The Indian Badminton League is based on the sound logic that the pick of Indian sportsmen must get into a system of professional sport if they are to compete with the world’s best.
The IPL is clearly the model on which this home-and-away league between six teams has been formulated, but IBL will do well to keep out the excesses of the cricket pro circus like dancing girls and celebs hogging television time.
Controversy is perhaps inevitable whenever a huge number of sportspeople aspire for a piece of the action and the pie. When even cricket greats like Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Ponting suffered the indignity of no team bidding for them at IPL auctions, it may have been unbecoming of some to cry over how much individual sports stars are worth in salary terms. Also, the field is not truly representative of all the world’s best badminton players as mainland China is under-represented.
In a cricket-obsessed nation, marketing any other sport is a hard sell. It is a testament to the spirit of sport-driven enterprise that hockey took to the pro sport route but soccer is yet to find such a format to promote the popular game in a bigger way. Badminton has broken through, though, and now faces the challenge of getting people to watch it on television. This is important for sports other than cricket even if they have advanced to the level of being supported by TV rights picking up the tab to a significant extent.