Kerry Packer’s World Series back in the 70’s ushered the first innovations in the game. Day and night games, TV Replays, The White Ball and Coloured Clothes everything was Packer’s contribution to the game he didn’t know much about.
I was a watching a Pranoy Roy show just before the World Cup started involving Imran Khan and Tony Greig, when they recollected how Packer first thought about Flood Lights. As a result the White Ball was invented and so were the Coloured clothes.
The prize money is quite huge and also the initial fund earmarked from Subhash Chandra's side is around 100 Crores. This is another attempt by him to take a bite in the Indian Cricket market after launching Zee Sports in an attempt to get the BCCI contract for broadcasting Indian Cricket which he lost out on.
Kerry Packer too went ahead with alternative to Test Cricket after loosing out on the Cricket TV broadcast rights in 1976 from Australian Cricket Board.
It will be interesting to see the future developments, the main roadblocks being,
- BCCI? If they don't provide the infrastructure and stop the players.
- If the players themselves don't join in. The last time Packer did this times were different. Cricket was not such a money spinner as it is today and player wages were quite low as compared to that offered by Packer. It will interesting to see if Subhash Chandra hikes player fees to bring more stars to his matches.
- The main roadblock is,
Jab Ek Cricket hi nahi sambhal raha to alternate Cricket kya khak sambhlega
Technorati Tags: Cricket, Zee TV, Subash Chandra, Kerry Packer
