Flintoff is in no way suggesting that the tournament should have remained in India with the sole purpose of enhancing his playing experience. For the boards, safety and good playing conditions for the players are rightly a consideration. But it is their disregard for the spectator that, it may be argued, stops the sport from finding new followers outside of the Test-playing nations. When cricket is offshored — as it was on earlier occasions to Toronto and even Singapore — it did not seem to worry the BCCI that the stands were sparse and even then thinly filled. The odd expat and the millions back in India glued to TV sets would do very well, thank you.

The ICC too works this way. For it, to take cricket to newer lands is a matter of getting those countries to field teams in ICC tournaments; the point is not to make the game attractive to local people. As Messrs Modi and Manohar of the BCCI will find out if they do end up playing the IPL in England, even in a country so historically invested in cricket, gate-money-paying spectators are not a growing lot.

But the television-rights-driven commerce of the game makes such considerations secondary. The board need not care. (It’s not just in India. Consider how casually the Windies abandoned the charming and resonant Antigua Recreation Ground for the cheerless grandeur of the now disgraced Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, in itself an irony because Viv Richards’s father is part of the folklore at the ARG.)

... contd.