Page 26 - IPL 2

Piyush turned and walked back slowly to his house, who was he to sell them a cricket dream. He smiles,
but gets misty eyed as he sums up his misadventure. “ I learnt something really important that day. In

this country you don’t need to sell the cricket dream. No matter how small you are, cricket is the biggest
dream, and at most times, the only dream! ” It’s the sport we live and breath, and we do it as a nation. A

six from Sachin unifies a billion voices, if only for a moment. That’s what cricket in India has always been
about. Big debate, big noise, big dreams.

It was 1994, a young man, short on experience but high on conviction, walked into the BCCI with a novel

plan: inter city cricket. Private teams, trading of players, a league with glitz and glamour. Modern and
dynamic. ‘They told him to get lost!’ laughs Piyush Pandey, his walrus moustache dancing along. But, he

wasn’t one who would. He had made up his mind. He had big plans for cricket. And for India, which he
believed, even back then, would be the key market for cricket. And he believed, more than anyone, that
he was the key to the key. He kept at it, getting into cricket administration, moving up one step at a time.

Cricket rights, associations, marketing, he handled it all. That precocious 30 year old was Lalit Modi. By
2006 he was well on his way to cricketing power. But, he hadn’t forgotten that plan he had in his hands

that day, around the same time that the little Goan boy, along with a million other kids, was swinging his
bat and dreaming of donning the India colors.

‘We did make some changes in the plan, the main one being that the original idea was a 50 over format,

which became T20 as time went along,’ says Lalit Modi, the man they now refer to as the father of the
league. He had made that plan, along with Piyush, Arun Lal and Amrit Mathur. Which puts to rest all the

speculation that the BCCI-IPL was hastily put together to counter the rebel league.

The idea was in the works since then, waiting for its time to come. And its time did come, bringing with it
success beyond everyone’s imagination.

16 HERE WE GO AGAIN... HERE WE GO AGAIN... 17