Something's got to give: international cricket or franchise leagues

South Africa's Test series against Pakistan ended three days before the start of the SA20, which ended two days before the start of the Tri-Nations series in Pakistan, which ended five days before the start of the Champions Trophy, which ended 13 days before the IPL will start.

From December 15 to February 9 - and if we restrict our focus to men's cricket - you could have watched the BBL (December 15 to January 27), the BPL (December 30 to February 7), the SA20 (January 9 to February 8) and the ILT20 (January 11 to February 9).

In the course of those 57 days, 27 teams played 158 games. That's 2.78 matches per day. During the same 57 days, 32 men's international teams played 122 matches: 22 Tests, 26 ODIs and 74 T20Is. All told - international and franchise - that's 280 games of cricket in not quite two months, which translates to 4.91 matches a day if we factor in Tests for the sake of the argument.

Do we have the bandwidth, mentally as well as electronically, to keep track of all that? Surely not. Something's got to give. But what should that something be?

We've all heard that there is too much of the franchise T20 stuff, and that it's killing cricket. Or killing cricket as it was before the IPL explosion changed everything in 2008. Here's a thought those of that view won't like: why doesn't international cricket get out of the way and let the reality of franchise T20 tournaments take their rightful place at the top of the game's pecking order?

"I don't think that's the answer. Leagues are good if they are looked at as a way to help the country in which they are played become a better cricketing nation. I don't think a lot of the leagues have that as their purpose. They are purely a money-making exercise. The reason leagues exist is very unilateral."

That's not one cricket's creaking conservatives speaking. It's a man of the modern age, who has played for six IPL franchises along with his 26 Tests, 94 ODIs and 59 T20Is for India, and another T20I for an ICC World XI. It's Dinesh Karthik, who had more where that came from for Cricbuzz.

"If there is a bigger vision, that's when you'll put back into the system and get better cricketers. When better cricketers come, the quality of the cricket improves. And more people will watch and you'll have more fans. It's all part of the ecosystem.

"If the main priority for any league is to try to milk the [cash] cow, that's not going to happen. So international cricket has a very strong place in the game. Yes, certain formats need tinkering and to be looked into. But international cricket needs to exist for the game to be in a healthy place consistently."

Tom Moffat, the chief executive of the World Cricketers' Association, doesn't agree that franchise cricket is only about making money. "If you look at the most successful sports leagues in the world, a few of them being in America, they're big money-making machines," Moffat told Cricbuzz. "But it would be difficult to argue they've been bad for their sports overall.

"Franchise leagues bring some new challenges but have also brought a lot of great things to cricket, including new eyeballs and new playing opportunities. So I don't think it's quite as black and white as that. We have talked for a long time about balance, and finding a system in which international cricket can thrive, along with the leagues, in a system that makes sense."

Wouldn't that balance be more achievable if international cricket woke up and smelt the franchise coffee?

"There is already a full calendar of leagues on the men's side, overlaid on a full calendar of international cricket," Moffat said. "With no central global management of that calendar and the moving parts around it, it's likely the leagues landscape will increasingly become dominant.

"We're moving to more of a football club-based model. There's a part of that which is inevitable and it's not necessarily a bad thing for the sport overall, but players and others still value international cricket.

"A significant amount of the game's revenue which funds underpinning structures is still generated through international cricket, including through ICC events. You also need a pathway to those ICC events and that is currently largely through bilaterals."

But Moffat wasn't fooling himself that important change wasn't underway, and with it could come serious ramifications: "Cricket has historically been a federated model, with international cricket at the top of the game funding the structures underneath. It's moving now to private money in leagues, with slick business models.

"Although they will probably want academies and a pipeline of global talent, franchises will have less of an interest in the full underpinning game development pyramid underneath. There's a clash of worlds at the moment and no-one to bring it all together coherently."

Men's leagues accounted for 1,039 games last year, when internationals added up to 833 - or less than half all senior men's games played in 2024. It gets worse for the T20 haters: 673 of the internationals were T20Is. That's 80.79%. Admittedly, 2024 was a T20 World Cup year, but there's no turning back from this direction of travel.

"At some stage the ICC will have to clamp down on the reasons for giving permission for these leagues and decide which ones they want to sanction," Karthik said. "Because in a lot of them the integrity needs to be questioned. We want leagues that promote domestic cricketers to become better so that the country's teams will be stronger."

Only the ILT20, the MLC, and the CPL allow more than four overseas players in an XI. But it will take more than that for international cricket to retain its status. Karthik thinks that's a fight worth fighting: "At least for this decade the game should be a lot more country-focused. Because, for example, in the recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy [in Australia from November 2024 to January 2025] more than 800,000 people [837,879] walked through the gates. That's a big number. There were more than 350,000 [373,691] for the Melbourne Test.

"So there are a lot of positives. We need to be able to hold on to them and see how we can grow from there. Can more people want to come to Test cricket in South Africa? In New Zealand? In India, in fact. What do we need to do?"

The idea of Karthik as a traditionalist jars with the perception that he is among the players who were made in and by the IPL, even though he earned 51 of his 180 international caps before the tournament was born. He has featured in all 17 editions of the IPL and appeared in 257 games, the same number as Rohit Sharma. Only MS Dhoni has played in more - just seven more. Karthik will be confined to the dugout this year as Royal Challengers Bangalore's batting coach.

When he turned out for Paarl Royals in this year's SA20, he became the seventh former India international and IPL player to appear in a different franchise T20 tournament. It's a phenomenon as recent as it is rare - the first was Munaf Patel, who took the field for the LPL's Kandy Tuskers in 2020. As per the BCCI's rules, Indians are allowed to sign for foreign franchises only after retiring from cricket in India.

Karthik knows why the regulation exists: "The moment you allow Indians to play in other leagues along with the IPL, they will stop playing domestic cricket. Then you are not going to have the same quality in our game. If you give them opportunities to go and play in other leagues, they will definitely go. Which I don't think is right for India. Not for any country."

Yet other countries do not impose the same restriction. They don't have the option. Because the IPL pays players exponentially more than most national boards for exponentially less time, effort and pressure, attempts by those boards to make the tournament off limits would likely result in international retirements. That's especially true in mid-market countries like South Africa, which produces more quality players than CSA and their affiliates could commit to employing.

"Indian players feel that whatever they earn is good enough, and they have that big carrot called the IPL dangling in front of them - and they believe they can get it," Karthik said. "In other places, the challenges are very different. I have gone to a couple of Test-playing countries where grounds and facilities are not up to the mark. You can't compare them with India. We could keep debating this, but to understand the reality on the ground - where India stands as a cricketing nation compared to others - is very important."

A glimpse of where India stands has come to South Africa for around a month since 2023. The SA20 features the country's best players and those of several other countries playing for teams whose names echo the IPL. Because of that, and the removal of the notion that cricket is a nation-building project, the stands are packed and the tournament makes money.

The SA20 is why people who wouldn't bother watching the under-19 World Cup are excited by rising giants like Kwena Maphaka and Lhuan-dre Pretorius. Who they play for - the Lions, the Titans, Paarl Royals or South Africa - has never been less important.