The game of cricket that started nearly 125 years back has seen many ups and downs but has always stood greater than the players.

After Team India’s Twenty20 triumph, cricket is providing tremendous business opportunities in a way larger than the game itself. What Kerry Packer laid as the foundation stone nearly three decades has become a skyscraper in the form of ICL (Indian Cricket League), a league of rebels challenging the supremacy of international and local cricket bodies in the region.

To shut the door on any such initiatives in the future, the most influential and powerful cricket board in the world, the BCCI, have introduced IPL (Indian Premier League) along the lines of football’s English Premier League or other popular leagues that function on a franchise model. Will the IPL turn out to be a damp squib?

Teams and players are traded where the governing body controls the flow of money. Such is the grandeur that nearly $1bn has been paid to BCCI in TV rights alone. Millions of dollars have been spent to procure the eight teams and their players.

All this for a 44-day tournament that would appear once a year. The IPL circus is around for two months and players are engaged with their respective international fixtures for the rest of the year.

Can the IPL guarantee that players will be totally dedicated to their new teams? It's the exact opposite of English football where players seem more committed to club over country.

Will the fans support MS Dhoni playing for Chennai, Andrew Symonds playing for Kolkata or Harbhajan Singh playing for Mumbai for similar reasons? What happens if any players get injured, would their new 'owners' have to pay compensation?

The good thing that the BCCI has done is to ensure a pool of youngsters will be ready to represent India.

A player successful in the Twenty20 format of the game can never be vouched for as a sound ODI or Test player - this will only happen when  the quality of domestic cricket is improved and local cricket is short of funds in India.

The IPL players will get the glory and the money. They would have to play for their country for 10 years to match what they will earn in one season in the IPL.

This is a fabulous business opportunity with all the hype and hoopla like a typical Shahrukh Khan movie, but without the soul.