Champions League T20 - a "useless" tournament resulting from a flawed concept

Sydney Sixers’s squad celebrates their victory over the Highveld Lions on October 28, 2012

6, 2, 6, 6, 6, 6 - a new buzz-mohawked MS Dhoni tore into the Sunrisers bowling attack and finally, some life was injected into the 2013 edition of the Champions League T20.

The Champions League is on – both for football and cricket. While the Champions League of football garners interest from fans all round the world, the Champions League of cricket has, till now, only managed to earn the tag of being a “useless” tournament.

Seriously, no one really bothers about the Champions League T20. The four-year-old tournament, that brings all the best T20 teams from around the cricket world, has failed massively to generate any sort of interest among the cricket fans.

While the UEFA Champions League is one of the biggest football tournaments held every year, the CLT20 has been nothing more than a minor blip on the radar of international cricket.

For the football Champions League, the fans wait in anticipation, throughout Europe and beyond to watch their favourite clubs lock horns with the rest of Europe for supremacy, while the CLT20 is used by most teams as a season opener.

Even when played in India, the biggest cricket crazy nation in the world, the CLT20 has failed to draw in the large crowds which an IPL game does.

So what really has gone wrong with the CLT20?

Although its concept was originally based on the UEFA Champions League of football, it has its own unique problems.

Concept of franchise cricket

Firstly, the CLT20 is only a four-year-old infant and a tournament of this magnitude takes time to gather a loyal fan base.

They system is successful in football because at the club level, it has a wider reach than international football. For example, the Arsenal football club has a much bigger fan base than the England national football team and so, Arsenal, during the Champions League, has a bigger fan following than the English team playing international fixtures.

On the contrary, the Indian cricket team boasts of much larger following than the Mumbai Indians side, and therein lies the main problem with franchise cricket.

In cricket, the concept of franchises or clubs hasn’t really caught on till now. For the fans, cricket has mostly been about national passion and they are used to the national rivalries, having been fed on nation versus nation confrontations for years now.

So, the Ashes or the Gavaskar-Border trophy generates much more interest than two franchises from different nations.

Failure of T20 leagues

Caribbean Premier League: All colour, no substance

The introduction of the Indian Premier League was the dawn of a new era in T20 cricket and it led to the mushrooming of numerous domestic T20 tournaments around the world. It was important for these leagues to be in existence because the whole concept and the success of the CLT20 hinged on them.

However, the results haven’t been as expected. Although the IPL has been a huge hit, other leagues have failed to capture the imagination of the cricketing world.

The Sri Lankan Premier League failed to kick off, while the Big Bash League and the Caribbean League, which started off with a lot of pomp and show, created ripples but not a huge wave.

So, the CLT20 still remains dependent more on the success of the IPL teams than the likes of the Otago Volts and the Kandurata Maroons!