The IPL is such a revolutionary concept that many cricket boards around the world are shaking in their boots. Many players are going to go from scrounging a meager income representing their regions (be it Sheffield Shield, County etc) to go on to make more money in 3 weeks work than they would playing an entire season with their clubs and representative sides. Twenty Twenty cricket is here, and it’s here to stay. It’s the sort of sport that appeals to those in the younger generations, the ones in which the traditions of a 5 days test match seem obscure. This generation is used to having all their information served up to them on a silver platter. Who needs to spend countless hours in the library, researching catalogues and books when Google and Wikipedia can give you all the info you need in 5 minutes? Their mission in life is to ‘Get rich (quick), or die tryin`’.

This is why 20/20 cricket will thrive and expand to become a truly global sport. Marketers know their audiences, and the new tech savy generation has a shorter attention span and very little name brand loyalty. If a better product comes along, they jump, and they jump hard. There seems to be no such thing as an early adaptor anymore (it’s more like an entire generation as a whole is now the early adaptors). As such I envision a number of premier leagues in which the best players are bought and sold in frenzied auctions (just like the first IPL auction). Allan Stanford, the Texas billionaire knows this, and he is creating his own premier league for the West Indies (and has the Cubans involved in 2009). When private individuals get in on the act (see Kerry Packer with 50 over cricket) the world generally listens. You never know, Mark Cuban the ‘Blogging Billionaire’ could be interested in such a venture, and anyone who knows anything about Mark, knows that he is a media darling.

This raises a number of issues for the cricket boards of these lucky few players. Do the boards allow the players to run off as needed? It essentially turns cricketers into guns for hire. The easy way to deal with this is for the leagues to broker deals with the boards as a whole. These deals would have to include the frequency of these leagues, the number of players allowed to be taken from each country and so many other agreements that it makes brokering peace in the Middle East look like an undergraduate lawyer’s first draft. But the biggest issue facing the cricket boards and the premier leagues is scheduling these events so that they don’t interfere with each countries existing schedule.

Cricket boards are there to make money, and they are currently between a rock and a hard place. By denying players the chance to play in the leagues will cause massive rifts in the game. The cricket boards can’t afford to have their star players on strike, and they definitely can’t afford to try and sell tickets while fielding second and third rung teams. The only solution is to get the boards to partner up with the leagues and make the most of an excellent marketing situation.

I think the IPL is going to be a wonderful test case, can 20/20 cricket go truly global? Can it capture the hearts and minds of the lucrative US market? If it does, things are going to become amazingly interesting. I for one, can’t wait.