A team from Yorkshire in the Champions League, what am I talking about? Leeds, Sheffield United, Doncaster, even York, now I’m being totally ridiculous. Leeds have been in the Champions League in the past, but this time I’m not talking in a footballing capacity, but instead about cricket. Yorkshire CCC had the honour of representing their nation in this year’s T20 Champions League, and qualified for the main stage, before bowing out without winning a game in the group stages.
The problem is it isn’t really a Champions League. A Champions League suggests the best teams from throughout the world, but this isn’t a truly global competition. Instead it is geared towards the demands of the IPL and is another way of branding T20 cricket primarily in India and to TV viewers across the world. India has an obsession with the shortest form of cricket and the world’s most passionate cricketing nation has once more seized the opportunity to take T20 cricket to a global audience, in the form of a competition which not only involves the strongest IPL teams, but also teams from across the world.
However, a Champions League where four out of the ten teams are from India is not really a representative and fair competition, which reflects the best of cricket from across the world. Not all four of the Indian sides are champions and don’t all justify their places in the competition. Yorkshire finished 2nd in the English T20, they and the winners of the competition Hampshire both had to qualify for the main stages, a task that the southern based county failed at. Meanwhile the fourth-placed Indian team still qualified automatically, so essentially half of the pre-awarded places were handed to Indian sides.
How is that representative? It sends out completely the wrong message before the tournament starts. Two Australian teams and two South African teams made up the automatically qualified eight alongside the IPL squads, so teams from only three nations were guaranteed entry into the main section of the competition. Again I rest my case that this is a “fake” version of a Champions League, when the top club sides from all the other nations of the world have to qualify. The beauty of football’s Champions League is the diversity of sides, and how an English team can be drawn in a group with teams from nations as varied as Ukraine, Turkey and Romania. Yet in cricket’s version such diversity simply doesn’t exist.
West Indies won the recent world T20, England and Pakistan have been recent victors, yet none of those sides were handed an automatic place. In fact if you look at all of the major test playing nations then Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and West Indies were all completely unrepresented in the main stages of this tournament, half of the ten main nations. How can a competition that claims to be a Champions League be run in such a way? If it wants to uphold that title, then quite simply things must change.
When you dig deeper you further find the advantages of the Indian teams and how the tournament is tilted in their favour. Not only do they have the numerical advantage, but each of the Indian sides can select four international stars, some of which are paid exorbitant wages. These teams are often reliant on their overseas players, and in fact if you take these players away, the Indian sides would be amongst the weakest of the competitors. This is in comparison to other sides who have a single or in some cases no foreign players and instead rely on solely domestic individuals.
However far the competition may be weighed in their favour, the Indian sides are still failing to dominate, and instead it is the South African and Australian teams which look strongest, with Delhi Daredevils being the only Indian team to qualify through to the semi finals, in which they crashed out to South African side Highveld Lions.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s an excellent competition, and T20 can provide some enthralling cricket for the supporters and TV viewers, but this isn’t all it’s billed to be. To attach the title “Champions League” is wrong, when in fact it is a competition which only incorporates a few of the major cricketing nations.
The standard may be excellent and the entertainment of the highest order, but that fails to deflect the notion that the description of this competition is quite simply fake. In the future it could be a real Champions League, but in my mind major amendments to the organisation of the competition have to be made before this can even be considered.
For now it will continue to be branded as a Champions League, and my mundane protestations may just seem like someone who has nothing better to do than have a good old moan. Yorkshire can claim they have been represented in the Champions League, and the cricket club did the region and nation proud, but I still refuse to agree that this competition is a true Champions League.
Yet the money in cricket belongs to T20, and such tournaments are a source of great income with their allure and widespread appeal. Whilst the television audience remains around the world and the appeal for such a competition continues, the fake Champions League will rumble on for years to come.