Champions League T20 Tournament Will Result in The "Rapid Growth" of Club Cricket Around the World - - Lalit Modi Believed

Lalit Modi, chairman of the Champions League Twenty20's governing council, is certain the tournament will result in the "rapid growth" of club cricket around the world. Modi also said there was a strong chance the Champions League would be taken to non-cricket playing countries as a means to expand the game's reach and get other countries to embrace cricket.

"The Champions League has been developed to embrace club cricket all round the world," he said on the day of the tournament launch in Bangalore. "It's a place where we can find young cricketers who then play for their national sides. The IPL is a great example of a domestic club-level tournament, and similarly nations around the world have club tournaments. The objective here is not to make money, it is to build the game, to build club-level cricket, to find and nurture new talent. Money is not the criteria. The objective here is that we have some of the best players around the world and we hope that in years to come the Champions League comes to symbolise what the UEFA [version] is to football.

"From this year itself the tournaments in countries like Sri Lanka, New Zealand and West Indies will become more competitive. You'll see players who were not participating in domestic tournaments who will now take part and do well. Before, once players graduated from their clubs, they became international players and if at all they went back to their clubs they hardly played a few games. But the rules of the Champions League are that you have to play for your club, and your club must win to participate here. You won't get a chance to be here unless you've not played for your club."

Dean Kino, head of business and legal affairs for the Champions League, said one positive fallout of this competition would be to give context to domestic cricket. "It increases the passion of grassroots cricketers to be involved for their states and provinces. If you look at the interest in the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash in Australia and the IPL over the last six months, you will see that the result of going to the Champions League has been hugely stimulating. At the domestic level it will drive young cricketers to the game and that will build on domestic cricket and make it stronger."

Modi felt there was no better format than Twenty20 to draw new audiences and one way to do so was to broadcast matches across the world in different languages. While the current focus is to take the Champions League to participating nations, there is a definite plan to expand the competition. "That is a definite possibility. The immediate future is that we have South Africa, Australia and New Zealand as leading candidates and the objective would be to move within the participating countries," he said. "But we must make the competition more broadcast-friendly and show it to countries that have never seen cricket before. Like the IPL did, we have to get more women and children hooked onto this game."

The governing council has definite plans to take the tournament on the road, with Modi confirming that future editions will move from country to country. Kino said the concept was to move the competition around as much as possible. "We will look at newer, cricket-playing countries primarily but beyond the next ten years a decision will be taken as to whether it is appropriate to bring the game to non cricket-playing countries. We want to take the grassroots level of cricket to as many countries as possible."

To make the Champions League more prestigious, one change could be to increase the number of participating teams, something the governing council will decide on after the inaugural tournament. Modi and Kino ruled out a home-and-away format, like in the IPL and other domestic tournaments, because of the obvious difficulties in flying teams across the world on a daily basis. "As a global league it is very important to get crickets playing all around the world and give them the opportunity to play on different surfaces, in front of different fans and cultures," Modi said.

The IPL, run by the BCCI, has been extremely successful and Kino was hopeful the Champions League would blossom with the inputs of Cricket Australia and other boards. "The Champions League doesn't arise from the IPL," he said. "Representatives of Cricket Australia, the BCCI and Cricket South Africa talked about the possibility of a Champions League even before the concept of the IPL was invented. We've been talking about this for years and it's been a matter of getting the right time and place to launch. Whereas the IPL certainly helped leverage interest in the event, the Champions League stands by itself as an international event. It becomes the apex of all domestic events around the world; its context and relevance is through domestic events."