IPO: Bummer Style

He will do a better job as a campaign manager for the corporates who are shying away from the IPOs.

Safety Signboard in zoo.

First Grade.

One day the first grade teacher was reading the story of the Three Little Pigs to her class. She came to the part of the story where the first pig was trying to accumulate the building materials for his home.
She read, "...And so the pig went up to the man with the wheelbarrow full of straw and said, 'Pardon me sir, but may I have some of that straw to build my house?'"
The teacher paused then asked the class, "And what do you think that man said?"
One little boy raised his hand and said, "I think he said 'Holy moley! A talking pig!'"

Superb Sehwag & bungling BCCI

A blistering innings of 309 n.o against the Protean in the first test of the current series!
The fastest triple hundred in history.
I was following the match on internet and the boundary alerts just kept on popping in. It was fitting that Chennai , which still has some serious cricket fans left, was a witness to this marvel of an innings. The commentary on cricinfo was superb , very graphic and contextual. But one missed the tube dearly. Hoepfully, the recordings will be available soon.

As usual, the general public was not a witness to this knock as only one DTH company has bagged the broadcasting rights and DD does not have the live feed. Unfortunately, even the highlights are absent. BCCI made its money by selling the rights. DD mysteriously sat out and the public was forced to miss the match. Or does BCCI want each member of the public to buy a specific DTH dish for every such contract they sign?

Will anyone sill say that BCCI- a NFP- exists for public interest ?

Realisation

How bizzare can a Not-for-profit organisation get ? The example of Indian Cricket Board (BCCI).

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.- George Santayana.

Opening the national TV channel the other day , I zoomed into a discussion on BCCI’s affairs and the IPL. While the discussion was mostly on between the merits of slam-bang cricket (read T20) & classical cricket (read Test matches & ODI), the advent of big money to BCCI was also being discussed with lots of enthusiasm.
In between, two comments caught my attention.

The first one made by a BCCI marketing official stated that
“BCCI is a not-for-profit organisation …..” He was speaking about the fact the individual BCCI officials don’t make money.
The second one , made by an international cricket commentator who also represents a global broadcaster , was about
“How much value can the BCCI give a sponsor?” . He was talking about general improvements in cricket.

Give me a break.
NFP ? - I thought these guys make crores of money but it sounds like they are doing a favour to the Indian public
Value to the sponsors ? - What about value to the game of cricket, its tradition and the paying public?

Lets take first thing first.

BCCI is a NFP.
BCCI’s annual revenue is nearing 500 crores now and is bigger than quite a number of midcap companies in the country.
The question is, who is the BCCI for ? To know that one must revisit the characteristics of a NFP .

In my first post about the advent of Corporate NGOs, I made a distinction between a Not for profit organisation (NFP) and an NGO. Essentially both are similar kind of legal entities qualifying for income tax exemptions. But a NFP can generate any amount of revenue and spend any amount too while a NGO is purely grant driven and has to rein in the costs.

A NFP can be registered as a Trust, Society or a section-25 company (a company promoted for charitable purposes).1
BCCI is registered as a Society under the Registrar of Society act of Tamilnadu. As per the act , it is managed by a governing council , whose member are elected in the annual AGM. The AGM is attended by the members of the society , who essentially are the state associations.
The stated aim of the BCCI is to promote cricket in India and the stated stakeholders are the Indian Public. 2 (Incidentally, BCCI still doesn’t have a website of its own. All information was sourced from public domain in the world wide web. It has just today signed a 50 MUSD deal for development of BCCI & IPL website on a 50:50 revenue sharing basis.)

BCCI generates revenue through primarily four means:

1. Membership fee from the associations.
2. Sponsorhip deals
3. Selling of broadcasting rights
4. Hosting of cricket matches.

Since the number of state associations is fixed , it is obvious that the majority of the nearly 500 crores revenue for the BCCI comes through sponsorship deals & sale of media rights.

Now, here comes the catch.

A society which has been set up nearly 90 years ago to promote cricket in India is legally bound to provide increasing value to the members of the society (in this case , associations) and through them the affiliated cricketers .
Secondly , promotion of the game in India involves making it more popular which implies that the general public or the viewers are indirect stakeholders who also should get increasing value from watching high quality, competitive international and national cricket.
Finally, cricket in India will said to have been promoted if there is substantial growth in the number of qualified first class cricketers.

Sponsorship in a NFP is necessarily solicited to fill the revenue gap of the budget after the planned budget is drawn up listing down the annual, activities of the board. Because BCCI hosts hundreds of matches every year across the country , sponsors & broadcasters will generally see a lot of value in putting their money after cricket . Once the revenue gap is plugged in , BCCI should typically go ahead with their agenda of promoting cricket and spending the money judiciously in building infrastructure, in wide-spreading the talent-catching net , in coaching and in hosting matches. In this way, it would provide additional value to its members, cricketers and the general public.

But when money generated from the sponsorship and media rights become the most important objective of the society , then it is but natural that the BCCI would have to start thinking of giving value to the sponsors first and its members next.

This is exactly what is happening today in BCCI.
Insiders say that the BCCI has been so subservient to the sponsors that even the selection committee members sing to their tune. Players are selected or dropped depending on the duration of the individual multi-year contracts with various sponsors. During a live telecast, advertisements sometimes eat away beyond the stipulated time between end of one over and the start of the next. Contracted players even give their practice a miss just two days before a test match to spend one half to a full day with their sponsors to take part in an ad-shoot.

Of course , the public pays for all the extravaganza by buying overvalued products of sponsors (read colas, energy drinks, durables etc.) , buying entry tickets , watching endlessly smartly- made- ads of ordinary products during the match, participating in inane contests through SMS polls & generally getting carried away by all the hype generated around a match.

It’s the age for hype , of carefully generated advertisements around the game or the player and more-carefully planted mass promotion through broadcasting media. The timing of promotion is also important. Notice that the ongoing test match with South Africa is not on national television. Just about an year back, the Information & Broadcasting minister had raised a hue and cry against private broadcasters for not giving feed to Doordarshan. Wonder why the government is silent today. Aren’t cricket matches serving any more the interests of the public ? or Is it because , sponsors of IPL want to “purposefully” spend their money for generating hype around IPL and hence they are giving the test-match adverts a miss. With no ads forthcoming, it looks like Doordarshan has chickened out of national broadcast of the matches.

The Brave New World of Cricket is here. Sponsors want to invest money in younger players and hence test matches do not get shown on national television. Even the public takes in all the hype and thinks that they will get to see quality and competitive cricket.

The sponsors have equated cricket with entertainment and are looking at those public who will part with some of their entertainment budget to watch more of 3- hour -slam-bang cricket and less cinema or visits to the mall. So, the masala drama churned out by filmy performers gets equated with the drama on the cricket field.

Give me a break! Will a hundred Amitabh or a thousand Sharukh Khan equate one Tendulkar, Sehwag, Kapil, Gavaskar, Pataudi, Azhar or Ganguly?

Will the demand on performances on the cricketers also burn them out quickly?

Will test match and thereby classical cricket die a forced but gracious death in viewer-ship interest?

Of course, time will give the answer.

But one answer is right in front of us.
BCCI is aN extremely corrupt form of a NFP in India today.
It does not follow the fundamental aims of the body to give value to its primary stakeholders & public . It gets exemptions from payment of tax inspite of making 500 crores a year. It promotes sponsors’ interests. It has no vision of how to conserve the traditional game of thinking cricket in the years to come. It has become a hot bed of power & money broking for mediocre official-bearers while the ex-cricketers are treated like employees.

Either the NFP rules must get amended ( to get a revenue-cap for example) or the Government must tax the body. The government should also probably make it compulsory for such high-revenue bodies to make their accounts, MOU and Article of Association public. A society registered as NFP should show evidence that it exists for the interest of the public.

Till that happens, BCCI will revel even at the hype generated by such controversies.

References:
1. Registration of NFP: http://www.ngosindia.com/resources/ngo_registration.php
2. Vision Statement of BCCI (Circa 2000) http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2000/aug/01vision.htm

Indian Institute of Management (IIM): Dedicated to the service of conning the nation

IIM Bangalore, an institute I had the privilege to study, announced today it has increased its annual fees by 60% to 4 lakhs a year thereby making a 2 year PGDM course in IIM Bangalore worth 8 lakhs . One wonders at the justification of such a hike and one questions too in the same breadth the autonomous character of the IIM. .

Before we discuss how banks are falling one over the another to finance a candidate selected by the IIM, let us first look at the character of the institute and the course.

Today, IIMs are spoken about in the same breadth as the IITs. (Although the brand name of the IITs has been unquestionably established by the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in USA. IIMs do not have a brand name to speak about globally)
What makes an IIM special ? Does the course it teaches make it special?

PGDM or MBA claimed its fame as a professional course in the post-depression period in Chicago in USA to acclimatise management professionals with the nuances of business. Its core was based on economics and its shell was filled with ornamental courses like marketing, operations and finance.

An MBA is essentially a “con” course which has no fundamental pre-requisite for admission. A graduate in “any discipline” with marks as little as 50% is eligible for the course.
Does it give you a hint ?
Can you compare a Masters course in Computer Science or Biochemistry or Bio technology or Engineering with MBA ?
You cannot. Because the acquisition of knowledge in the graduations courses of more fundamental disciplines like science make you eligible for the Masters course in the same discipline. While you can be a mediocre graduate of any discipline with little knowledge to be eligible for a MBA.

A research paper in the M.Sc or M.Tech has to be original in its contribution towards progress of knowledge. But , a research paper in MBA can be empirical in nature (as you so often see in Marketing papers ) and still be accepted for publication. There is no theory which comes out of experimental laboratories in MBA. All you require to write a paper is either to draw a 2x 2 or 3x3 matrix of variables (like demand, cash flow, profit etc..) and postulate a hypothesis or commission a research of consumers and do an esoteric statistical analysis to prove some obscure point of how consumers spend 10% of their income on aphrodisiacs while they talk on their cellphones during their evening visit to the loo.

The IIMs have perfected this con. Do you know how ? I shall come to that later.

Firstly, why are the IIMs famous ? Are they famous because of their elaborate infrastructure , faculty etc or because of their successful alumni in various sectors of the economy ? The answer for obvious is latter. 200 thousand people take the CAT entrance test every year for the IIMs and only about 1500 qualify to get admitted in the 7 IIMs. That’s 0.7% . Roughly speaking 1 out of every 100 students applying for IIMs gets selected . In top grade universities in USA , the ratio is 1: 10 to 1:15. The IIMs have successfully resstricted the supply of seats to create an exclusivity where only the cream of graduate students in India can be eligible. Obviously, bright students that they are , they pick up any course like a jiffy. All they need is some guidance and not reputed faculty. Roughly , 40% of the students rise to become CXOs of organisations within 10-15 years of passing out and glorify the name of their alumnus.
Bottom line : It’s the students that make IIM famous and not the faculty. Having studied under some faculty, who could not even articulate their thoughts properly , I know that for certainty.

Consider a situation where you have 20 IIMs and 10,000 students graduating out of IIMs.(Incidentally the requirement of managers in India today are annually near about 30,000. This supply gap is being commercially exploited by the mediocre private institutes like IIPM & ICFAI). That would mean an admission to application ratio of 1: 20 , which is decent and closer to the international standards. But in a such a scenario, the IIMs would loose their exclusivity and the brand value as the students by themselves would not ensure success and the institutes would have to put in a much harder work from the faculty.

What is the quality of faculty in IIMs? Pathetic by international standards. The Indian business houses probably have 0.01% of such faculty as their business consultants while in the USA, faculty of A-grade business schools would either sit in the boards of multiple number of top corporate or consult them regularly. How many of these IIM faculty can claim to have to come out with original theories or postulates or formulae that deserve mention in textbooks? Negligible numbers.

So, what have the IIMs done apart from perfecting the “con” that goes by the name of MBA?

So long, the IIMs probably forgot to cash in on the demand for their seats. Now they have remembered their folly and are attempting to correct the same by raising the fees . Isn’t this a case of charging the market what it can bear to pay? Just because, the banks are ready to roll the money? What incremental value are the IIMs giving by raising the fees by 60%?
Better-paid top-grade international faculty ? No.
Better courses? No.
Better audio-visual infrastructure in the class room? No.
Free books ? No.
Larger number of scholarships ? No.
Then what ?

Just because the students are receiving an average annual salary of 15 lakhs or more in the placements , IIM Bangalore decided that its is best to make hay while the sun shines and thereby forgetting the fact that with a course fee of 8 lakhs the IIMs will now be that much more difficult and risky for a middle class academic student to get into.

So much for academic progress in higher education!

Its time that the students stand up and refuse to pay the unjustified hike and demand the value that a 8 lakh course deserves from a national institute.

Get us the best faculty of the region .
Get us the best infrastructure .
Throw out the junk faculty from the institute based on student feedback.
Reduce excess staff.
Abolish relative grading.
Increase student intake.
Have arrangement with reputed foreign universities for an one semester
residential exchange course.
Have free text books.
Have 50% scholarships.
etc. etc.

Otherwise, when the recession strikes the global market, IIMs will find it difficult to place students at even a decent average salary and Indian students will increasingly opt for the Whartons and the Harvards and the Dukes rather than pay an obnoxiously overvalued course fee for a mediocre post-graduate course .

P.S : If you did not know, IIMs are also not-for-profit organisations (NFP). An NFP charging 8 laks an year where their cost is probably 1.2 lakhs only per student. If this is not an unaccountable rip-off, what is ?

Goa: A lesson in beauty, warmth, music & Indian law.

The tragic death of a British teenager ,Scarlett Keeling, in Goa has suddenly brought forth safety & security issues that confront international tourists visiting India.

Scarlett, a fifteen year old English teen, was found dead on one February morning this year. She was discovered at the Anjuna beach, which is one of the most sought-after beaches by both the international and Indian tourists.

As news of her unnatural death spread , all the television channels were spot-on Goa. Fiona, Scarlett’s mother had lodged a complaint with the administration that she did not believe the post-mortem report which talked about “accidental-death-by-drowning” at the rocky Anjuna beach. And she suspected that the local police were trying to cover up.

Within days, the media laid bare the history of the Keeling family; painting them as a dysfunctional family with history of marital separation, promiscuity in relationships & substance abuse. Fiona , the mother, was characterised as a “subaltern” Brit, a bad mother and a backpacker who came to Goa with her daughter for a cheap vacation with psychedelic vision.

Family side over, the media then focussed on the drug scenario in the late-night trance parties, the corruption of local culture by foreign influence, availability of free-sex as a trade off for accommodation & food etc. The cue-picking and glib-talking anchors were trying to conclude that the Scarlett’s death was inevitable. Whether she died due to accidental causes or incidental was somehow made to appear irrelevant.
“In India, we will not allow our teenage daughter(s) to be left alone with an unknown man in an unknown and unsafe place;” was how a local minister seemed to preach on national television. (It is another matter that, in India, daughters are often left alone with known men , in a known & safe place like home to suffer increasing domestic violence and/or child abuse.)

Scarlett could not but meet this tragic end! What a bummer, eh?- all the channels seemed to scream the same

And all through last month , Goa & India tourism earned a bad name. A paradise was torn apart completely by the print and television media. Traditionally, Goan beaches are attractive for the beautiful breakers of warm water pounding the sunburnt winter sand , miles of beaches to walk on, the local music , multi-cultural food and home made wine & alcohol. Goan music is lively, boisterous, fun-loving and joyous. You can’t but get affected by it. Whatever else that go with these traditions, in the guise of drugs, trance music & sex, are largely confined to a section of tourists with minimal interaction with the uninitiated locals. Media seemed to gloss over this part a wee bit more.

But more importantly, the media quite forgot the case. The covering up of a case by the local administration & police. A case of murder being converted so smoothly to a case of an accidental drowning after an OD of drugs, as the first post-mortem report seemed to suggest. Fiona challenged the post-mortem report ,successfully .
After sixty years of independence; it again had to be a British, and a "subaltern" one at that, to civilise local legal authorities that the fundamental rule of the criminal law is to call a spade a spade - a rape a rape , a murder a murder- and anything else would be a compromise with the law or what is called a "cover-up."

I think the media did not focus on this issue at all. The issue of a individual's right to a fair investigation by the police. If they had done that, they would have probably done some justice to voice the silent distrust of millions of Indians on the indian police and legal system. Because, these silent millions believe that fair law & fair police , in India, are meant for those people who can afford to buy them whether in the police stations or in the court.

Go to Goa. Its as safe as any other Indian metro. Enjoy the blue warm water breaking waves while the law ,hopefully now , takes its rightful course in convicting the perpetrators of a heinous crime on a teenager, who deserved to live as much as any one of us.

Freedom of thought!

Thought for the day & Indian Cricket Captain

"Never explain yourself to any one.Because the person who likes you doesn't need it,and the person who dislikes you won't believe it.." -- Author Unknown

Nice thought to start in the morning. It works when the world is divided into black & white. Into two kinds of persons, one who always like you and one who always dislike you. Unfortunately, majority of the persons you know would like you sometimes and dislike you the other times (or worse still: they will be indifferent) depending on their equation with you at the present.

Secondly, the people who like you do not remember the "noble thought" when they ask you for an explanation and you just can't remain silent giving the excuse expressed in the "thought for the day ". And the people who dislike you are not looking for an explanation anyway. They have their negative prejudices about you firmly enshrined and they will analyse every action of yours through them.

However after reading Dhoni's interview with cricinfo; captioned 'It's important to send the message across-Dhoni' ; one is certain that he should pay a heed to such noble thoughts. In this interview, the young rajput captain of the Indian cricket team from Ranchi defends dropping of seniors from the India ODI cricket team and cites the fantastic 2-0 win in the CB series in Australia as the proof of a young Indian team playing aggressive cricket, successfully.
Maturity over time will convince Dhoni that there isn't any need to explain anything to anybody as long as the results on the field talk for themselves.

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Freefalling

Each day the stock market falls,the investors must be feeling like these campers.

Breadwinner

FOSTeRA & MO - New directions in NGO movement?

In my last post, I had talked about the ease of getting funding in a NGO from global , institutional funders as well as corporate. for eliminating the biggest disease of India, poverty.

A problem as large as poverty has been made more complex by the substantial leakages in the implementation programme of the NGOs and the non-sustainable nature of the projects. Add to it the nepotism that is generated by class, caste, religious & regional considerations and you are back to square one.

In a globalised market driven economy, funds do not move on a sustainable basis purely on charity & sympathy. Hence , livelihood programs of NGOs must meet the hard challenge of generating sustainable good income.

Although sectoral changes in India have meant the rapid growth of the services sector almost at the cost of the agriculture ; there has not been any marked shift in skilled labour from the agricultural sector to the services or manufacturing sector. Logically, there should be one if the per capita income is to improve in the rural country side where poverty is starker. This implies that either new skills be taught (english teaching, call centers, IT training) in the agricultural sector Or traditional non-farm skills (weaving, handicraft, woordwork, mudwork etc.) be used to create global products. A constant change in skill training from NGOs will effect a smoother sectoral transition as well as generation of sustainable income.

A news ticker 6 months back mentioned that a 25 seat rural-BPO-cum-call center was inaugurated at Chanachandiram near Hosur in Tamilnadu. The call centre would impart training as well as provide employment to Plus-Two educated youth from naxal-affected villages in Krishnagiri district. Multi-national companies such as Object webtech and Leo Soft had tied up with FOSTeRA (Fostering technologies in rural areas) to outsource their back office work. About 75 youth from naxal-prone villages would be trained round the clock in the call centre. They would be given training in typing, English grammar, communication skills, data conversion and XML tagging. The salary level is Rs.5000/- per head.

Similarly,Maya Organic, a "social venture company" as opposed to a NGO, after their success of the Bangalore retail shop (selling handcrafted furniture of global quality & fair-trade certified ) is opening up a chain of retail centers, brandnamed MO across the country. The buisness model of MO is novel as they are working on a direct-connect between the producers in village and the consumers in the retails sector . Further, they emphasise that their products will be marketed by showcasing world-class quality and not poverty. Thirdly being a social venture company where VCs have pumped in money, there will be whole lot of mentoring, accountability and professional hand-holding in marketing , which is so much non-existent in a traditional NGO.

FOSTeRA and MO are examples that appear to strike the right chord in the hearts of those who want these scourge to be eliminated from the society.

KLPD

This series was sent by a friend.

The expression on the lover-boy's face in the last pic. is terrific.

Bhajji Blast at Brisbane: Indian cricket team defeats Aussies in the CB series (March’08)

If the one day series against South Africa in Nov’06 was a disaster and the first-round exit from the World Cup in April’07 was the pits we reached as a nation enjoying cricket then surely the 2-0 win in the trination (Aus, SriLanka, India) CB series , today , is the one where we have reached the climax with the earlier T20 World Cup victory in Sept’07 & the Perth test-victory against Australia in Jan’08 being peaks in the journey. (Do you recall that Australia and Sri-Lanka were also the finalists in the World Cup? )

This is a team which has energy, passion , talent , attitude & bench-strength in abundance to invest in and the investors in IPL will be a happy lot too. Most of the winning team players feature in the league and will be the team to back for the 2011 World Cup.

Bhajji gets the special mention because he was involved in dismissing both the players, Hayden & Symonds, who were involved in the longest partnerships in both the finals. Incidentally, Bhajji was targettted by the home crowd (Australians) in the “monkey (with Symonds)” and “obnoxious little weed (with Hayden)” controversies that erupted during the course of the tour. Bhajji took the battle head-on in the field . Finally the "weed" wins!

Going back to the start of the tour, the rivalry of the game took a twist when Oxenford , the third umpire , ruled Andrew Symonds “not-out” in the Sydney test match. Indians were flabbergasted. How could a third umpire give a wrong decision ? Were the Aussies cheating? Field- umpiring errors from Bucknor and Benson followed and the Bhajji controversies only increased the intensity of the rivalry. It was a case of “poetic justice” today for the same Oxenford to give the right decision as a third umpire and rule Hussey out after a 10 minute delay. (Can you beat it ? For 10 minutes , the play was stopped for the thrid umpire to give a decision, which seemed an open-and-shut case from the tv replay.)
Congratulations to Dhoni and his team for winning the CB series. Fantastic!
And , thank you Sachin Tendulkar for repeating the magic that we saw in Sharjah’98. Two exceptional innings (117n.o & 91) on the trot in the 3-match finals provided the anchor for the team to build on.

Its been worth the wait after following 15 months of live cricket on television from Hyderabad through Bangalore and now in Kolkata.

Nagaland: The endless promise of a Bright Indian Future ?

The elections in Nagaland, presently under President’s rule, is due soon.
Did you know that?
You, who is in Mumbai and flicks through the TOI in the morning or you in Bengaluru, for whom politics has no meaning ? And countless, other yous!
But you would have noticed that there was an election in Himachal recently or even in Pakistan or President’s rule in Karnataka.
Surprise, surprise ! You and I in Kolkata, probably know precisely as much.

So, when Nagas talk about their relationship with Indians as “us-and-them," why blame them? We , in India, are physically & mentally removed from this state for generations.

Nevertheless, the impending elections in Nagaland is being watched closely by the Indian government, the NSCN groups (there is a third one now, “U” – NSCN-"Unified" formed by two ministers of the IM & K group: did you know that?) , the warring tribes & the international Community.

Across the groups, Nagas do not accept the Indian constitution. Period.
The Government of India, considers its strategic importance to be too vital to be left out of the boundaries. Bordering Myanmar & being close to China, Nagaland is one place, India would not like to secede. So the talk is on for giving a full-scale autonomous government (do you know what it means?).

And the elections are on too. Congress & the NPF are two major parties . Both of whose Naga leaders have amassed huge wealth during their rule. The parallel governments in Nagaland (did you know that Nagaland has two numbers full scale parallel governments running in their respective tribal bases ? Now you know , Us and Them?) taxes the government employees , locals and the contractors working there.
Nagas maintain that they are united. But are they ?
Life goes on in India. While elections in Nagaland once again raises the
issue of secession with dignity !

Indian Premier (Cricket ) League- Big Money only?

Well, I do not think any body will grudge the crores that the cricketers are earning through IPL as long as they maintain their international standings while playing for the country.The last big trophy India won in cricket was way back in the eighties. In the recent World Cup for one day Cricket held in the West Indies, Team India with combined valuation of more than 10 crores lost to Bangladesh , a team which if put in IPL auction would not even fetch one hundredth of the sum. I am stressing this point because the “star status” of a cricket player is established not by his performance in the domestic circuit but by the display of his superior cricketing abilities in an international arena. It is interesting to know that a market atleast has been created around these talented cricketers. But for any market economics to work , if someone is earning then somebody else has to pay for it.In this case, of course, it is the Indian cricket audience in the stands and the Television viewers. As long as they continue to see value in watching IPL, the venture will sustain itself. Some of the investors have dubbed the IPL extravaganza as reality television with lots of adrenaline being pumped in. But this is reality television with a difference. Here pure cricketing performances will determine the international career of a cricketer. A couple of flops from a star player and the viewer will loose interest in him. Entertainment packages will surely bring in the audience to the stands but cricketing performances will determine the sustainability. Finally, all investors are talking of a long term scenario to see money coming in. But be certain , money will go out as fast as they came in if there aren’t sufficient numbers of cricket viewers in the short term.