Harsha Bhogle is not too perturbed with the ECB's announcement of the English Premier League, instead suggesting that the franchise-driven system, with more localised loyalties is critical to the future of the game. He believes that market forces will decide the future of the game. He put forth his point in the Indian Express:

The stage is set then for the football model where there will be T20 leagues in each country; some more lucrative than others. That is why I was amused when I read of a proposal in England to ‘counter’ the IPL. You don’t need to. The Bundesliga exists, so does La Liga as does the EPL. And France, Belgium and Turkey and everybody else has its own league. The leagues with bigger markets draw the better players, the smaller leagues effectively become feeder leagues and that is how it could well be with cricket. Having said that, it raises the question of how much T20 cricket is good for the game.

The key here is the definition of the “game” as we have traditionally known it. If the “game” is Test cricket, it is a valid question but I don’t think any one person decides what the “game” is. The markets decide. We didn’t decide how much rap was good for the music world, people buying cds did. We didn’t decide how much of computer animation and special effects was good for the storytelling style of movie-making. The box-office decided that. So too it will be with T20 cricket. If we believe we can control how much T20 should be played, we will seed another Packer for human enterprise fuelled by finance will always find a way.

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