BCCI is blamed quite often for the lack of imagination and initiative to promote cricket in the rural and urban areas. The BCCI is the ghost of all the other sports federations, sports person and in few cases the general public on the kind of money is generated by cricket and the marketing done by the ghost to make more money. There have been allegations that the board is controlled by few big names time to time and they are the guardians of cricket in India without much credibility. Even in some cases the BCCI has been blamed by its own fraternity (past members and cricketers) for high handedness of the officials on individuals.
Its the kind of acceptance to the sport from the people of the country and the sustained success of Team India in the international competitions and the lack of it on other sports. The kind of work put up by the BCCI (ghost) team in promoting the sports in the country, building infrastructure,marketing, packaging etc etc in a way that the game is today more than a religion in the country. The board took full advantage of the WorldCup victory and the special talents like SunilGavaskar,KapilDev,Sachin helped the game spread even to the nook and corner of the country. The board worked proactively to telecast live the boring 6 day (1 rest day after 3rd day) test matches in radio when TV was not popular and extended that to TV when the same arrived to our living rooms. The board was quick to recognize that the govt can not provide the funds to promote the game and took the first steps to get sponsors from the corporate world.All these are positive effects to the sport, where as other sports federations failed miserably in promoting their respective games irrespective of high success (Olympic victory for hockey).
Basically the hard work and proactive measures taken to promote the game in the early 80's and 90's are bearing fruit today that the Indian Public can not think of any other sports today. One can easily see that kind of change that has happened in the infrastructure side, we have very few centers hosting international games in the past (Bombay,Madras,Calcutta,Kanpur,Delhi) today we have 15+ full fledged centers to host international games with world class facilities and BCCI has a very vital role in this change in infrastructure. In the 80's we could see very few coaching academy and it would be in the city but today apart from the NCA, we have cricket academy in all the leading associations to help develop the game, Again the other sports federations failed miserably in this and mostly gave full control to the government and lost the advantage of functioning independently. One can easily see the difference between the NCA and SAI camp in Bangalore to validate how the BCCI has progressed to a world class promoter of sports. The introduction of the pension scheme for the domestic cricketers has made life reasonable for so many dedicated cricketers.
BCCI has showed the way to other sports organizations on how to promote a game and capitalize on success. Its now for them to take a leaf from BCCI and start working on promoting their sport instead of crying foul that BCCI is raking huge money in the expense of what is due for them. It is for the Sports federations to maintain good relations with the industry to make sure that the corporates support their respective sport instead of depending on the government. The industry and sponsors are not dump to just put money on cricket if it does not produce results, we saw this fact in the last cricket world cup debacle when the industry started to dump cricket but the quick come back to the top with the T20 victory turned the tides back to the sport. There is also this classic example of Sania Mirza making huge sponsorship deals but Anju Bobby george is not making much explains the dependence of government funding for athletics and industry support for tennis and cricket.
Finally the huge money flow into the game has not happened overnight, it has been long years of hard work, good leadership and proactive measures which has brought the fame and money to the sport. The domestic cricketers have benefited immensely
due to this change and as i had mentioned in one of my earlier post, today we cannot see a domestic cricketer starve in the streets where as we hear that internationals in other sports are left in the lurch.
As always there is room for improvement in anything one does and it is applicable even for the BCCI and i am very confident that BCCI will improve and move in the correct direction in the interest of the game.
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6 comments:
Rightly said Vasu, the current position the BCCI enjoys the benefit of their hard work for the past two decades. They rightly deserve this. Hats off to their approach in promoting the sport.
The Indian hockey federation has nearly killed the game. Its high time that they work of the revival of the game's lost glory. Hope they learn a lesson or two from the BCCI.
Nice article Vasu for people like me, who dont know much about CRICKET. But still i would like to make a few points here. Read below with open eyes and ears:
Point 1:
I deny the fact that BCCI is doing it in the interest of game CRICKET, as you said. If it is so, why dont they let other players to come in to the arena. Why discourage ICL. Why thrash Kapil out of BCCI. Below mentioned article raises a question, who gives the authority to BCCI to select a team on behalf of India (Team India). Many ignorants still think BCCI is a government body and work in the capacity to select Indian Team.
"Till now The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had been dilly-dallying with the decision on ICL (Indian Cricket League). And now, instead of replying back to ICL directly, it has shown its real face by launching IPL (Indian Premier League), its first professional venture in the form of Twenty20 league to counter the ICL plans. By doing this the BCCI has definitely shown its true colours. To read more watch out this link"
http://mutiny.in/2007/09/15/bcci-vs-icl/
Point 2:
You have mentioned about introduction of Pention money to the players. Thats good for the old players who can not make their earnings out of old age. But why BCCI hammering the prospective opportunity prevailing to the cricketers who can still be couch, mentors and trainers to the new players, wondering how BCCI is doing it. Simple, by stopping the progression of ICL, a well qualified competitor. Read more through this link:
http://www.window2india.com/cms/content/article11092007.jsp?aid=2448
Point 3:
You have mentioned that BCCI wisely generated money to promote the game. Are you sure, they generated money for the game. This author has different story. Read on:
http://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk/main/s119/st116846.htm
More to write, may be later....
Sohail
On ICL, its not an organization which was meant to bring in talent, it is yet another body which tried to capitalize the WorldCup debacle and make progress in creating a parallel system.Zee was tired of fighting TV rights and ICl was the platform to create their own entertainment using cricket.
In any sports system, you will find only one board representing the country i.e BCCI(India) PCB(Pakistan)ECB(England) its the recognition the respective board has earned over a period of time.
On KapilDev episode, no organization will encourage a person to work against its interests,in spite of that the board was generous enough to invite him for the silver jublee celebrations. Kapil was a member of most of the cricketing affairs with the BCCI till the ICL happened, he could have fought the battle with in the BCCI but chose to go with the ICL and has already paid a heavy prize.
Over all i feel BCCI has done much more than any other sports body in India.
IMHO there will always be different opinions on public affairs but one can not takeaway the credit from BCCI for what ever they have done to the game of Cricket in India.
Vasu..
Well said. BCCI might thrived on the stature of cricket in India. But, it should not be forgotten that they are responsible for cricket still living in India.
Sohail,
There are political issues in BCCI. But, they have never tried to suppress the game in the name of politics. All the money involved is only for the game to grow.. rather than only the individuals to grow. Consider the case of hockey, the country which once posessed 8 gold medals is now nowhere to be seen in the list. There the politics took the upperhand and pushed the game to the backstage. In case of cricket, atleast the game is still holding the forte.
The success of cricket here can surely be attributed to the way BCCI promoted the game here. The clubs/federations for other games have miserably failed to do that esp hockey. Hockey which is being often compared to cricket actually lost its throne to cricket. Add this with the dismal performance of our hockey team and the sport is totally out of picture though we have some really good hockey players in our team. The IHF could ve done more to promote the game and take it to the next level. BCCI certainly deserves some credit for this.
BCCI is also a club and hence it came up with IPL as against ICL. It would be insane to say they are saviors of the game. It all boils down how to promote and improve the game which in turn (naturally) brings in more money. Its just two clubs fighting it out for prominence.
Take for example Hockey, where till junior level players perform exceptionally well and after that the support which they get(from parents and university/training centre) comes down(because of other priorities.. especially money) as they like to earn for a living. This is the time where a board can step in and see that the players should not loose focus. The money should be channelised properly for the same.
If people of our country get confidence on our sports system then we can see more people taking sports as their career(apart from cricket) and see a excellent bunch of players representing our country. Till then we can see sports people being ruined by the system and without clarity in the system parents will not allow their children to work on their passion.
Karthik Anand.
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