On face value, it is very difficult to take the Champions League T20 seriously.
It is not, as its name suggests, a competition of winners. After all,
the second, third and fourth placed teams in a league of nine are
participating along with the runners-up of some tournaments and victors
of others.
Beyond the format, there are other oddities. The opening concert will be
headlined by a person who calls himself DJ Earworm, a mash up artist.
For those who don't know that does not involve potatoes but mixing of
sounds to form what the Billboard 100 charts say is very popular music.
What that has to do with cricket is as much as cheerleaders and
fireworks. So, in other words, a lot.
Let's not bemoan that cricket is not simply cricket anymore because it
has been taken over by side shows. We've known that for a while and
secretly a lot of us like it because it is, even if it is just a little,
fun. Who doesn't like a bit of dancing in between regular life? In the
middle of all the fun, we could forget about the real issues that
surround a tournament like this.
The imbalanced nature of the competition is its greatest flaw. With four
IPL teams, two South African franchises and two Australian gaining
automatic entry into the event, the rest are right to feel a little left
out. Of the remaining Full Member countries, two - Zimbabwe and
Bangladesh - were not even invited to qualify while the other five were
give two spots to fight over. Even those were not evenly handed out as
England were allowed two teams in qualifying while Pakistan, New Zealand
and Sri Lanka were only permitted one each.
The result is a main event that just does not seem fair. If the
marketing says the competition will be played between champions, why are
so many absent?
The answer lies where so many other answers do: in money. When a novel
concept like the CLT20 was mooted, its intentions must have been to play
a real league of champions. The boards of India, South Africa and
Australia quickly realised the only way they could make money out of it
would be if more Indian teams were involved to appeal to larger Indian audience, who the advertisers pay to target.
That economic law of supply and demand was enough to steer the course of
the entire tournament. Because more Indian teams need to be involved,
fewer other teams can participate to avoid the event becoming much
longer. Because South Africa and Australia are shareholders, they needed
to see some benefit other than having a stake in it, so they get two
teams. Because everyone else is not part of the administration of the
tournament, they get what's left over.
Surely then some concoction of a tournament name like the 'Ind-SA-Aus
T20 with invited guests' would be more appropriate and more honest. It
would settle the question about who really owns the competition, who
benefits from it and who dictates terms. It would be a private event and
no-one would have any right to complain about it.
Such a neat solution is not possible though, because the ICC endorses
the CLT20 in its current form. Why else would they permit a window for
it in every year on the FTP? No other multi-team tournament that is not a
World Cup (even the Champions Trophy is at an end) and certainly no
other domestic event has this right. The game's governing body has
rubber stamped the CLT20 and that would give it little reason to alter
its composition in future.
Perhaps ICC involvement could make a difference in future, if it assumes
some governing rights over the CLT20. Take UEFA's Champions League,
which the CLT20 is often compared with, as an example. First of all,
note that the top three leagues in Europe are allowed to enter four
teams into the event, while some of the other countries are not even
given a spot, so even the footballing equivalent is skewed.
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