Spot on.There's an interesting discussion awaiting underneath the weird Dhoni bashing that seems to have been the focus. I have no idea why out of all players Dhoni is the one to be catching strays in the first place, the bloke was a fine test keeper (less said about his captaincy the better), an ODI ATG and an underachiever in T20Is. But given that he was also the captain for three ICC tournament wins, none of which have been replicated since despite the relatively increasing depth in quality between India and other teams I'd be willing to excuse his mediocre test captaincy and T20I record.
Some of my own thoughts about franchise cricket that I've probably echoed in previous posts of mine on the same topic...
- First, most of the players do not give a crap about 'representing' any franchise. All they see is the loads of money they earn in a short period and the chance to further establish their reputations and grow it. This is even more true in the case of overseas players. Finch's comment on playing for nearly every IPL side and not remembering half of them, Buttler's rather racist mocking of the English vocabulary of Indian fans, the way in which several players underperform for years or teams before magically performing well for their international sides... there's numerous such examples. Teams having to rotate players every three years is also a reason, there's no attachment to any team with a core of players. The 'loyalty' of blokes like Bravo or Faf towards the Super Kings or Polly to the Indians is because of their ownership groups, not because they like the city the team is based in or the club itself and there's no doubt that it's the same for most Indian players too.
- It's also why I hate the cliche of 'IPL has trained players to perform better under pressure'. Sure they're not going to be as raw or inexperienced when they play international cricket due to the IPL's standard of cricket but those silly knockouts do not train them in any way for real pressure that you get when playing for your country. It's why the Indian side has wilted multiple times under pressure with both bat and ball in the knockouts for so long, the IPL's simulation of 'pressure' is an absolute sham.
- Reducing sport to mere entertainment is frankly ludicrous. It simply is not, that is not the point of sport. If you need just entertainment there's plenty of other avenues like shows or movies where you know everything is 'fake' or acted. Heck, there's even entertainment masquerading as sport these days like with the WWE. Sport is above entertainment because you know that those athletes participating are putting their bodies and minds on the line to gain an extra inch of performance for victory, it's what has made the entire thing compelling since time immemorial. People watch it because they know everyone is giving it well above what most humans are capable of and sometimes beyond even what the participants are normally capable of. I'm not even bringing in the other aspects of sport like the political, communal/social sides of it. If cricket is reduced one day to mere entertainment where people just go through the motions for the sake of putting on a show, I'll definitely stop watching it and I doubt I would be the only one.
- Franchise cricket has no place for tests or even a first-class format. Despite not being an old timer fan, I adore test cricket and hold it as the best format of this sport. There's no other equivalent in other sports that I can think of which brings something similar to the table and I feel that's what most of these morons in cricket administration are missing when they keep chasing the T20 dollars which has loads of equivalents in other sports. In a world where international cricket is almost dead and franchise only cricket prevails, there may not be any tests and I doubt I'd stick around if that is the case.
- One thing I fiercely dislike about all the people wanting franchise cricket to be the dominant force henceforth is the absolute lack of consideration for cricket in other parts of the world. Once you have franchises signing players onto year long contracts, most cricket boards have no incentive to invest in cricket pathways in their respective countries to bring up players as those projects are fundamentally loss makers on average that is subsidised by the few who make it to the top. This will just lead to an erosion of said pathways and the absolute dwindling of cricket as a sport of interest in many countries. There's already a lot of competition in such countries from other sports for cricket, the football leagues in Australia usually pay more and have better security compared to cricket, West Indian athletes are better off these days pursuing the American sports and England has it's own competition from football and rugby. In places like NZ where the sport is already a niche, cricket may just simply collapse.
- Now the counter argument is the subcontinental interest keeping the game alive and the franchises investing in said pathways instead. The former will keep the sport alive in this region, however it will still be very India-centric which already significantly hampers one other passionate country in said region. We may well have a NFL or NBA like situation in that case. Franchises will also not be incentivised to invest into pathways when they know that their chances of acquiring players via an auction are nebulous. Nobody wants to invest a lot of money into developing players you don't even have a surefire guarantee of signing. I don't think the BCCI will abolish auction anytime soon given the lucrative viewership and interest it brings and I don't see a world where every owner mutually agrees to not bid for other team's academy players (hell, you had Nehra making a troll counter-bid for Arjun Tendulkar when everyone knew he wasn't worth any bid in the first place because he knew MI would want him for other reasons) when they know they might be missing on the next Bumrah or Sachin if they do so.
- This will be even worse in other countries. The mostly India/America based ownership groups have no incentive to try and establish pathways in countries elsewhere unless they have equally profitable leagues running in said countries. Given the notorious difficulty in generating profits from T20 leagues, that is quite an arduous task. This just means that once those leagues start running out of talent to showcase, the owners will shut up shop and move elsewhere as they notice their margins falling. These morons like every other capitalist out there are fundamentally interested in generating money and not improving the sport or making long term plans for sustainability. I don't see a world where primarily India based teams will set up academies in other countries with current overseas player limits restricting their ability to sign players already. Besides, if you're a talented young athlete in Sydney with a sports scholarship to go to Uni and a contract to be a part of an AFL team, why the fearsome tweak would you try and grind it out in KKR's Sydney academy to earn a shot at immigrating to Kolkata at a young age to try and break into the IPL unless you have a desi dad who really forces you to get into cricket?
I can keep going on for more and more length but honestly I'd just hit the character limit for a single post on this forum so I'll just stop here and leave everyone to mull on these thoughts.
From a lot of things I read, from Indian/IPL fans, there seems to be this idea it'll be like the English Premier League - the 'best', highest-profile, amongst other leagues. I'd say it's at or beyond that level already. With the addition of restricting their own players to play elsewhere. If BBL had an Indian internationals, or at least upcoming or fringe player in each team, the viewership and money they could make would sky-rocket, if The Hundred had the same you can be sure they'd get the women's matches starting at 10am so the men's games are at peak TV time in India.
Long-term, like you say, it could be closer to US sport where the rest of the world is irrelevant other the funnelling talent into their leagues. I could envisage a situation where the richest franchises, instead of setting up academies, would potentially link up with a county in order to get first refusal on players. Of course they might not need to do this when they can just buy franchises in other countries.
