Last week I happened to be in the press meet organized by ICC development committee in Kathmandu. Cricket’s top most governing body’s head Mr. Ishan Mani (President ICC) and Mr. Malcam Speed (CEO) also spoke about cricket of Nepal. They expressed their appreciation for the performance of Nepalese Cricket Team at junior level. However, they also expressed the need for replicating junior level performance at senior level for Nepal’s transition to ODI status.
These days people who knows about my cricketing background, generally ask me about the possibility of Nepal playing one day matches along with other test playing nations. While putting up this question to me, I see a lot of hope on the face of these people, who believe that Nepal will soon make its way to international cricket considering the success at junior level. However, I unwillingly have to make them aware of the fact that, we still have to go a long and tough way to make our way to international cricket. However, I personally believe that it is very much possible goal for Nepal within the span of next five years.
There are so many areas where we need to work on, starting from developing infrastructure, improving domestic cricket standard, bringing professionalism, participating more in international events so on and so forth. How does all this possible? All these require various resources, good management and support from every one in the country. Above all most important resource is monetary resource, which can almost help to acquire all other requisite resources.
Now, it’s high time to have a look how cricket is run in the country. CAN is chiefly funded by ICC and ACC, through which it carries different activities. Revenue from sponsorship is not significant neither CAN receives any major financial support from government and other sport body. So, CAN is basically run as a cost center, where its cost are funded by ACC and ICC up till now.
If we really want to see the cricket to grow in Nepal in a sustainable way and Nepal becoming a part of International cricket map, our first job would be turning CAN into profit center. For this CAN has to run like a corporate body. Looking at the growing interest of cricket in the country, I think it is very much realistic goal to achieve by next three to five years. We can learn from India’s experience, where BCCI was running in loss till late 80s and now have become one of the richest sports institutions in the world just by exploiting the interest of the game within the country. It is prerequisite for the development of cricket in the country to reduce our dependency on ICC and ACC and we must find our indigenous and constant source of revenue to fund the cricketing activities in the country.