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BCCI spent over 100 crore to pay former players
The cash-rich Indian Premier League may have its share of critics, but one cannot deny the fact that it has gone a long way in making the Indian cricket financially secure and, in the process, established itself as one of the powerhouses in the sport.
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The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) must be applauded for making good use of the additional revenue. While all stadia across the country have been upgraded with the modern facilities, and specialized coaching camps have come up, the Board has not forgotten the contributions of its players from the past.
At the BCCI awards on Wednesday night, president N Srinivasan said the success of the IPL had helped the Board to spend over Rs. 100 crore towards making a one-off benefit to former cricketers.
'Success of the IPL has given us a lot of revenue addition'
"The most important decision of the BCCI was to give a life-time achievement award, that is a one-time benefit to cricketers who have played Test cricket and to cricketers who have played Ranji Trophy for a sufficiently long period of time. In the process I think most of our cricketers who played for India were covered and all those senior Ranji Trophy cricketers were also covered. The total outlay the BCCI has spent in this is over Rs. 100 crores," he said.
The BCCI chief said the extra income made it possible to spread cricket to smaller towns and they now have as many as 22 ODI venues across the country.
"The success of the IPL has given us a lot of revenue additionally which we are able to spend on cricket and creating infrastructure in cricket. Almost every association, every venue and we have around 22 ODI centres, and one by one all of them are creating excellent facilities, creating very good stadiums for cricket.
"All this is possible because of the income BCCI is able to derive form the cricket that our players are playing. I think without this it would not have been possible to spread the game and taken it to all parts of India and create the infrastructure and facilities," he said.
'We have also established specialized cricket academies'
Srinivasan further pointed out that they are working towards improving the nature of pitches in India, while also trying to raise the standard of umpiring.
"We have also established specialized cricket academies, apart from the NCA, to help and nurture talent that is available in different parts of the country. We also have programmes to improve the standard of umpiring. Every Ranji Trophy game is videographed and all decisions are analysed; we also have umpire coaches. We are also spending time to improve quality of our pitches. In short we have taken a holistic look at cricket in India and going forward," he said.