Bollywood leaves cricket stumped in Cape Town

A line of floats snaked around the streets of Cape Town on Thursday. The bulk of the parade was made up of eight trucks, carrying the eight teams who are about to contest the Indian Premier League.

By Simon Briggs in Cape Town
Last Updated: 8:17AM BST 17 Apr 2009

Party time: a carnival atmosphere n the streets of Cape Town Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Yet the leading vehicle was occupied by no sportsmen, only a handful of Bollywood actors and Lalit Modi, the millionaire businessman who runs the competition. In the back-to-front world of the IPL, money and influence trump runs and wickets every time.
While the parade drew a respectable crowd of enthusiastic well-wishers, it must have left an equal number of motorists fuming at the snarled-up traffic around Cape Town's central business district. Still, that is unlikely to bother Modi. Few sports administrators have shown less regard for the established order of things.

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Last year, Modi brought about the most turbulent year in cricket history when he conjured a billion-dollar tournament out of thin air. This time, he has arguably gone one better.
Can you think of another major competition that has been teleported, lock, stock and barrel, to another country more than 5,000 miles away? And all in just 27 days. Modi may be reviled by traditionalists, but you have to admit that the man is a wizard at getting things done.
The second season of the IPL was nearly derailed completely by the elections in India, which started yesterday and will continue for five weeks. The organisers might have got away with it but for the recent spate of terror attacks, notably in Mumbai and Lahore, which made the inability of state governments to provide full security for the cricket games a deal-breaker.
As Modi explained at a press conference yesterday, he had just two days to work out what to do next. To cancel, or to move to one of the alternative hosts, England or South Africa. He has since insisted that the weather was the clinching factor in the decision, though his briefing yesterday also mentioned the "can-do" attitude of the South Africans, and the enthusiasm of their government.
While some may see this as a missed opportunity, especially in the light of the estimated £100-150 million benefit that the South African economy is expected to accrue, there would also have been something uncomfortable about this corporate juggernaut landing on our shores. Especially in the same week that the gentle idyll of the English county cricket season was due to creak into life.
The IPL is an important development for the future of the game, and could prove to be the financial lifeline that keeps cricket alive in the digital age. At the same time, though, it is disconcertingly wedded to the bottom line.
The news that a 7½-minute time-out is about to be inserted at the halfway mark of each innings, allowing broadcasters to squeeze in another batch of adverts, is just the latest example of sporting considerations disappearing beneath the demands of commercial logic.
In cricket, we are used to dealing with administrators who are former players or gentle old buffers, and thus sensitive to the "spirit of the game". Modi comes from a very different world, and bears closer comparison to a wheeler-dealer such as Bernie Ecclestone.
Yesterday's press conference was held at Cape Town's International Conference Centre, which was entirely appropriate in view of the amount of corporate jargon being used. After Modi had emphasised the unprecedented size of his advertising spend, his South African aide-de-camp, Etienne de Villiers, declared that in 27 days "we will have rewritten sports marketing history", and added the hope that "this whole enterprise will become a case study at Harvard or Stanford".
Perhaps the most surprising sight was to see Francois Pienaar, the former Springboks captain, taking to the stage to discuss "the three Ps" – product, price and promotion.
It used to be said that all sportsmen wanted to be rock stars, and vice versa, but now an increasing number of them are transmogrifying into sharp-suited businessmen.
When you consider where the spotlight is falling in the build-up to this tournament – not so much on the likes of Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen as on Modi and Bangalore franchise owner Vijay Mallya – perhaps we should not be too surprised.link.