What would a Champions League T20 look like in today's world of cricket?

While the IPL is still comfortably superior 7 years later, the landscape of T20s overall has changed drastically in those 7 years, so is the return inevitable?

The winning runs of the 2014 Champions League T20 final came off a signature Mahendra Singh Dhoni six, ironically eclipsing Gautam Gambhir's innings again, albeit this time as the opposition, to lead Chennai Super Kings to their second CLT20 title.

It would turn out to be the final winning runs hit in the Champions League T20, for two months before the scheduled 2015 edition in the United Arab Emirates, it was announced that the tournament would be scrapped due to the “tournament's limited public following.”

And those four words from the official statement accurately paint the picture of the Champions League T20 of then.

The initial rendition of the CLT20 was like a product that could not break even in spite of public endorsements by big household names. The India-centric nature of the league was unable to keep the boat afloat singlehandedly for longer than six editions. Investors saw the potential in the concept: a $6 million prize money pool with ESPN Star Sports paying $900 million for the global broadcasting rights for 10 years (which was comparable to Sony Entertainment Television and World Sport Group’s purchase of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 10-year broadcasting rights for $1.026 billion).

Bharti Airtel bought the title sponsorship for three years for reportedly $40 million, but with poor execution of the concept and overly focused on the Indian audience (which one can’t exactly blame given it is undeniably the biggest cricketing demographic), Bharti Airtel withdrew after one year, and the league struggled to find a title sponsor that would fully commit to the length of the contract, making the CLT20 the quintessence of the aforementioned comparison.

However, seven years onwards, the T20 format has not only evolved vastly in terms of dynamics and popularity-wise, the ICC also recognizes the format as the vehicle to drive the game’s popularity in countries where cricket is traditionally more unpopular than even chess, and expanded the T20 World Cup from 16 to 20 teams 2024 onwards.

Since then, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) launched their own franchise league, the Pakistan Super League (PSL) in 2016, and it has arguably grown to become the second most popular league, and also the league closest to compete with the IPL’s financial might.

Cricket South Africa (CSA) had tried launching their own franchise league in 2017 by the name of T20 Global League, which saw three teams bought by two PSL teams (Javed Afridi’s Peshawar Zalmi and Rana Brothers’ Lahore Qalandars) and an IPL team (Red Chillies Entertainment’s Kolkata Knight Riders), but shifted it to the following year owing to financial considerations, lack of broadcasters and a title sponsor, and ultimately scrapped the league in June 2017, replacing it with six-CSA owned team league by the name of Mzansi Super League (MSL), that has had two successful seasons so far (2018 and 2019).

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), also had a second-go at launching a franchise league eight years after they scrapped the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) in 2012, with the Lanka Premier League (LPL). Albeit the league is clouded with credibility issues, it had a successful opening season nonetheless and is slated to host the second season in December.

Smaller boards have also tried to capitalize on the subsequent success of the evolved T20 format since then, with Cricket Canada launching the Global T20 Canada (GT20) in 2018 that has had two seasons so far.

With all these factors, it is just to ponder the question: When/Will the Champions League T20 ever return? And if it does return, what would it look like?

And that is what we will attempt to answer as realistically as possible.

There are many things to consider when deciding the best possible format for a Champions League T20. With how occupied the cricketing calendar is, even a tournament that goes from start to finish in not much longer than 2 weeks, would limit some teams’ involvement. Making the tournament fairer than in past editions and giving champions from tournaments a better status and ranking than 2nd and 3rd place teams is another concept we will be striving for. A structure similar to the recent World T20 was considered, where some teams play a qualifying stage first but ultimately discarded. The recent T20 World Cup formats have had their rightful critics: it is essentially another qualifying stage to pass and with the ICC abandoning the format after the 2022 edition, it wouldn't make sense to have such a structure in this league as well.

There could be many ideas floated as to the ideal structure of such a tournament, 8 teams all the way up to 16 teams with various phases could be considered. What we will explore here is a 12 team format where each team is treated equally from the outset.

3 groups of 4 teams will allow for an 18 game group stage. Playing 2 games a day would put this at 9 days long, before 2 semi-finals and a final would keep the tournament short and sweet at 2 weeks long. It would mean the majority of games were meaningful and give every team traveling to the competition at least 3 games to play.

Using this format, the allocation of teams invited boils down to 2 choices. The champions of all 12 full member leagues get an invite, or the winners of the top 8 league teams and the runners up of the top 4. There are many valid for and against arguments for both options, but ultimately the lure of having a truly global competition, where fans from all around the globe have a reason to tune in and watch is too strong to ignore.

As far as finding a suitable window for the tournament, with agreements already locked in for the 2022 calendar finding an open window is nigh impossible. Ideally, a window would be reserved in the FTP, like it was for previous editions, probably around the time of the year after the Caribbean Premier League and before the Lanka Premier League, Big Bash League, Super Smash or, Bangladesh Premier League.

Let us explore the concept further creating a hypothetical Champions League T20 for this year. The 12 teams would be the Chennai Super Kings, Sydney Sixers, Multan Sultans, St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, Kent, Jaffna Stallions, Wellington Firebirds, Lions (South Africa), Rajshahi Royals, Matabeleland, Kabul Eagles, and North West Warriors (Ireland)

Realistically this would be impossible as the Royals and Stallions have folded and won't be defending their title, but thankfully this is still a hypothetical piece and we can play pretend that they will be able to compete.

Giving these teams seeds and splitting them into 3 groups of 4 is a simple matter: we use their respective country’s T20I ranking and use a snake order to let them fall into their groups, giving us

Group A
Kent
Sydney Sixers
Kabul Eagles
NW Warriors

Group B
Chennai Super Kings
Lions
Jaffna Stallions
Matabeleland

Group C

Multan Sultans
Wellington Firebirds
St Kitts Patriots
Rajshahi Royals

In this hypothetical Champions League T20, there are four player clashes occurring: Ravi Bopara is a part of both the Royals and Patriots, Shoaib Malik in both the Royals and Stallions, Johnson Charles in both the Sultans and Stallions and Imran Tahir is in both the Sultans and CSK. (We are using the 2020/21 squads for reference).

In an ideal world, there would be three fair policies to deal with such clashes: the player either represents his home side or for a team that have fewer overseas players in their squad, with the home side naturally taking first priority.

Applying the two neutral teams clause, Bopara would represent the Patriots as the Royals have more overseas players in their squad, Malik would represent the Royals over the Stallions as the Royals do not have Bopara’s services available, Johnson Charles would play for the Stallions over Sultans for the same reason as Malik, and Tahir would represent the Sultans over the Super Kings as IPL franchises traditionally have 8 overseas in their squad, while PSL franchises have 6 (or perhaps Tahir because qualifies for the home side policy. If you know you know!)

Dwayne Bravo and Dominic Drakes would play for the Patriots instead of Chennai Super Kings under the home team clause, and Rahmanullah Gurbaz would play for Kabul instead of the Sultans.

Unfortunately, we do not live in such a utopian world. When the Champions League T20 was ongoing, money proved to be such a beautiful word, as IPL teams would cut 20% of player salaries should they instead represent another team of theirs that qualified, for it was a clause in their contracts. For the 2014 and final edition of the CLT20, the franchises no longer penalized players, but instead rewarded them with an additional 10% of their IPL salary for representing them. Now tell me, is money a beautiful word or not?

The only one to disagree in this case would be Kumar Sangakkara, who represented his home team, the Kandurata Maroons in the 2013 edition.

It is very likely that with how large the salary disparity is between IPL and other leagues, should the Champions League T20 really return, such tactics would be employed again. But, we can only hope, can we?

For determining host nations, a bidding system would be in place for a four-year cycle ideally, akin to the process of selecting World Cup hosts. A sub-committee would be in place to review the bids (again, like the World Cup host selection process). To ensure the league is not India-centric to keep the boat afloat yet again, there would be parameters like the World Cup in place to combat that, that being geographic spread, distribution of events in Asia (as Asia is unarguably the biggest market for cricket) and the commercial outcome.

Let us apply this for a fictional 2021-2024 cycle.

2021 - India
2022 - West Indies
2023 - Sri Lanka
2024 - England

Awarding one year to India would solely be taking into account how great the geographic spread and the commercial outcome is, as it is very likely an American tourist will not leave India without seeing a flat and heavy baseball bat and questioning what they have done to their beautiful sport (not). One season to India is arguably enough to generate revenue that would be far greater than the next 3 seasons in the cycle, as not only is it directly attracting the Indian market, the IST timezone is also perfect for 80-90% of cricket fans outside of India (namely the Asian market), with games being scheduled at ideal times for Pakistan, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Afghan fans.

Awarding one season to the West Indies would be more of an emphasis on the geographic spread than the commercial outcome, as hosting games in the Caribbean would open the market to attracting the vast spread of desis all over North America if not the Indian market itself.

One season to Sri Lanka would somewhat be attracting the Indian market, as both countries share the same timezone, but it is again attracting the Asian market, which is very pertinent from a commercial perspective.

A season awarded to England would also likely be for the same reason as the West Indies, as the desi diaspora living in England along with English cricket fans to boot would satisfy the parameters as long as it is not held during the English summer (looking at you 2019 World Cup.).

With the advent of so many T20 leagues since the CLT20 was canceled in 2015, it would be fair to believe its return is inevitable, the question that lingers is how can it be fit in such a volatile yearly calendar if the respective boards are up to put it back on the menu?