ant Studios to produce a video game “Big Bash Boom”, a fully licensed version of the 2018 edition featuring all the franchises with every player, available on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. An authentic IPL video game is yet to hit the market.
In 14 years, IPL has also not been able to come up with a full-fledged women’s league. The Big Bash did it in 2015-16, allowing the women’s teams to share the same colours and branding and playing double headers with the men. Two matches on one ticket are exactly the kind of outings families seek. The Hundred followed the same strategy and declared that the total prize money of £600,000 would be divided equally between men’s and women’s competitions, making it a level playing field in ways more than one.
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