First came the multimillion-pound player auction. Next were the cheerleaders and their miniskirts. The latest evolution in cricket to be hatched by the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a five-minute “strategy break” in the middle of each innings, to boost television advertising revenues.

The IPL’s quickfire Twenty20 format, designed to wrap up a match in the time it takes to watch a Bollywood film, has already been derided by the game’s purists. Their likely reaction to the latest rule change is easy to forecast.

However, the IPL’s organisers, who are planning to introduce the intervals when the tournament starts later this month, admit privately that they cannot afford to care about the reproach of old-school followers.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which runs the IPL, is under immense pressure to boost earnings after the competition was forced to move from India to South Africa because of security concerns. Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, has admitted that the shift in venue will wipe out the IPL’s profits, which had been expected to reach £100 million this year. It is estimated that the introduction of a five-minute advertising break after ten overs would boost the advertising revenues yielded by each IPL game by as much as 30 per cent. The rejigging of the format is thought to have been key in securing a new £1.1 billion broadcasting deal between the BCCI, the IPL owners and Multi Screen Media. Advertising is the IPL’s main source of revenue.

On the pitch, five minutes of uninterrupted thinking time for the team captains could conceivably change the dynamics of the IPL, a competition still in its infancy as far as strategies and tactics are concerned. At present there is an interval of 15 minutes between the innings.

More than anything, however, the new advertising intervals will underscore how swiftly cricket, until recently a commercial laggard, has been transformed under the watch of its Indian custodians.

Before last year’s inaugural competition, the BCCI boasted that more than 200 variations had been tested before the “optimum commercial and investment model” for the IPL was hit upon.

The generation of cash is more important than ever in the wake of the expensive shift to South Africa, BCCI officials say. IPL team owners include Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man – an industrial mogul not known for backing underperforming assets. Another team owner, Shah Ruck Khan, Bollywood’s most bankable star, is rich – but not so rich he can afford to forgo returns. “The owners must make money,” Dr Jitendra Singh, the dean of Nanyang Business School in Singapore and an expert on the business of cricket, said. “They will turn the screws on the [IPL organisers] if the right results do not come about.”
Source – timesonline.co.uk