Management Lessons From IPL-ICL Saga

By manishankar on Mon, 04 August 2014 at 01:47 IST

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by Manishankar Chakraborty

Learning every time, everywhere. The amazing thing about management learning is the fact that you can literally derive takeaways from any and every incident happening around you, from any sphere of life. The only thing which is an absolute must is the ability to observe the happenings minutely and try to correlate with the text. An amateur manager or a manager in the making can also have maximum learning out of the incidents happening day in and day out. The amount of learning increases exponentially if one is trying to decipher things from the area of interests as it becomes comparatively easier for all and sundry to comprehend the happenings to a nicety.

Cricket being a passion in Indian, every development happening in the world of cricket particularly if involves stake of the home team. The citizens are excited and curious enough to put in their contribution which makes it an ideal platform for brainstorming and thereby learning. Be it the early ignominious exit of the Indian cricket team from the world cup in the West Indies or the recently owned 20-20 crown Indian supporters makes all a real life case studies which can very easily be leveraged while teaching management.

IPL and ICL saga

The recently formed factions of Indian Premier League (IPL) in response to Subash Chandra's Indian Cricket League (ICL) can very well explain even the toughest concepts pertaining to Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices, can provide beautiful insights into men management after poaching them with mouth watering offers, legal tussle to gain supremacy over each other, stakeholders interests incited etc. are indicators proving the fact that these happenings from day to day life can serve as the best teaching tool in a business management classroom.

ICL wanted to beat the monopoly of the richest cricket board in the world thereby coming out with a novel spectator friendly format of cricket and drawing top notch talents from all across the globe.

The time chosen by the smart business tycoon of the Zee fame was spot on as Indian fans were grappling with the Indian team's poor performance in the world cup at West Indies. The move made by Subash Chandra has been compared with that of Kerry Packer when he started of the concept on colored clothing and pygama cricket in the eighties. This move can very well be brainstormed in a classroom consisting of intellect budding managers so as to drive home the point of new launch, catching the competitor off-guard with a timely smart move. The way the model of the tournament was framed can very well explain the nuances of new product development where thorough study and proper positioning started to gain inroads into the established players share in the market.

ICL's moves were frightening enough for the most affluent cricket board in the world to make their smart moves. To start of their response was to safeguard their interest by protecting themselves after taking the legal course. They come out with draconian orders of banning players from playing for the country if at all they sign for the rebel group. Slowly and gradually, business sense prevailed on the part of the board officials and they came out with their competing formant the Indian Premier League (IPL) and started gathering momentum by drawing the best talents from all over the globe. In the meantime the fight for infrastructure, doing a way with the monopoly of BCCI (Board of Cricket Control in India) became the agenda of the warring faction.

The Takeaways

The whole episode unfolded and brought with it many an interesting situations for a business management student or even a practicing manager to analyze so as to find solution to their own problem. For a start up this can be an ideal example of getting into something which is having a cover of monopoly, consisting of fair amount of entry barriers, but with huge potential and handsome profitability once the new player starts to find its feet under the sun, Analyzing the consumer's interests (read as spectator) and carving a model so as to match their expectation can be termed to be the ideal example of launching something commensurate with the consumer needs. There was a latent need being felt by cricket fancy fans to soak into something which would provide them instant entertainment and is also not time consuming. Therefore came it the concept of 20-20 with all the new avatars like roping in global players, franchising teams to various corporate/business houses which cand serve as an ideal pointer for all entrepreneurs and managers.

Author is Faculty Management.

He can be reached at- [email protected]

I am a versatile management trainer with hands on experience in Men and Resource Management, Training and Training related administration. I have more than 290 published articles, business case studies, research papers to my credit.You can avail those by mailing me.I am also a professional management consultant and management trainer with 135 hours of management training till date to industry and corporate bodies and government departments.I am also a professional Columnist for leading print and electronic media houses.