A Common Fan’s Sports Diary

Wonder if these guys ever talk about improving the Ranji Trophy?

The BCCI wants India to play as many international fixtures to possible because these matches net them a lot of money. Subsequently the heavy international calendar ensures that the tired Indian internationals rarely play in the domestic tournaments like the Ranji trophy, unless they have been dropped and are looking to prove a point. This reduces the star quotient of the domestic circuit and dilutes the quality of the cricketing fare and the intensity of the competition. A combination of these reasons ensures that the fans stay away and as a result the state associations and the BCCI make very little money from these games. As a result these bodies take very little active interest in these games. No effort is made to improve the state of these domestic tournaments.

The players who play in these tournaments have a million reasons to feel dispirited. They play in front of nonexistent crowds. They get paid poorly. And realistically speaking they don’t have a great opportunity to make a case for themselves, thanks to the poor quality of the pitches and the lack of quality competition. Runs scored and wickets taken are always taken with a pinch of salt. Players are rarely put in situations which test their mental fortitude and help them mature as cricketers. Most of the players who shine and get a chance to play at the next level are not well prepared to handle the rarefied air of international cricket. And not because they didn’t have the ability but because they have no experience or practise of having played on sporting pitches or against quality opposition or having been in tough situations. 99% of people reading this will not be able to name the top scorer and the top wicket- taker in last season’s Ranji trophy . If you can then may god bless you.

So is it wrong if players are ready to give an arm and a leg to play in the IPL?

The money is important but there are many other reasons why domestic players would be ready to forego the entire Ranji Trophy season to play a couple of IPL games

Prof Ratnakar Shetty and the BCCI are worried about the charms of the IPL but are they doing anything to make the Ranji Trophy exciting.

The Ranji format is flawed and fundamentally prone to produce defensive boring cricket. Borrowing a few ideas from Australia and South Africa will address that problem. But Mr Shetty and gang either find high scoring draws exciting or they schedule their discussions on domestic cricket during the IPL’s 10 minute strategic timeouts.

Seriously , is it absolutely impossible to market the Ranji Trophy in a cricket crazy country like ours?

Will it be difficult to draw crowds and attract sponsors if UP’s pace battery of RP Singh, Pravin Kumar and Sudeep Tyagi took on the might of Gambhir and Sehwag on a bouncy track with both sides playing to win. A few foreign players could be thrown in to add to the competitive intensity and the star power.

Will this lead to revenue generation from the Ranji Trophy and a better lot of players coming out of domestic cricket.

Yes

Is that in the best interests of the BCCI, the state associations, future India aspirants as well as Indian cricket in general

Yes

Does the BCCI control all the variables that are required to make this happen?

Yes, unless they are being blackmailed by someone from another cricketing nation who has a video of the entire board involved in a gay orgy in the middle of the Wankhede

Johny Damon and Xavier Nady play for the New York Yankees. Their annual salaries are 13 million dollars and 6 million dollars respectively. However, Damon stands the risk of defaulting on his latest home loan payment and Nady’s been unable to find a place to live in New York. And no, they have not taken a mortgage on the White House or tried to rent the Yankee Stadium.

They have been caught up in the scandal involving Allen Sanford’s Ponzi scheme and all their financial accounts have been frozen.

Other victims include golfer Vijay Singh and footballer Michael Owen. Luckily, these guys aren’t as cash strapped as the two Yankee players and numerous other sportspersons in the United States.

Stanford is the same guy who a few months earlier was the financial messiah for cricket in the West Indies and was just getting started as the saviour of English cricket.

Now the same Caribbean people who once hailed him for bringing life back into their cricket are scrambling to get their money out of the Stanford International bank in Antigua.

Allen Stanford’s status in the world of sports has quickly gone from Super Hero to Super villain.

Closer home, we have Subrata Roy Sahara of the Chit-fund scheme fame

He sponsors the Indian cricket team and the Indian Hockey team.

And now his company, The Sahara Group, will be providing long term financial support to Indian boxers and wrestlers, to enable them to get better training and more international exposure.

They are also in talks with Manchester United to become their Shirt sponsors.

Forget the Mittal Trust Fund; it is the Sahara Group which is facilitating Indian sports to go where they have never been before.

And all this from a Chit Fund Scheme (also known as the Sahara India Financial Corporation) which was banned in June 2008 by the Reserve Bank of India from accepting any more public deposits.

And if that doesn’t scare you enough, the Sahara Group, after their appalling attempts at running television channels and Airlines, have also forayed into other financial businesses like Insurance and Mutual Funds. It has never stopped amazing me – how do these guys spend so much on sponsorship when all their companies are bleeding money. Well except for their Chit fund business and the jury is still out on that one.

As an Indian sports fan, however, I can’t thank Mr. Subrata Roy enough. He has given a massive lift to the national passion (cricket), the national game (hockey) and the national pride (the Olympics boxers and wrestlers).

But would I trust them with my hard earned money. No I wouldn’t. Not even if there is no other investment option left in India

They spend so much money on sports but whose money?

The similarities with Allen Stanford are difficult to ignore. The Texan wasn’t called a crook before he recently got caught.

You can love and loathe Subrata Roy at the same time. And I am sure the Caribbean cricket die-hards are having the same mixed feelings for Allen Stanford.

They cheat (now conclusively proven in the case of Stanford, while there is enough to be suspicious of Subrata) the poor and the not so poor and give it back to them by way of sponsoring their favourite sports teams. And they take a little cut for all their troubles.

They are well and truly the modern day version of Robbing Hood

A rare champion

Cricketers are by far the richest sportspersons in India, with the exception of Vishwanathan Anand and a couple of golfers probably. But when was the last time a cricketer gave away his money for a good cause?

I don’t remember ever. And don’t count the charity games they play in.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is hardly any money in amateur boxing. The AIBA Boxing World Cup was a rare event that offered prize money. Our bronze-medal winning boxers won 2,500 USD each – peanuts compared to most other sports.

But, in spite of the meagre amount , boxers Akhil Kumar and Jitender Kumar, decided to distribute a share of their prize money to the coaching staff comprising – Sandhu, Bisht, Ramanand and C Kuttappa. “We will give $500 to each of them as these people matter the most. They wipe our blood and sweat and put in the effort to prepare us for the toughest in the world. They are the unsung heroes,” said Akhil.

Now you decide, who is richer – cricketers or boxers

We just read how the meltdown in the financial markets has deeply affected the Premiership clubs leaving a few almost on the brink of collapse

But you know what – the folks in the blue half of Manchester are grinning from ear to ear

If you want to know why, check out the top name on this list. And we all know where the owners of Manchester City come from – Abu Dhabi

The City fans have every reason to be in love with the Sheikhs

That means that while the rest of football world will be practising financial prudence when the transfer window opens in January, Manchester City will be the only ones with pockets full of money. It will be a market where everyone will be looking to sell and City will be the only buyers around – the only club capable of paying huge transfer fees and adding more players on high salaries.

Guess in the football players’ world, all roads now lead to Manchester – the Blue half that is.

Recently we identified a trend that financial organizations sponsoring English football clubs have been hardest hit by the financial crisis.

Now we have a new report from Bloomberg which gives us more insight into how most of the premiership clubs are struggling financially – thanks in large part to the great financial meltdown.

Here are the key paragraphs of the report with the significant lines highlighted for the benefit of the readers of Commonfan

The chairman of English soccer’s governing body said the country’s clubs have debt of 3 billion pounds ($5.25 billion), and conceded that a team may become a victim of the meltdown in the world’s financial markets.

“We are in a very much more volatile position, in which debt is not only a problem in terms of volume, it’s a problem because those who own the debt are themselves now often in serious problems,” Lord David Triesman, chairman of the Football Association, told reporters today at the Leaders in Football conference in London.

The four teams that finished at the top of the Premier League last season, champion Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, carry a third of the debt, Triesman said. The data are from financial firms in the City of London, he said, without giving details.Top tier teams can control their indebtedness, Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore said.”This is top of clubs’ agendas and in my view they are managing it responsibly,” he told delegates attending a conference at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium.

Today, the vice chairman of West Ham United said former Landsbanki Chairman Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson won’t be forced to sell the east London soccer club after the bailout of his bank, Iceland’s second-largest lender.

West Ham Situation

Landsbanki Islands hf, of which Gudmundsson was the majority shareholder, was seized by Iceland’s Financial Supervisory Authority because of a risk it could default.
“He’s still standing,” West Ham’s Asgeir Fridgeirsson said in an interview today. “At the moment, he’s not planning any changes.” The East London club isn’t for sale, he said. Gudmundsson, who had a $1.1 billion fortune according to Forbes magazine, bought the club with compatriot Eggert Magnusson in November 2006 for 85 million pounds ($150 million). He bought out Magnusson’s stake and is now sole owner of the Premier League club.

The Premier League is soccer’s richest, generating revenue exceeding 1.5 billion pounds in 2006-07, and matches are watched in 199 countries. Its latest television agreement is worth 2.7 billion pounds over three seasons. Much of that money has gone to players, and those pay levels need to be reassessed to protect the future of teams, Triesman said. Wages in English soccer are growing at a rate of 12 percent, and one Premier League club increased salaries by 41 percent last season, he said. Clubs were imperilling themselves by building a “debt mountain.”

‘Tangible Danger’

“This poses us with a tangible danger,” he said in a speech. “Not only is debt at high-risk levels, but we’re also in a period where transparency lies in an unmarked grave.” Clubs, like the banks, don’t explain their finances well, bringing uncertainty and a lack of trust, he said. He called on teams to be clearer about their accounts and ownership.

“Nobody in the wider world knows what the quality of the information is and nobody has real confidence in what they cannot see,” he said. The English Premier League has become a scoreboard for the global credit crisis. Newcastle players wear the logo of Northern Rock Plc, a U.K. mortgage-lender that was nationalized in February; West Ham lost XL Leisure Group Plc last month when the tour operator grounded all its flights because it ran out of money; and West Bromwich Albion was unable to land a shirt sponsor after being promoted from the second-tier championship.

We thank Vijay Raman for this report. He is now our special correspondent on matters that combine football and finance.

How’s this a for a coincidence

Northern Rock – they became the UK’s first victim of the financial meltdown exactly a year ago – also happen to be the sponsors of Newcastle United Football Club.

AIG – earlier this month they were saved from a collapse by the largesse of US federal govt – also happen to be the sponsors of Manchester United Football Club

Bradford & Bingley – they are being nationalised by the British govt as we speak – also happen to be the sponsors of the Bradford City Football Club

Now answer another question

What is common to the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Bank and HSBC – other than the fact they are all generally doing fine and have avoided the calamitous fate of the organizations mentioned above?

None of them are involved with a football club, although they sponsor a lot of sports teams and events.

Need I say more?

P.S – thanks to my friend Vijay Raman for this wonderful insight. He is a banker and a football lover based in England. No wonder he knows stuff like this