Crushing cricket to the Core!!!
February 22, 2008 by Praful H.B.K.
With all victories comes a feeling of immense power and invincibility. We forget that for where we were yesterday, someone is there now… and tomorrow someone else will be here… BCCI has exceptional amounts of money and immense power with it. BCCI believes that with all the money that is there in the sport, we will have very little to lose in any sense of the word except on the field itself. We have arm twisted our way out of all troubles that we may have been in earlier or are in now. We have changed the way international cricketers behave on-field only on the basis of money we offer to them (Symmonds who hated the way we proved him a liar, is all to happy to not play for his country in Pakistan and play in IPL - given a million dollars for a few weeks). Ricky Ponting - who went all out against CA to play in IPL is now complaining that IPL will destroy international cricket (I think that is what BCCI has in mind - to destroy international cricket and screw these Dubai based ICC goras so bad that they never think of touching us again).
But then, for all great civilizations, cities, organisations and power-houses must come down one day. How long will this bubble last for BCCI and the biggies who have invested in these teams, thinking as if there was no tomorrow or nothing could go wrong for BCCI. I still think ICL is a better initiative, than this one. They have better plans for cricket in general and are more planned about the whole thing. Given time, effort and patience it will be more fruitful to Indian cricket than IPL.
But then power (money being it’s present form) talks and IPL is all over the place. God help those poor souls who signed up with ICL, because for now there seems to be no limelight and no front page headlines for them.
Note: Seriously interested in working for ICL. Let me know if you have connections for the same. 
IPL is going to be a big success in a country like india. It wuld gradually be interesting for other countries as their top batsmen can play in IPL. important is the money flowing over IPL.
IPL should be a big success in a country like India… only issue is whether it will ever be able to contribute to the game. Money does not ensure success and it definitely does not ensure growth, for great civilizations would have never come to the end they came to!
The bigger question is with players like Symmonds already refusing to play for national squads give IPL, how long will countries be able to keep producing players like him if the circuit does not come with enough money… But then a lot changes over time and no one can be as certain with any thing that comes tomorrow.