I like to do a fun exercise where I pretend to be a reported from the future and report on present issues as if they were in the past. The IPL is very interesting in this regard, so I’ll try to imagine how the IPL will be viewed in 2015.

2008: The year that cricket changed.

June 15, 2015.

The just concluded world cup has been a great success with all the 45 countries competing very well. It was a very exciting tournament, and this has proved beyond doubt that the cricketing is now a truly worldwide sport. There used to be a time when football was the most-followed global sport, but the fast-paced, exciting and highly talented players of  today’s world competing in Twenty20 cricket have overtaken football by a wide margin.

Cricket’s great success can be traced back to the year 2008, when the Twenty20 format of the game suddenly burst into scene. You may remember the now-outdated One Day International format of the game was the dominant way cricket was played during that time, and that, in many ways was the biggest limitation of cricket. Who has the time to watch a game for 7 straight hours? Maybe the people of those days had a lot more free time than we do.

But in 2008, two rival, competing Twenty20 leagues simultaneously broke out in India, the ZEE-TV owned Indian Cricket League and the BCCI’s pet the Indian Premier League. These leagues shook the very foundations of the game, and brought in many innovations into the game that undoubtedly contributed to where cricket is today. Firstly, it cut all the beauracracy out of the game. There was a time before 2008, when cricket players had to impress lazy beauraucractic officials of the official cricket boards to have any chance of getting into the national side. Only the top handful of cricketers made money those days, and that meant that the vast majority of junior players never had a chance. The Twenty20 leagues changed all that.

By making private companies responsible for hiring their own teams (and paying for them as well), the great visionary Lalit Modi instantly cut all the red tape, and automatically opened up all the avenues that were previously not available. The private owners, on their behalf, revolutionized the game with professionally managed teams, hiring CEOs, COOs, coaches and trainers, and suddenly upped  the standards of the game. Another great insight of the Modi was to allow foreign players into the teams, making it not just a domestic event, but am event where global players could take part.

As the leagues started to become more and more popular, the salaries of the players started to proportionately increase, attracting even more talented players into the game, creating a positive feedback cycle that benefited everyone. As the teams got richer, they started investing their money in better facilities for spectators, investing in brand new stadiums and facilities for cricket. Undoubtedly, the several world class stadiums that we have today are a direct testament to the huge returns enjoyed by teams.

The leagues started off with a small number of Indian city-teams, but expanded rapidly to include all the world’s major cities - New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney and London, with events happening on a truly global scale. Cricket today is a $ 1 trillion industry worldwide, and is a major source of entertainment for the people. It has lifted the game of cricket to an unprecidented level.

And it all started on April 18th with a match between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders…