CLT20 scrapping would help cricket balance, not bank balance

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

A revenue stream worth more than R300-million a year to SA cricket could dry up at a meeting in India on Sunday.

That’s when the working committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will decide whether to scrap the Champions League T20 (CLT20).

Future editions of the tournament are in danger of being cancelled because of shrinking crowds, spiralling television ratings and losses of around US$100-million a year incurred by broadcasters.

The franchises who fill the two berths reserved for SA sides earn R2.4-million each. As shareholders in the tournament, Cricket SA (CSA) make around R302-million annually.

Each time one of the Indian Premier League (IPL) sides involved in the CLT20 decide to hang onto a player who would otherwise turn out for his SA franchise, that franchise is compensated to the tune of R1.8-million.

Cricket Australia bank the same amount as CSA while the major shareholders, the BCCI, claim about twice as much. And it is the powerful BCCI, supported by the broadcasters, who are bent on hitting the CLT20 for six.

The IPL is the jewel in the BCCI’s crown and the CLT20 has come to be seen as stealing some of the former’s shine. It is played just two months after the IPL, in itself a two-month slog of matches almost daily, and involves several of the same players and teams.

In cricket terms the CLT20, a tournament that has become as unloved as it was always unreal, would not be mourned. But the likely impending loss of so much money is a looming disaster in a SA cricket economy in which franchises would struggle to stay afloat without the funding they receive from sources like CSA and the CLT20.

“It’s going to affect everybody - maybe not in the short term because there are still outstanding commitments to be fulfilled but certainly in the long term,” a senior franchise official, who declined to be named, said on Monday.

But he did not think the loss of the tournament, which featured the SA teams that reached the final of the franchise competition, was all negative.

“My big concern was that our own T20 tournament was becoming the most important competition because of the money it involved. That was happening to the detriment of the other competitions. Maybe, if the CLT20 is shelved, we will see the balance return to normal.”

The cricket balance that is. Not the bank balance.