The last time a full-strength Indian cricket team went to the United States, on their way back from the Caribbean in May 1989, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) banned six of the players. Dilip Vengsarkar was captain, and Kapil Dev, Mohammed Azharuddin and Ravi Shastri had also led, or would lead, India.
West Indies had thrashed India 3-0 in the Tests and 5-0 in the ODIs, and 14 men still licking their wounds flew north to play exhibition matches against teams from Pakistan and West Indies. The board, not consulted before the endeavour, was not amused.
On their return, the four seniors, along with experienced opener Arun Lal and wicketkeeper Kiran More were given one-year bans that prevented them from even playing domestic cricket. Six others, including Sanjay Manjrekar, who had scored a Test hundred against that mighty West Indies side, escaped with a fine on account of being relatively new to the international scene. Arshad Ayub and Chetan Sharma were merely warned.
The board was all-powerful in those days – “Some cricketers have become total mercenaries,” said BN Dutt, the BCCI president – but that was the first generation of Indian players that would not countenance being pushed around. After a Public Interest Litigation was filed, a Supreme Court judge excoriated the board, pointing out numerous flaws in its constitution and the way it was applied. The bans were lifted in September 1989.
The matches those players were part of were just exhibitions though. What is going on at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium Turf Ground in Lauderhill, Florida this weekend is far more. It represents the first step in what the BCCI hopes will be a gradual conquest of a continent that has remained largely impervious to cricket’s charms.
These games would not have happened but for the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) owing the BCCI millions on account of the curtailed tour of India in 2014. The slot in the calendar was also vacant because the Champions League Twenty20, an event that the BCCI, Cricket Australia and Cricket South Africa had hoped would one day come to rival its footballing counterpart, had been jettisoned after six seasons of lukewarm interest from spectators and sponsors alike.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) completes its 10th season in May 2017. After the recent scandals and the Supreme Court laying out guidelines for cricket administration, no one is sure whether the IPL's next telecast deal will be as lucrative as the current one. The board is also aware that the Champions League's demise has cost it close to $50 million (Dh183.7m) a year in TV revenue.
When part of the IPL was played in the UAE in 2014, nearly every match was sold out. The Arabian Gulf states, with massive expatriate populations from the Commonwealth countries, represent a viable venue for a mini IPL in August-September, but sections within the board remain reluctant to play there for geopolitical reasons.
There is no such problem with the United States, which is a huge untapped market with upward of three million citizens from South Asia. These two matches, pitting the two-time World Twenty20 champions against the country that is home to the IPL, offer a perfect test case for cricket in North America.
If the weekend experiment takes off, then expect a truncated version of the IPL to hit North American shores in the near future.
And then, instead of the relative anonymity of Lauderhill, it might be Yankee Stadium or Dodger Stadium that play host.
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