The Forbes magazine has named Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the top earning cricketer in the world last year. Forbes said that Dhoni earns $8 million in endorsements, from the brands like Reebok, General Electric and Pepsi, and the rest from his cricket salary and fees.
With its deep-pocketed owners and global appeal, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has shaken up professional cricket, luring top players from five continents with paychecks as big as $111,000 per three-hour match. That’s a stunning sum in a sport where domestic leagues have traditionally been an afterthought to the international version of the game.
While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it’s played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift. More:
[Graphic: HT]
Having whipped Australia, the Indians now look set to take on England. Is cricket headed for a new world order, asks Rob Steen in the Financial Times
When Australia’s cricket team flew to India early last month they had their sights on matching one of the game’s longest-standing records. When they flew home this week, they had been soundly beaten and captain Ricky Ponting faced fierce criticism. Even those with a poor sense of smell scented an era’s end.
A ninth consecutive victory in a Test series would have equalled England’s sequence between 1884 and 1892. Instead, Australia dominated the first two days of the opening Test but allowed India’s eighth-wicket pair to save the follow-on. Then they were drubbed in the second Test and spent the last two chasing shadows.
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In Cricinfo, Mukul Kesavan says the Australia series marks the end of India’s great middle order, and even possibly, the primacy of Test cricket
Australia’s tour of India that begins with the first Test in Bangalore on the ninth of October brings with it a sense of an ending. It feels like a moment of transition between one cricketing era and the next.
This sense of an old order dissolving is reinforced by the dramatis personae. After he lost the Test series in Sri Lanka, Anil Kumble as captain seems more than ever part of an endangered old guard. Even when he was made captain in the wake of Rahul Dravid’s resignation, the appointment was seen as an interim one. The Australian tour was considered too difficult a tour on which to blood a young captain like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who already had the responsibility of captaining the one-day side. Kumble did a heroic job of leading the Test team through a controversial tour, but Dhoni’s outstanding record as a captain in limited-overs cricket, and Kumble’s poor form in the lost Test series in Sri Lanka, have heightened expectations that Dhoni will captain India in every form of the game sooner rather than later.
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Bestselling author Jeffrey Archer is a man of many parts — he was captain of the athletics team at Oxford, he ran for his country, and was a Conservative MP at 29. He wrote his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, in 1976. Since then he has kept producing works that always topped the charts. His stint in jail for perjury saw him write a well-received prisoner’s diary, and, adapting the tales he was told by fellow prisoners, he put together a short-story collection called Cat O’ Nine Tails. Archer was recently in India to promote his latest book A Prisoner of Birth. In an interview with The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk, he speaks about cricket, of which he is an avid fan, about politics in the UK, and about getting on in life without being in the dumps over the mistakes one makes.
Wonderful to have you here in a bookshop in Gurgaon, Landmark, in a mall.
Yes, which wouldn’t have been. When I first came to India 15 years ago, there wouldn’t have been a mall.
•You said you never came to India because you were never invited. You need an invite to come to India?
I thank Landmark very kindly. They said, ‘We would like to do a proper tour. We know you have been to India, but we would like to take you around the country because you’ve got a lot of fans here.’ And I said, ‘Well, I have seen the figures from the Kane & Abel days, which is 30 years ago. And they said, ‘Oh, they are buying more now that you are even more popular. So we would like you to come over.’ So I had just done Australia for the fifth time, and I had just done America for the seventh time.
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The stage is set for the grand blockbuster finale tonight as two of cricket’s biggest superstars, M.S. Dhoni and Shane Warne face off tonight in Mumbai. Stephen Brenkley in The Independent says IPL has changed cricket forever.
The inaugural Indian Premier League reaches its climax today. But it had long ago changed the face of cricket forever. Like it or loathe it (the former considerably outnumber the latter) the tournament is not only here to stay, it seems ready to grow and grow.
Its progenitors have been bowled over by the dramatic events, the sceptics apparently knocked for six. Live crowds and television audiences have both met targets, albeit with caveats.
The IPL has regularly had the biggest audience share on Indian cable television. Attendances approached capacity in almost every franchise. It has also been a hit on TV worldwide, including the UK, despite the lack of English players.
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And for details on tonight’s match, CricInfo has the dope here.
No one dares argue with the money. But will T20 end up changing the game forever, asks Rohit Mahajan in Outlook
If money is the mortal enemy of the soul, as is believed, then cricket could be in danger of losing its soul. On April 18, when the inaugural Indian Premier League Twenty20 begins in Bangalore, cricket, as purists love it— with its bucolic beauty and quaint traditions—will metamorphose into Tamasha Cricket. The mix could be the newest opium for the Indian masses: adrenaline-pumping sport and heart-thumping Bollywood, gyrating dances and lusty sixes, sporting geniuses and dashing superstars. Sport must intermittently reinvent itself—the lure of money is difficult to resist—but soon a day may come to pass when we even fail to recognise cricket as we knew it.
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And, elsewhere in the same issue, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the most expensive player in the Indian Premier League speaks to Rohit Mahajan about the unique blend of cricket and entertainment
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian One-day and T20 captain and the most expensive player of the Indian Premier League, is a man who doesn’t mind speaking his mind. He talks with conviction and frankness, dealing with each question with his customary placidity of mind and work. As we wait for the unknown in the IPL to come to light, Dhoni, in an exclusive interview, shares his views on this novel blend of entertainment and cricket. Excerpts:
What kind of changes will come into Tests and One-dayers as an effect of Twenty20 cricket?
It will depend on what form of cricket you are playing. There were Test matches to begin with, then came One-dayers. There are not too many changes in the basic approach, but yes, people started scoring at a much faster rate in Test matches as well. Three runs an over is considered the benchmark these days–if you score at over three an over, you have the upper hand, otherwise you’re slightly on the back foot.
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In its annual power list, India Today mixes new names with old to come up with a list of those who matter most in the creation of a new India. Some of the names, Ratan Tata (at #1) and Mukesh Ambani (#2) are now standard bearers on the list. Anil Ambani inches his way up to #3.
Media barons continue to matter. Brothers Samir and Vineet Jain (#9) of the Times of India group, Raghav Bahl (#18) of TV18 and Prannoy and Radhika Roy (#22) of NDTV continue to be on The List, while Ronnie Screwvala (#24) of UTV is the new entrant.
Other names debuting on the list include former President APJ Abdul Kalam (#7), K.V. Kamath (#13), managing director of India’s largest private bank ICICI and Lalit Modi (#29), BCCI’s powerful vice president and the creator of the Indian Premier League.
Film stars continue to make the list with Shah Rukh Khan (#6) way ahead of Amitabh Bachchan (#16), Rajnikant (#28) and Aamir Khan (#38). And cricket, the other religion of India along with films, rules with Sachin Tendulkar (#25) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni (#35).
For a complete look at who’s on the list, and why, click here.
