Exclusive Lalit Modi interview: 'Soon IPL players will earn more than $1m a match and Test series as we know them will disappear'

Lalit Modi’s butler is fiddling with the television trying to work out why it will not bring up Sky Sports. The founder of the biggest league in world cricket is lying back on his sofa at his house in west London desperate to watch the latest big match in his grand project.

The butler never does fix the television but it does not matter because across two hours of chat with Modi, while fresh pomegranate juice and Indian snacks are served, the focus is not on the past or the here and now. It is on the future, and namely, the growth of the Indian Premier League and how it will dominate the cricket world even more than it does today.

According to Modi international bilateral cricket is a walking zombie already and the IPL will only become richer as India’s economy goes from strength to strength. He predicts a “bonanza” for cricketers, saying they will earn more than $1m per match and that the next generation will be fabulously wealthy.

He also warns the ICC that if it does not produce a proper Test championship the IPL could do it instead and reveals he always had plans for an IPL Test knockout competition with teams such as Mumbai playing floodlit matches over four days.

He has advice for the England & Wales Cricket Board, too, predicting its own Twenty20 tournament will merely be a “fly to be swatted on the wall” in economic terms if it does not allow private owners to buy into franchises. 

But first the $1m player. We already have stars earning more than that for an IPL season. Ben Stokes is on $1.95 (£1.4m) at Rajasthan Royals, ‘icon’ Indian superstars such as Virat Kohli are paid even more. But that is for a 14-match season. Modi believes if the IPL’s $12m salary cap is relaxed it will initiate a bidding war for talent that will catapult the best players into the top earners in world sport. Such a move would have huge ramifications for Test and one-day cricket. A player’s loyalty would be torn between playing for his country or the IPL boss who has made him fantastically wealthy. 

“The IPL is here to stay. It will be the dominant sporting league in the world. We have one and a half billion people in India that are dedicated to the game of cricket,” says Modi. “The income levels of the Indian population are rising, you will see international and domestic brands wanting to target the Indian consumer. Where are they going to go to do that? They are going to go to only one product, the IPL. Why? Because it gives consistent ratings, it delivers, it has a great fan base and nothing is better than the IPL for advertisers because they get value for money. If that happens than the IPL will overtake the NFLs of this world. 

“Going forward you will see an IPL match grossing not less than $200m a day in terms of revenue, each match. If you have a season of 60 matches the value will be billions. It would have been reached already if there had not been infighting in the BCCI [Indian board] but it will get there eventually.

“Remember the BCCI does not pay for players. The IPL council does not pay for players. It is the owners that pay for the players’ purse. What happens if the IPL loosens that purse and gets rid of the salary cap making it a free market? It is going to go like Premier League football. The salaries will be out of whack. You will see players making $1-$2m a game. It will happen sooner rather than later. That will change players' psyche and loyalty.

“At the end of the day it is great for the players. They will make a hell of a lot of money. If you are a good cricketer in the world you can rest assured you will be picked up by the IPL. If you are good you will make millions. If you are even second-rate you will be picked up. It will become a great sport for them. 

"The percentage of the overall income for a player annually will be 80-90 percent from the IPL. In a free market the person with the deepest pockets will win. The players will gravitate towards who pays the biggest salary. Boards will have to live with that fact. It will be unfortunate for them but it will be a bonanza for players.”

But who will provide the talent? No matter how rich it is, the Indian game cannot produce all the players. Modi believes the Twenty20 leagues around the world will be nurseries for future stars.

“The players will be produced by academies. Now there is a business of players that was not there before. The mistake is thinking you need the boards for players. The IPL and the Big Bash and the CPL and England’s new league together in the future - they will have enough to produce players. From the player's perspective, his aspiration will change. Yes he will say he wants to play for his country. But in his heart he will want to be an IPL player. Cricketers have a limited shelf life. They know that. They have to make the most of it.”

Modi is being as forthright as ever and believes he has the facts and track record to back himself up. The IPL has grown and prospered as he predicted it would a decade ago at its inception. Few outside India grasped its potential, not least among other boards and at the ICC. It is easy to dismiss Modi’s vision of the future again and it will horrify many who love the game but he has been right before.

“Today international cricket does not matter. It is of zero value to the Indian fan. First it was the Indian team then everything else. Now it is the IPL first, then everything else. Tomorrow you will see bilateral cricket disappear. Big series will happen once every three or four years like the World Cup. The ICC will become an irrelevant body. It will be full of fat lugs who have no power. They can scream and shout now and in the future they will threaten to throw India out if they try to expand the IPL but India has the power to stand on its own feet. It does not need anybody. They have a domestic league that it is going to be 20-times the size of international cricket.

“At one time international cricket was the bread and butter of the Indian board. You will see it dwindle down to a single digit in terms of revenue, less than 10 percent will be from ICC and international events. I guarantee that. IPL will be more than 90 percent of business for BCCI going forward. No other board will be able to compete with that because they do not have the domestic market. They have the players but not the domestic market. That is the key, your domestic market.”

The BCCI’s latest IPL media rights deal is worth $2.5bn. Franchise owners bought teams a decade ago for between $67 and $111m. Modi now believes those investments are worth between $300-$400m, such is the value of buying into the Indian economy. 

He believes the franchise owners know that the key to their success will be to buy the best talent so expects the salary cap to disappear in time. Where will this leave Test cricket and what about the ICC and Test cricket?

“I think there is a window for Test cricket and a World Test championship will survive if all nations get together and make it a proper tournament. But it has to be a championship. If the ICC does not do it I see no reason why the IPL would not do it instead as a knockout IPL Test championship.

“I had that planned. It is already in the system. Everyone thought I was working on a second IPL season. It was not. It was an IPL knock out Test series played over four days each game. Teams such as Mumbai would have a separate team altogether. They would recruit separately. It was always on the cards. The second IPL season should not be a second T20 season. We do not want to extend and overkill that format. We wanted to do knock-out Test series instead. We would have night games and coloured clothing. That was in line of supporting the main event at bilateral level but now I see bilateral level disappearing [ie it would replace it].”

Modi lives in London but spends most of his time travelling the world looking after various business interests. He has not returned to India since leaving in 2009 with various government agencies on his tail and charges from the BCCI. Many were later proved to be untrue but he was found guilty by the BCCI of eight offences relating to irregularities in the administration of the IPL. He has never been charged by the Indian government with a crime and denies all accusations. He claims he cannot go back to India because of threats to his life from theAsian underworld. Modi’s lawyer claimed in 2013 he was the subject of an assassination attempt in Thailand in 2009 by the same gang.

Modi admits his time in cricket is over. But he has advice for the ECB as it plans its own IPL tournament. “There is a big market in England. It has a great club culture. I always said I would love to have an English Premier League. But they have one chance in life, not two. Either you make it on day one or you do not. If they do not have teams owned by private owners they are finished. If it is going to be owned by the board and the counties it will not work. You have got to have the money from the owners. If you have ten billionaires sitting at a table who all have big egos, want to win and the best players, they will pay for it. Then you compete with IPL. 

“If they copy the Big Bash with teams owned by the board then it will will always remain a small player. The Big Bash is a fly to be swatted on the wall compared to IPL. Its revenue is negligible to the IPL. ECB will be the same. It will make a little bit of noise but when it comes to players the big money will be in India. Boards relying on TV revenue is not enough, they have to have private investors.”

Such a prospect would never gain approval from the counties and it is impossible to see it happening in England at this stage. But in Modi’s world view that is why England will never compete with India again.