Short, sweet, Indian sideshows threatening cricket as we know it

Fans roar across the world as Manchester United score to put themselves in front. It's a situation that excites its fans, and it is estimated that an incredible 5% of the world's population are United supporters, and it's one that occurs quite often, and has for quite some time. It's a situation that the English Premier League, one of the world's biggest professional sporting leagues, does little to correct. The '4 team dominance' (Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool) is a result of the league, and in fact the sport, that has become a money based game. Association Football (Soccer) is the world's most popular and one of its oldest games, but people rarely question the incredible lack of competitiveness between its richest clubs and the ones struggling to make ends meet. It's a situation that is just not cricket, is it?

This week, Cricket Australia will make its final decision on whether to allow its contracted players to participate in the new ICC sanctioned Indian Premier League, which will feature local Indian players, as well as international stars from across the cricketing globe. The amount of players signed up from the land down under alone is incredible, and whilst nothing is finalized yet, the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) wants an answer soon, or it will ban the players from playing in the future.

Most Australian players have expressed a desire to play in the tournament, and with the money on offer, who could blame them? But the situation remains, that has already become a problem with the rebel Indian Cricket League, that players seem to be so keen to play, that international cricket could suffer. New Zealand has already lost one of its brightest stars, Shane Bond, to the rebel ICL, forcing the NZ board to ban Bond for the move. What is most incredible is that the tournament is just that. It is not a season or a league, but rather a short Twenty20 tournament that lasts barely over a month. Bond has chosen a couple of months work over a year long international commitment.

The money that the BCCI generates is excessively large. So far, international cricketing standards have not been affected by it, though political influence has.