Why the IPL is not Indian

Foreigners number less than a third of IPL players but are paid almost two-thirds the tournament’s salary total.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

IF you're not in India you're either envious or relieved, or both. Envious because cricket's greatest show on earth is starting without you. Relieved because you're dodging nine-and-a-half weeks of chaos. Both because you know you can't have the show without the chaos.

The IPL does strange things to people. That remains true as its 17th edition begins, and even though T20 has outgrown its enfant terribleness and handed it down to strangiosities like T10 and the Hundred. In terms of major men's T20 tournaments alone, 66 different competitions, at least, have been played everywhere from Canada to Kenya to Hong Kong. Thirty-four have survived. One matters exponentially more than the rest combined. This year's version started at magnificent Chepauk on Friday, when Chennai Super Kings played Royal Challengers Bangalore.

For millions of Indians the IPL stops the world. It saturates the media, rises above politics, dominates discourse. For other millions worldwide the tournament spins on its own axis. It dances to its own tunes, makes its own rules, reinvents the ancient game in its own image. Depending on who you ask, the IPL is Planet Cricket itself or the game's Death Star. The division follows, broadly, generational lines.

Those who have nothing more than vague memories from before the mid-1990s, or when the internet spread into many of our lives, consider it central to their consumption of cricket. Innovative new strokes? Thank the IPL. The resurrection of wrist spin? Thank the IPL. The data revolution that has reshaped the ways matches are won and lost? Thank the IPL.

Their elders could not agree less. To them the IPL is at once the driving force and the product of much that is wrong with the modern game. Players pushing international cricket down or even off their priority lists? Blame the IPL. The slow, sad decline of first-class cricket? Blame the IPL. Bazball? Blame the IPL.

Difficult as it is to believe from inside the IPL bubble, it is the most divisive issue in the game. Inside that bubble all agree that the tournament has breathed new and vibrant life into cricket; that the game would be stunted and dull without it. Outside the bubble many wonder how everyone can't agree that, as one esteemed Indian cricket journalist said privately a few days ago, "this bloody IPL has killed cricket”.

He is, it should be noted, of a certain age. His younger cohorts, and almost everybody else working on the tournament, don't have the time or reserves of mental energy required to ponder such philosophical concepts. The IPL gives all of us much but demands exponentially more from those tasked with feeding the insatiable monster. On them it inflicts a level of exhaustion — evidenced by dead fish eyes, shoulders hunched like molehills, a shambling, shuffling gait, senseless rambling that only their fellows can understand — that is better left unseen and unheard. Know that, for you to enjoy the IPL in the manner to which you have become accustomed, others work themselves to a standstill.

Of course they toil far harder than the players and for laughably less money. Then again, no-one buys a ticket or turns on a television to watch a driver wait for players to board the team bus, a police officer keep spectators in check, a reporter peck at a laptop using both their typing fingers.

The money sloshing around the tournament, and the one-way direction in which it sloshes, is another line that separates the IPL's lovers from its haters. As is geography. If you're in India, there's no avoiding the IPL. If you're not, you have the choice to pay attention or not.

So here's a fact that might make those further afield take notice: in terms of where the buck goes, not stops, the IPL is more foreign than Indian. Currently the 10 franchises' total salary bill for 2024 adds up to USD88,100,177 at Friday's exchange rate. Of that, USD55,094,562 — 62.54%, almost two-thirds — has been spent on players from other countries. And that despite the 78 foreigners comprising just 31.97% of the 244 who make up all 10 squads. You might say the combined talent and skill of the outsiders is worth more than twice their weight in dollars. Let no-one say the IPL is only about India or Indians.

Australia and South Africa have each supplied 15 players this year, England 13, West Indies 11, New Zealand and Afghanistan eight apiece, Sri Lanka five, and Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ireland one each. The South Africans take home the biggest chunk of the foreign purse — USD16,172,345, or 29.35%. The Australians are next with USD15,671,029. The English bill amounts to a relatively smaller USD7,024,428 — just 12.75% of the overseas total, and an average of USD537,816 less than the South Africans individually. The West Indians have two fewer players than those from England but, with a kitty of USD8,114,503, they earn USD1,090,075 more. While the Kiwis and the Afghans have the same number of players in the tournament, the New Zealanders are up by USD1,368,593. Bangladesh's Mustafizur Rahman, Zimbabwe's Sikandar Raza and Ireland's Josh Little earn, combined, three-and-a-half times less than Mitchell Starc, the IPL's all-time record signing at USD2,963,309.

Envious about all that money? Relieved that you can keep an eye from afar? Both? If you're at all cricketminded — and you are if you've read this far — stand by for nine-and-a-half weeks of all of the above, and more.

Cricbuzz