Tony Becca
THE INTERNATIONAL Cricket Council (ICC) will be holding a meeting of its members, full and associates, in Karachi on Thursday. This time it has nothing to do with the laws of the game, with conditions of play, with suspect bowling actions, or even with the use of technology to assist with umpiring decisions.
This time around it has to do with a row that is brewing between the ICC, a number of its affiliates, and the Indian Government over the broadcasting of matches involving the Indian team.
For many years cricket fans in India, like cricket fans around the world, were accustomed to seeing the national team in action on national television. That, however, has changed in recent years.
MAKE THE NEWS AVAILABLE
With the coming of private broadcasters, televised matches involving the Indian team has been done by private broadcasters. The general public has been denied access to these broadcasts and a few weeks ago the Indian Government ruled that in future these private broadcasters must share feeds involving the Indian team with Doordarshan, the state-owned broadcaster.
According to India's information and broadcasting minister, P.R. Dasmunsi, the reason for that is simple: it is to make the broadcasts of the Indian cricket team in action, and any Indian team in any of the country's major sports, available to the Indian people.
According to the ICC, a number of cricket boards around the world and to the private broadcasters, however, the decisions by the Indian Government will "devalue exclusivity and result in huge losses to private broadcasters".
Based on the words of Ehsan Mani, however, the president of the ICC who has written to both the information and broadcasting minister and the Prime Minister protesting the ruling, it is more than that.
"I wouldn't like to speculate how much money it would cost us, but I know it would be substantial," said Pakistani Mani recently.
That suggests the ICC's protest has nothing to do with the interest of those who are denied watching their team in action, with exclusivity, or with the "huge" losses the private broadcasters would suffer, but rather with how much money it would lose.
While that is important, especially as the ICC is now moving towards spreading the game and needs money to do so, it is also important that the general public is not denied the opportunity to see their national team in action. And that is the problem facing the game.
The ICC, it appears, is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
On one hand, the ICC, in its bid to spread the gospel of the game, would certainly love to see it on national television. On the other hand, however, the lack of exclusively, the inability of national networks to compete financially with private broadcasters for the rights, would mean a loss of revenue for the ICC, not so much from Test matches but from events like the World Cup and the ICC Champions Trophy.
That would mean less money to fund the growth and development of the game, and the ICC cannot afford that.
A LONG GAME
On top of the cost involved, cricket is such a long game that there is the growing problem of national television devoting so much time to televising a match.
As the ICC and representatives of private broadcasters like CSI Octagon, ESS, Sony Entertainment Television, TEN Sports, TWI and Zee TV gather in Karachi to discuss the problem, there certainly will be sympathy for those who are denied access to live television broadcasts of their teams in action.
Times, however, have changed, there is nothing free any more. This is the era of free market and in order to do what it needs to do the ICC needs money. For cricket fans, for sports fans around the world, that is the harsh reality.
Like the people of India, cricket is dear to the people of the West Indies and based on the criticisms by Jamaicans last year when the series between the West Indies and Australia was televised live only on Sportsmax, they certainly would like to see their Governments do what the Indian Government has done.
As good as that would be for the growth and development of the game in the West Indies, however, the question is this: if the Governments in the West Indies do what the Indian Government has done, who will pay for it?
