Kentucky Fried Cricket's great leap into the unknown

The curious beast known as the Indian Premier League (IPL), or according to the ICC, the 'good' barbarians, has entered a new stage. Its grand auction of talent has taken place and Mahendra Singh Dhoni has garnered top dollar, with Andrew Symonds a close second. The teams have faced a fascinating mix of imperatives, trying to build commercial franchises from scratch, with players having to provide all-round ability both on and off the field. It seems that the Monkeygate affair has no effect on Symonds' popularity in India, and his earnings were further boosted by his serious equivocation over the ill-advised tour of Pakistan. Precisely why anyone thinks it is a good idea to send Australia into the lion's den of extremism for an entire month, given the white hot atmosphere over Iraq and Afghanistan, has clearly replaced their brain with dollar signs. Rudd and his foreign affairs team should effectively ban the team from travelling for the tour unless a suitable surrogate option such as Sharjah, Sri Lanka (mmm, maybe not on second thoughts) or even a late-season Australian tour can be arranged.

Those issues aside, the IPL represents a grand attempt to reshape cricket in the Indian marketing image. Utilising the wondrous pulling power of Twenty20, the BCCI aims to redefine the parameters of world cricket. Instead of Indian one-day tournaments being sandwiched around other tours, with the Australia summer programme sacrosanct, the world will schedule the entire Future Tours Program, that much vaunted instrument that gave us a diet of constant floggings of Bangladesh, around the IPL kernel.

The colonel's secret recipe is to model a league on a truncated version of the English Premier League, with players playing for around six weeks of the year. An interesting development is the use of a salary cap and a restriction imposed by Cricket Australia that only two Australians can play in each team. These teams are geographically based franchises, with six of them hosting a local hero known as an icon. The icon commands megabucks - at least 15% more than their franchise's next highest earner. On top of this, the teams must include four players under twenty-two and can select players from within an international pool of contracted players. In effect, it is close to the AFL draft system but with each selection made on an auction basis.

Whether this will work remains to be seen. The question is will it turn out like an exhibition series and hence be a very expensive non-event, such as the unloved ICC Superseries or will it resemble a long-established marquee competition such as the Premier League or the World Series. It remains to be seen, however we should see some exciting cricket and intriguing captaincy as players learn a new game and have to deal with the specific strategy set by the team management, not just the teams offered up by selectors.