Contrary to popular belief, the foundations of the Indian Premier League were laid long before S Sreesanth caught Misbah-ul-Haq off Joginder Sharma to help India win the inaugural World T20, in 2007.
Lalit Modi had floated the idea in 1995, albeit in 50-over format, but the Board of Control for Cricket in India aka BCCI had shot it down. It had been stowed away until in 2007, when Subhash Chandra announced the Indian Cricket League. The BCCI responded by banning every ‘rebel’ Indian cricketer who signed up for the ICL and launched its own ‘official’ league – the IPL.
While this had been taking place in India in the summer of 2007, Zaheer Khan had been avenging jellybeans with wickets, Anil Kumble scoring a Test hundred, and India winning their first Test series on England soil in 21 years.
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Given the concept, it was difficult for the IPL to fail. But as Lalit Modi would later admit, the magnitude of success was not something even he had expected. It was evident from the first season that the concept was out to change the economy of cricket.
One major country that was not part of the IPL’s inaugural season was England. The IPL was not played in the Indian cricket season of winter. The late starts – at eight in the night – enabled the BCCI to host the tournament in April and May, which clashed with the start of the English summer.
Given the enormous amounts at stake, some English cricketers might still have signed up for the IPL, had Allen Stanford not showed up with his Super Series. For five years, the champions of domestic cricket from England and West Indies would play a match, as would England and the Stanford Superstars (an all-star West Indian side).
The prize money for the latter was a winner-takes-all $20 million. It was a sort of equivalent for the IPL as far as the English cricketers were concerned. IPL 2008 featured only one English cricketer, Dimitri Mascarenhas.
'Duty to the Game'
England toured India soon after the Stanford Super Series for seven ODIs and two Test matches. India comfortably won the first five ODIs. After the fifth ODI, in Cuttack on 26 November, the teams returned to their hotel in the twin city of Bhubaneshwar and learnt about the ghastly terrorist attacks in Mumbai from earlier that day.
For the Mumbai Test match, the cricketers were supposed to be put up at The Taj, one of the places where the terrorists ran amok. The sixth and seventh ODIs were called off. The England team flew home.
No one would have blamed England if they did not want to return to India. Chair of selectors Geoff Miller assured that no one would be pressured to return. But England did return because, to quote Andrew Strauss, the cricketers had "a duty to the game." The Tests were rescheduled from Ahmedabad and Mumbai to Chennai and Mohali.
Strauss scored 123 and 108 in Chennai in front of 3,000-strong police force and 300 commandos. England set India a steep 387. Virender Sehwag blasted his way to a 68-ball 83 before Sachin Tendulkar (100*) and Yuvraj Singh (85*) saw India to the highest successful chase on Indian soil.
"I play for India, now more than ever," said Tendulkar during the presentations. The historic chase, followed by the words and visible emotions from a national hero often elevated to demigod status, resonated beyond the geographical confines of Mumbai.
At the same time, England’s willingness to return for the tour turned out to be wise. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had hailed the decision as "brave and courageous." After the Chennai Test match, the England cricketers donated half their prize money to the victims. The English, board and cricketers in unison, sent the message that they were with India in this fight against terrorism.
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In February 2009, Stanford was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission on multiple counts of fraud. He would be later sentenced to 110 years of prison, effectively killing off the only alternative the English cricketers had to the IPL.
The BCCI had terminated the IPL contracts of the Pakistani cricketers in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. Superstars like Ricky Ponting, Shane Watson, and Michael Hussey had opted out as well. The BCCI now wanted the hitherto untapped pool of English cricketers. They signed a deal with the ECB to release the English cricketers for a 21-day period between England’s away and home series against the West Indies.
For well over a century, England had been the go-to place for overseas professionals, not only for honing cricketing skills but also for making more money out of cricket than they would have otherwise. Indian cricketers had been advised by coaches and mentors to spend summers in England to get acquainted to tough conditions. From Ranjitsinhji to Farokh Engineer to Zaheer Khan, many an Indian cricketing career had been built or turned around by English cricket.
India had taken giant strides towards taking control of the economy of cricket on either side of the new millennium, but the tide was yet to turn the other way. That happened now, when English cricketers enlisted themselves to be auctioned to play a league in India. The whole thing would have been impossible to convince Rip Van Winkle had he missed the years between 1983 and 2009.
At $1.55 million, Kevin Pietersen – who had led the English team that returned to India after the Mumbai attacks – and Andrew Flintoff were jointly the most expensive cricketers of IPL 2009. Ravi Bopara, Paul Collingwood, and Owais Shah also earned contracts. Over years, India would evolve as the most sought-after place for overseas professionals.
Things changed elsewhere as well. In July 2011, just ahead of the first Test match of India’s tour of England, MS Dhoni auctioned the bat he had used to hit the six that had sealed the World Cup final that April, for charity. The price soared to £60,000. The man who won the bid went to the stage, shook Dhoni’s hand, and offered to pay £100,000 instead, making it the costliest cricket bat in history.
All this happened 40 years after Ajit Wadekar, another Indian captain, and Hemu Adhikari, the team manager, fought with the BCCI to increase the daily allowance of the Indian cricketers from £1 to £3. The Indian cricketers had changed beyond recognition, as had the fans.
In 1990, British conservative politician Norman Tebbit had asked Asian cricket fans settled in England to undergo a test to confirm their loyalty towards England during cricket matches. By 2011, the Indian fanbase in England was so vast, and some of them so well-off and influential, that almost no one cared about the Tebbit Test anymore. It has become even less relevant today.
At the same time, England had been winning on the field. They won 4-0 in 2011 and 3-1 in 2014, and even 2-1 in 2012-13, their first series win on Indian soil in 28 years. That trend changed in 2016-17, when India thrashed them 4-0 at home.
By then, Virat Kohli had taken over as captain. Soon after his appointment, Kohli had put emphasis on fast bowling and fitness. He was not the first Indian captain to do this, but few had been as persistent, and no one had been backed by a board that had not only been minting money but used that money efficiently to create a supply chain to meet his demands.
Under Kohli, India changed their image of bearing an ordinary pace attack. The constant focus on pace – even while compromising on batting – helped them achieve something they had always wanted to but never quite achieved before: take all 20 wickets in Test matches consistently outside the subcontinent.
Off the field, too, the equation had changed. In the 1990s and even as late as in the 2000s, cricketers from the subcontinent were often mocked for their English accent or vocabulary or both. By the late 2010s, Indian media personnel would ask Indian cricketers questions in Hindi or another Indian language, the cricketers would respond in the same language, and there would be no translation to English – all this in England.
Three decades ago, several prominent names in the Yorkshire cricket fraternity (including Fred Trueman) were uncomfortable about Tendulkar, an Indian, playing for the club. In 2021, while grappling under racism accusations, they appointed Lord Kamlesh Patel as director and chair.
The Sussex cricketers, unable to pronounce Ranjitsinhji or Duleepsinhji, preferred to address them as ‘Smith’ instead. When they tried to call Cheteshwar Pujara ‘Steve’, Pujara protested, but nothing changed. In 2021, his former teammate Jack Brooks issued a statement of apology to Pujara.
The centre of cricket has switched from England to India. The change has been slow, but consistent. One wonders what Lord Harris, who had tried to prevent Ranji from playing for England (but has a prestigious shield named after him), would have had to say. Back in 1906, Harris had accused Indians of not possessing "the patience and resolution of the Anglo-Saxon…"
(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Chief Editor of CricketNews by day and biryani demolisher at night. He is the co-author of Sachin and Azhar at Cape Town, and tweets @ovshake42.)
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