Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Yes. When there’s no limit on the number of balls, you’re trying to play for a draw. If you’re behind, you’re trying to make things go longer. Now all of a sudden, it completely changes the strategy of the game. You only have 120 balls and you need to maximize your score. So rather than trying to run out balls or whatnot, sixes become way more important. So Lalit knows this is the perfect opportunity. He goes back to IMG who remember he had initially partnered with Disney and ESPN way back in the day to start broadcasting cricket in India in the first place and says, hey, I need to hire you as consultants from the BCCI. We’re going to set up a whole new league. Andrew Wildblood who runs IMG’s India operations, becomes essentially Lalit’s partner in setting up how are we going to structure this? What are we going to create as the business plan of this new league? We’ve got some time. We’ve just done these major rights deals and sponsorships deals for BCCI. Let’s be really thoughtful about this. We’ll plan to start it in 2009. So here we are. We’re now at the end of 2006, beginning of 2007. We got 2–3 years to set this up. Then in the spring of 2007, a rebel league starts up under their nose in India. Another domestic T20 league with city-based franchises announces that they’re going to launch, and they’re going to call it the Indian Cricket League, and it’s backed by the broadcaster, Zee TV. Not only was it called the Indian Cricket League, which is just a great name, that is actually an entity name that Lalit had registered in the 90s. I don’t know if Lalit was thinking he would actually call IPL the Indian Cricket League, but then something else launches called the Indian Cricket League. It’s a good point. This opportunity for a domestic cricket league was not some aha brainstorm that Lalit had once he took over BCCI. Everybody knew that this would be a huge opportunity.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.