7th
Someone, somewhere, grows a pair.
This is good shit.
Someone has finally piped up about the proposed post-2012 FTC. And for my money, it’s a pretty relevant someone: FICA, the world players’ “lobbying” group.
The new FTP is anything but new—it’s the old one tweaked so that everyone but the ECB, BCCI, CA and CSA play less cricket. If the FTP is continually drawn up like this, Sri Lanka, West Indies, New Zealand, Pakistan (unless diplomatic relations with India thaw), not to mention Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, will be playing themselves in some sort of dickless B-league generating minuscule revenues and producing shitty cricket.
The Test Championship, which was shot down primarily by the BCCI, is a good idea because Test cricket is collapsing under the weight of its irrelevance (not to mention it’s boring as shit more often than not). Also, it would ensure equal opportunity for all teams to play, especially those increasingly marginalized by bilateral series arrangements. So there’s plenty at stake.
But, the way it was originally proposed, TV revenue would be shared; all boards would earn equally. And there lies the rub.
I mean, I guess it basically makes sense: why should the BCCI—cricket’s Oil & Gas Industry in terms of revenue, political clout, and all round sleaze—want to share it’s revenue? It generates the lion’s share of it, and shouldn’t be responsible for propping up fledgling, corrupt boards like WICB, or broke, boring boards like NZC. Also, the status quo works fine for them—they can schedule bi-later series with whomever they want, making as much they want.
Well, it’s good to see a power cricket stakeholder finally telling the BCCI to go fuck itself. And by “telling the BCCI to go fuck itself,” I mean appeasing the BCCI with a more graded revenue sharing formula. You know, whatever works.
