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Cashing in on cricket?

Prem Panicker

Come July 11, captains of the nine Test playing nations will be meeting at Lord's, in London, to discuss urgent issues concerning the game.

Chairing the meeting will be Jagmohan Dalmiya, the fledgling president of the International Cricket Council. With him will be the likes of Dr Ali Bacher, Sir Clyde Walcott and ICC CEO David Richards - thus marrying the players and administrators on one platform, so that the formers' suggestions can be immediately looked into and acted upon by the latter.

All very laudable. More so as the item at the very top of the the agenda is a request by the Test captains (Mark Taylor, Wasim Akram and Courtney Walsh being the three spearheading this move) that a level of sanity be brought to cricket scheduling; that tours be arranged with some thought for the wellbeing of the players, that there be gaps between tours for players to find time to recuperate and to be with their families, and so on.

But there is another item on that agenda that interests me equally - money.

Sources indicate that moves are afoot to press for some kind of pay standardisation across the board. A uniform wage structure applicable to all nine Test-playing nations is, I am told, being envisaged.

This move is interesting in context of two developments - one, the dramatic rise in wages paid to Indian cricketers in recent times and two, a budding controversy on wage scales for Australian cricketers that has, for a while now, been threatening to erupt into open revolt.

Look at the Indian scenario first. Way back in 1986, a player got Rs 15,000 for playing in a Test, and Rs 10,000 for appearing in a one-dayer. Today, the corresponding rates are Rs 120,000 per player per Test, and Rs 90,000 per one dayer. And that, even allowing for inflation over a period of 11 years, is one heck of a jump.

Fair enough in a way - it is the international players who are bringing home the bacon, enriching the Board's coffers. And it is only fair that they share a good-sized slice of the cricketing pie.

What is causing dissatisfaction, though, is the perception that the money is not filtering down to the lower levels. Ranji Trophy players, for instance, have pay scales frozen at the early Nineties levels. And what is adding salt to the wounds is that some state associations, such as the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (with Coca Cola) and the Mumbai Cricket Association (with Pepsi) have managed to line up sponsors - with the result that the players in these two states are much better paid than their counterparts elsewhere.

Admitting that this situation is increasingly finding disfavour with domestic cricketers, BCCI officials indicated that moves are on to solve the problem by introducing throughout the country some sort of uniform pay scale on the lines of the one prevailing in English county cricket.

And one reason for the sudden urgency is that the BCCI would like to pre-empt a situation where disgruntled players unionise. For now, cricketers are a disorganised lot, making it easier for the Board to deal with them. And the last thing the BCCI wants now is a trade union of cricketers, both domestic and international.

While this situation prevails in India, Australian cricketers are also heading for a pay-related revolt. It will be recalled that exactly two decades ago, Kerry Packer and his World Series Cricket managed to rope in the entire top-line Australian talent only because the cricketers were then paid a pittance, making them more amenable to the lure Packer dangled before them.

Today's players are, as compared to their counterparts from 1977, considerably better off in terms of remuneration. However, the word is that frontline Australian players have demanded a greater share of the revenues the Australian Cricket Board earns from merchandising, and also of the sale of TV rights to Channel Nine and pay-TV.

The feelings of dissatisfaction, in fact, boiled over to such an extent that there was even talk of a strike during Australia's tour of South Africa earlier this year.

Unlike in India, Australian players do have a players' association - with no less that Sir Graham Halbish, one time chief executive of the ACB, at its head. However, though Halbish could give the players an insight into how the ACB thinks and functions, the ACB for its part refused to negotiate with him.

What makes a bad situation worse is that while senior players who have come pretty much to the end of their careers are prepared to talk of taking extreme steps - including a strike - the juniors, who still are not sure of their place in the side, are not prepared to be as confrontational.

The ACB, for its part, is not prepared to consider any substantial hikes in the immediate future. More, the ACB feels that any substantial pay hike at this point would mean that money kept aside for grassroots development would be drastically curtailed.

While this controversy simmers, discontent has also been apparent, of late, in the West Indies, and in Pakistan. And all of them seem to centre on the question of money or, rather, the more equitable distribution thereof.

And it is in this context that the decision by the international cricket captains to moot the idea of a uniform wage structure for international cricketers, when they meet at Lord's on July 11, makes sense. Remains to be seen, though, what if anything comes out of it.