India's cricket team players visited the Miami Heat

Cricket may be India's number one sport (I'm sorry I lied, it's number one, two, three, four, and five) but the ol' 'bat and ball' is still relatively anonymous in the USA outside the fanbases of Commonwealth descent. So it is with an intention to promote the game in this untapped market that two Twenty20 international matches have been scheduled between the national teams of India and West Indies in Florida this weekend. And in a move to promote cricket to Americans, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have also ended up reverse promoting our favourite sport here - basketball - to an Indian audience.

On Wednesday, August 24, cricket and basketball united as three members of the Indian cricket team visited the facility of the 2012 and 2013 NBA Champions Miami Heat - the American Airlines Arena - in Florida. Star spin bowler/All-Rounder Ravichandran Ashwin, batsman Shikhar Dhawan, and fast-medium bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar were part of the BCCI contingent that visited the home of the Heat, where they were hosted by young guard Tyler Johnson and undrafted rookie Briante Weber.

Rajlaxmi Arora reported the news on the BCCI website:

The trio were hosted by the latest recruit of Miami Heat - Tyler Johnson as he gave them a walk through their locker room, team meeting room, gymnasium and recuperation centre at the American Airlines Arena.
Briante Weber joined Johnson in hosting the Indian trio as they explained the techniques involved in Basketball to the Cricketers and showed off some moves. The group then got involved in a session of Basketball in the practice court.
The cricketers enjoyed their experience at the court with some engaging discussion with the NBA stars. While Shikhar and Bhuvneshwar were chatting up with the hosts, Ashwin seemed to have gone back to his school days of playing basketball.
Speaking about his visit at the Miami Heat home arena, R Ashwin said: “I’ve played a bit of basketball during my school days, so that got me really excited while I tried my hand at it again after so many years. I am thankful to both Weber and Johnson for taking time out and showing us around their home turf.”
Bhuvneshwar Kumar said: “It was great to see these guys and learn about their game. I was impressed with the facilities here and it was a learning experience for me to see the amount of technology being used in sports science.”
“It was great fun,” exclaimed India opener Shikhar Dhawan. “I am very happy we could make it here. Exchanging thoughts about how sports has transformed with the latest technology is always good. While I tried to explain these guys how Cricket is played, they in return taught me the finer details of basketball.”

Team India arrived in Miami on Wednesday and will play back-to-back Twenty20 matches against the West Indies on August 27 and 28 at Central Broward Regional Park in the city of Fort Lauderdale. This will be the first time that competitive international cricket will be played on American soil. The BCCI reached out to several American athletes and celebrities to promote the game with the #TeamIndiaInUSA hashtag on Twitter, including NBA veteran and three-time champ Udonis Haslem of the Heat and upcoming young point guard D'Angelo Russell of the Los Angeles Lakers.

As an Indian and an NBA fan, I love this union. Hopefully, Ashwin, Dhawan, and Bhuvaneshwar can introduce some Indian cricket fans to the NBA, too. The Heat in particular, who have lost LeBron (to Cleveland), Wade (to Chicago), Bosh (to a serious and uncertain health condition) and their local fanbase (who're just late to the arena), could certainly use some new fans to count on for their support.

A tale of three leagues

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It's a tale of three leagues, in three countries, of three sports.
1. National Basketball Association (NBA) - Basketball, USA
2. English Premier League (EPL) - Football, England
3. Indian Premier Leauge (IPL) - Cricket, India

India has a total of ONE succesful professional sports league: the IPL. ONE. Like it or hate it, but that's the truth. Hell, even many cricket purists hate it, disregarding the Twenty-20's format as 'real' cricket.

Whatever - we aren't here to argue about what cricket should be. We're here to talk about what the IPL wants to be. The IPL wants to be the NBA, and it has wanted to be the NBA for quite some time. It is no secret that the league format, the franchises, the cheerleaders, the dugout (or "bench"), the player profiles, the "strategic" time-outs, the advertising frenzy, the television broadcasts, etc in the IPL have borrowed heavily from the NBA and even the EPL. Sorry football fans, but in many ways financially, the IPL has actually overtaken the EPL. According to the inaugural Annual Review of Global Sports Salaries (ARGSS) (later published on sportingintelligence.com), IPL became the second highest paid league in the world this year, overtaking the EPL. You know what's it second to? The NBA.

Even NBA Commissioner/Tsar/Maharaja David Stern become a fan of the IPL last November. In an interview with DNA-Mumbai, Stern said, "We are closely watching as to how the IPL has been a game-changer in sport. It has adopted a number of Western sporting practices like the franchise system, player bidding, the home-and-away games, double-headers and the like."

Now, IPL may take yet another page out of the NBA book. After adding two new franchises to the existing eight in the IPL, the BCCI is looking to change its format to finish the tournament in the same seven-week period as the previous three IPL editions. Until IPL-3, each team played each other team twice, home and away, to play a total of 14 matches each, which meant that a grand total of 60 matches were played. If the same format is continued for 10 teams, 94 games would have to be played. The BCCI don't want that because they have a time constraint.

One of their options is to do with the NBA does: Divide the teams into two groups (NBA-read: Conferences) of five. Like the NBA, the teams in the same conference play each other three or four times, whereas teams in opposing conferences play each other twice, once home, and once away. Each team plays 82 games in the regular season. In the IPL, the proposition is that each team plays other teams in its groups twice (home and away) and the teams in the group once.

Good idea, but it does create problems. Home advantage is something that teams obviously rely on, so on what basis will the home games be played in the inter-group games?

The other idea I feel is worse, which is to have the same round-robin system in the two groups, and then the best teams move on to a 'Super Six' stage and they all play each other. With this format, there are many teams who may never get to play each other, and that completely defies the whole point of being a league.

My solution is this: screw the groups. Don't follow the NBA, follow the EPL. Have all teams play each other home AND away like the current system. Play 94 games. I can hear the groans already: there aren't enough days to fit these many games. Or the groans from TV broadcasters: we can't show more than one or two games a day because TV ratings will take a hit.

I don't see why the league can't be expanded to take a longer time. This way, it will become less of a quick tournament and more of a 'season'. Yes, international cricket clashes will cause a problem, but just like international breaks in the football season, the IPL can incorporate their season around cricket international breaks, too.

And it's fine to glamourise our leagues just as media has done it in the US, but their needs to be a limit, and that limit is crossed when the sport is overshadowed by celebrity and marketing culture. I searched for 'ipl' in Google-Images, and you know what I got? Three of the first four photos are of Katrina Kaif, Preity Zinta, and Shah Rukh Khan. The first cricketers don't show up till the eight pic. Even Vijay Mallaya scores earlier.

If we are truly looking to bring a sports league/season culture such as that in the USA, Europe, etc into India, our leagues have to be bigger, last longer, and be ABOUT THE SPORT. It is laughable that the second-richest league in the world lasts just seven weeks.

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