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        The Indian Cricket League, which yesterday grandly unveiled its list of Indian and foreign players (at the moment, it is 44 and six) to play in its inaugural season, seems high on aspirations but low on practical efficacy. If the ICL hopes to build upon the obvious disillusionment in various quarters against the BCCI then its methods should be much more transparent and and certainly unBCCI-like. But there is more bravado than any real coherence in the way Kapil Dev and other spokespersons of the Zee-backed cricket enterprise are seeking to explain their position. For instance, we still don't have an answer to 'Why ICL?'. And quite unlike the highly success Packer coup, ICL doesn't aspire to fill a need of the time. At any rate, when Kapil speaks you cannot get a convincing answer for something even as starlight as 'what day is today'.

        The BCCI's functioning over the years has been woeful and the mandarins who run the affairs on a putative honorary basis have merely fattened themselves. The interests of the paying patrons and the players (the two most important stakeholders in the entire venture) seem to bring up only the rear in the BCCI's line of priorities. It is nicely romantic to think that ICL has been floated with the idea of nurturing cricketers, develop grassroots cricket and ensure a win-win situation for the game, its players, its administrators and the public. But the reality would be that Subhash Chandra and Co have smelled that there are millions to be made through cricket. The rationalised talk of developing cricket and providing international exposure to young Indian cricketers are all mere after-thought altruism. Money is at the centre of everything that the ICL seeks to represent. But isn't precisely this that the BCCI eventually became? The choice of the version — 20-20 — is the dead give away here. It is being predicted as the next thing for the television companies looking for exciting events that could be nicely packaged as view-sized nuggets. It is a game that puts a premium on speed and athleticism, and pure cricketing skills (something that Test players need) are not its strong suit. By its mercenary poaching ways, the ICL can only queer the pitch, rather bring any clarity to the over all picture.

        The ICL, with its proposed league of have-beens and wannabes, can hardly be an attractive proposition for the viewers. At least as of now, there is nothing in the ICL that offers the hope that it would mark a major difference from the way we have been used to so far. But the BCCI should not be lulled into easy complacency. The failure of the ICL, which may happen, does not read as a vindication to the way the BCCI has been functioning. The BCCI can however use the ICL challenge to set its house in order. It can get down to doing something concrete for the first-class cricketers and the facilities available at the stadiums for the spectators. Does the BCCI has this nuanced introspective ability? Going by its past, the answer should be in the negative. But the emergence of the ICL on the horizon is good in that it at least shows that brazen monopolies can no longer be the flavour.