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Once upon a time the greatest dream of any Indian cricketer was to spend the summer playing with an English county team, getting a taste of pace bowling and walking on the field with big hitters from around the world.
Now many of the world's top cricketers will
be picking up their kit and converging on the subcontinent for 45 days a year. They'll brave the Indian summer and the other attendant dangers of living in this part of the world, like the much-feared Delhi Belly. They'll learn to drink only bottled water and avoid raw food if they want to stay healthy - yep, that means no salads.
In the past week we've just watched the cricketing world being turned topsy-turvy in front of our eyes. When it comes to cricket, India is the global superpower and it has just underlined its world dominance in a torrential shower of dollars.
The new cricketing global order was born at a brash and glitzy auction that promises to change the world of cricket irrevocably. You may not like the idea of putting a price tag on cricketers but look at it for a moment just in monetary terms.
Three companies each bid over US$100 million ($124 million) to own teams in the new Indian Premier League (IPL) that will play Twenty20 matches for 45 days annually. Sony Entertainment, deciding it had to be on the field for this one, dug deep into its pockets and offered US$1.06 billion for the TV rights. These deals will run for a decade.
All this has just added to the sizeable wealth of the Board of Cricket Control of India (BCCI). The BCCI is now so rich it's ready to out-tackle football's giants like Manchester United and Real Madrid.
The man who turned the BCCI into a powerful money-machine is an unusual figure who sometimes seems almost out of place in the sports world. Lalit Modi is a tycoon turned sports administrator who hasn't played cricket since the days when he was a schoolboy.
He learned about sports marketing when he lived in the US and the influence shows. He became a BCCI vice-president two years ago and since then he has focused on how to squeeze out more cash for the organisation. He now also has a second role at the BCCI: he's the IPL's commissioner.
Modi brought together an unbeatable combination of India's two loves - movies and cricket. So you had movie superstar Shah Rukh Khan as a team owner bidding for cricketers like India's one-day captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Into this heady cocktail Modi also threw in some of India's richest industrialists like Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire who controls Reliance Industries, and Vijay Mallya, the flamboyant tycoon who runs a liquor-to-airline conglomerate. Ambani has bought Mumbai's cricket team and Mallya is the moneybags who'll guide the stroke-play in Bangalore.
Modi, 42, is a rich industrialist himself and that made it easier to persuade the others to reach for their cash. His family owns Godfrey Philips, a leading tobacco company, and several other top firms. He also did the distribution for sports channel ESPN in the1990s but parted ways with the channel acrimoniously. Some commentators say he is determined to prove himself at the BCCI because none of his previous ventures have been big hits.
The extraordinary numbers that the IPL is dealing in have already been flashed around the world. Suffice it to say here that India's Dhoni will earn about US$1.5 million for playing about 45 days annually. That's US$93,000 for each of 16 matches annually for the next three years. And Brendon McCullum, the highest paid of the five New Zealand players, will be taking home US$43,750 for each match.
The BCCI has always been rich but it was never one of the world's most efficient sports organisations.
It was run for years almost as a personal fiefdom by its former president Jagmohan Dalmiya who was ousted two years ago by Sharad Pawar - who's also India's Agriculture Minister. With Pawar came other cricket administrators like Inderjit Singh Bindra and Modi.
On the financial front, the new administrators turned into big run-getters almost as soon as they stepped up to the crease, signing one multi-million-dollar deal after another. First came an US$80 million deal with Indian conglomerate Sahara which sponsored the country's team for four years - quadruple the previous four-year contract.
That was followed by a US$50 million deal with Nike to be the kit sponsor till 2010. Then came the blockbuster US$612 million deal for the television rights to all matches in India till 2010. Modi now reckons that the BCCI earns about US$20 million every day the Indian team steps out for a match.
Modi told the Business Herald: "We've completely revamped the marketing programme and monetised the revenue of the BCCI. It's quite a different ball game now."
How much does the BCCI earn? Modi says it's now making about US$250 million a year. What's more, he predicts revenues now will grow in leaps and bounds in coming years, especially with the new IPL.
"As viewership and the fan base grow, cricket in India is just getting bigger," he says.
Since last April, Modi has turned his attention to assembling the incredibly complex IPL package, often putting in 14-hour days.
"We had to find the right business model, the right operational model and the right game model. It looks like we got it right," he says ebulliently. The auction actually raked in more money than Modi had expected.
Will the IPL be a money-spinner for the owners of the eight teams who've all splurged heavily? Nobody's sounding worried about returns, even though one consultancy firm reckons some teams will lose up to US$10 million in the first year.
And it's not just the Indian tycoons who are getting ready to take guard at the wicket.
Australian media magnate Lachlan Murdoch also has staked a claim to join the Indian cricket circus and is a part-owner of the Jaipur team.
Says Modi: "US$100 million now looks like too low a price. We had to explain the model to everyone. Today the people who missed out are the ones who didn't understand it."
But really ardent cricket lovers aren't likely to be too enthusiastic about the IPL format and the Twenty20 shows with its cheerleaders and carnival atmosphere.
And cricket writer Ramachandra Guha was almost contemptuous. Said Guha: "Test cricket is Scotch, one-dayers are Indian whisky and Twenty20 is local hooch."
