Now with the IPL being the money spinner that it is, one has to remember that just a couple of years ago, the T20 cricket format was hardly taken seriously by anyone in international cricket. In 2006, a T20 fixture between Australia and South was again one that was taken as a bit of jest, wherein one player from each team was wired with microphones. The fielder in the middle dropping a catch had to hear some smart ones emanating from the commentary box, which clearly showed that T20 matches were still something of a joke.

The first time that people smelled some real money making potential in the T20 game was when Alan Stanford, showed everyone the colour of the money. With his grandiose plans and million dollar tournaments doing the rounds in the cricket news, it seemed that T20 had finally arrived on the international cricket map.

However even then, just before the first ever T20 World Cup, Andrew Symonds spoke signifying what was going thru the minds of many cricket players, and how an element of seriousness was only now creeping into T20: "It's a fun game for me, but it looks like it’s heading down the serious route unfortunately. Playing the games in the past, the captain doesn't mind if you interact with the kids in the crowd and muck around a bit, but now I don't know if that's going to be the case," said Symonds.

The real wakeup call came when Australia were defeated by Zimbabwe in the league match of the first ever T20 World Cup, and Ricky Ponting was forced to acknowledge that "We've got to start respecting the game a bit more." There was then a sea change in the attitude to T20 cricket which indicated that test playing nations would now take the format seriously and would compete for it with as much intensity as they used for other forms of cricket.  

And then when it was a dream World Cup final featuring old foes India and Pakistan, everyone sat up and took notice. When India won the T20 World Cup and the winners got such a tumultuous reception, everyone in international cricket and more particularly the BCCI finally woke up and smelt the coffee.

Thereafter the IPL was born to quickly stake its claim as the richest competition in international cricket; on the face of it a mere domestic event, but which lured the best talents from around the world. And the huge cash potential of the IPL was quickly known to the organisers so that they did all within their power to crush out any kind of ‘rebel’ competition to the IPL.

Seeing the potential however, it is the IPL today, who knows it may be the American Premier League tomorrow and the Chinese Premier League day after….

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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