Programmankündigung: das einsame Vergnügen

Überraschend gerade reingekommen, dank Thomas ((*piep*)): ich werde morgen früh vermutlich der einsamste Mensch in der Blogosphäre sein, aber nichts wird mich davon abhalten, dass ich morgen ab 6h30 von den Playoffs der Indian Cricket League livebloggen werde. Mein erstes Cricket-Match. Ein wahrhaft esoterisches Vergnügen.

Thomas hat entdeckt dass Zee Music – ein indischer Musiksender – auf ASTRA-28 live die Playoffs der ICL 20-20-Championship überträgt. Aktuell am Freitagnachmittag übertragen sie schon ein Spiel (hab gerade zehn Minuten reingeschaut). Am Samstag und Sonntag jeweils ab 6h30 und 12h30 für fünf Stunden.

“20-20” oder besser: “Twenty20” ist eine kürzere und schnellere Form des normalen Crickets. Nachdem in diesem Jahr die Weltmeisterschaften ein durchschlagender Erfolg waren, gab es entsprechende Berichterstattung in BBC oder Economist über diese mögliche zukünftige Form des Crickets. Der Economist hat sich Ende September anläßlich der indischen ICL mit Twenty20 beschäftigt, was auch einiges über den Hintergrund klärt, warum es ausgerechnet auf Zee Music zu sehen ist (Hervorhebungen von mir).

India’s innings – A new form of cricket sparks a fight over a lucrative market in India

Sneering cricket purists call it “hit and giggle”. But “Twenty20”, a new three-hour version of the elegant and at times seemingly interminable game, is serious business. In South Africa the inaugural Twenty20 world tournament, at which the top 12 cricket-playing countries are represented, is playing to sell-out crowds. It is accompanied by American-style razzmatazz previously unseen in cricket: feverish commentary, drumming dance music, scantily clad cheerleaders and all. And away from the stadiums, another contest is raging—to bring Twenty20 cricket to India, the world’s biggest cricket market.

On September 13th the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which claims a monopoly on the game in the country, unveiled plans for a Twenty20 cricket league, the India Premier League (IPL). Modelled on England’s football league, it will involve eight teams, based in big cities and privately owned through a franchise agreement with the BCCI. This was the BCCI’s response to the formation of a rebel Twenty20 league, the India Cricket League (ICL), by the Essel Group, an Indian conglomerate, earlier this year […]

The new format is a revolution in brevity, designed for television. In a Twenty20 game each team bowls 20 overs—each consisting of six deliveries, the cricket equivalent of a baseball pitch—at the opponent’s batsmen.[…]

Over the next eight years this contest will earn cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), $1.5 billion from television rights alone. Indian broadcasters charge up to 400,000 rupees ($10,000) for a ten-second advertising slot during coverage of the Indian team’s games.

Hence the attempted putsch by the Essel Group, which owns a television channel, Zee TV. It plans to invest $40m a year in its rebel league, the ICL, and expects it to be profitable within three years. Last month the ICL unveiled 51 players, including several foreign stars, who have been signed up on contracts said to be worth up to $500,000 a year. The league is scheduled to start play in November with a month-long tournament, featuring six teams and a prize of $1m. According to Kapil Dev, the former cricket star who runs it: “This game is fast, it’s exciting, it can go to America, it can go to China.”

But not with the ICL, if India’s cricket board can help it. The BCCI has banned the ICL’s Indian players for life. The league’s foreign stars also face bans, though cricket’s international governing body, the ICC, may hope that the BCCI’s recently announced plans will convince them to renege on their rebel contracts […]

[The] new Twenty20 leagues are gambles, because Indians have hitherto shown almost no interest in domestic cricket. “Cricket in this country is very heavily intertwined with national pride and emotion,” says Uday Shankar, boss of another television channel, Star TV. Until it is proved that domestic Twenty20 can generate the sort of following that international cricket does, he says, broadcasters and advertisers will be wary of it.

This could benefit the ICL, which is owned by a broadcaster. But the BCCI can frustrate its upstart rival by in effect denying it access to stadiums and players. “They’re going to find it hard to get the cattle,” says Gideon Haigh, a cricket historian. Yet one way or another, Twenty20 will prosper, he believes. “It’s about crowds. It’s about television,” he says. “This is where the action is in international cricket.”

Erste Eindrücken beim zehnminütigen Reinzappen: Cheerleaders, Videoleinwände, Parallelen zum Baseball mit Werfer und Schläger (es werden anscheinend sogar “Change Ups” geworfen) und Ball aus dem Spielfeld schlagen.

Mehr morgen früh ab sechsUhrDreißig. Ich und der Kampf gegen die Cricket-Regeln.