Just like the idea of World Series Cricket coined by Kerry Packers invited controversies and scorns from the orthodox cricket watchers in 1970’s, the same way, Modi’s blueprint for the IPL was shunned in the early nineties when Madhavrao Scindia was BCCI president. But the youngest scion of the Modi business Empire was only waiting for his time to come and it came when he became the youngest vice president of BCCI in 2005.  After rising to the pinnacle of the institution that regulates anything and everything associated with cricket in the country, he decided to go straight ahead with the realization of his IPL dream. And thus ushered a new era in Indian cricket, with the game shaking off all its conservative, colonial inhibitions to emerge as a colorful, rock-n-role version of action that is exciting to watch and easy to follow and tailor-made for the taste of jet-set age and its high-paced professionals.

From being the scion of multi-billion dollar enterprise that has interest in everything but cricket, in agro-chemicals, steel, tobacco, tea and beverages, education, entertainment and Real estate, to ending as the creator of something as magnificent, as enormous as Indian premier League -  it could have been a lifetime’s work for others to complete the journey. But for Modi it was a steep curve.

His first stint with BCCI was that of an adversary; during the early 1990’s, when he was trying to build a business out of distributing sports pay channels, Modi became a business rival of BCCI’s establishment. Blessed with a strong business intuition, back then Modi realized that live cricket in India has very very strong potential and it is a commodity that Indian audience would never refuse to pay for. However, he somehow realized that to win over an establishment, you have to penetrate it from inside and so he joined the BCCI and the rest is history. His rise in BCCI has been fast and stunning; by 2005 he was in the middle of the power struggle that resulted in Sharad Pawar, taking over the reign from former Indian cricket supremo and ICC chief Jagmohan Dalmiya, and himself becoming the youngest vice president of BCCI.

For the man, who holds a marketing degree from Duke University, it might have taken a tweak of his fingers to help push BCCI’s revenues over the US$1 billion mark, which was seven-fold of its previous revenues. After he took charge, the board’s commercial activities gathered a new momentum. Soon he rose to such a formidable status that “no one in cricket wants to be on his wrong side”. He hit the ICC where it pained - he accused the international cricket body of harboring a neo-colonial bias. Naturally his aggressive stance made him quite unpopular in the international cricket circuit. Former England cricket captain Michael Atherton has called him “ruthless”. And he was a ruthless administrator indeed, and also an astute financial planner, who visualized the strong business potential of a package of Twenty-20 cricket and Bollywood glamour.

And his strong business intuition proved right, in two years his baby has not just changed cricket, it has made the ICC bow before the power of BCCI. Call it muscle flexing, but from politics to society - muscle is where money is.
 
While the conservatives are disturbed at how the shortest format of cricket are fast taking over the finer points of gentleman’s game, for Modi, it’s quite simple: “We've hit records in viewership, record numbers in sponsorships sales, record number in team franchise sales, the owner themselves have done so well, the stadiums are full. We got Bollywood involved, I mean it's a script that I couldn't have written better myself.”

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

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