Who owns what?

As I mentioned in my previous post(Bargaining through Cricket), the people/heroes are in a better position to negotiate only when they are on a high, or they have stronger muscles to flex.

Continuing from where I left, in the first Dialectic Forum Discussion,in the ICC Vs Team India fiasco, the situation turned ugly because of the simple fact that BCCI is the member nation of the ICC test playing nations, and as per the ruling of the ICC, all the national boards have to abide by its rules and regulations.

Now, perhaps for the first time it came out in the open, that as per the prevailing situation and status of BCCI and ICC, the players which are playing for India(whom we consider as our heroes) are just the employees of BCCI , or, in other words they have been hired by BCCI to play for it. This is because, the functioning of BCCI is out of the purview of Sports ministry of India, which controls and promotes all other sports. So, the Team India was never Team India, it was perhaps team BCCI (or Team Jagmohan Dlamiya), which all of us realized only when this incident happened.

It must be reminded here, that the team INDIA played in ICC champions trophy without their sponsors' logos on the jerseys, so it is not just that our Heroes have won, perhaps there was a compromise between both the parties, with BCCI facilitating the deal. ICC wanted India to play, primarily because of the largest cricket playig nation(population of more than 1 Billion). So just amusing that ICC decided to step back just because team India was favorite to win that tournament or team had icons like sachin, dravid and ganguly, may not actually hold competely true. (Had that been the case, IPL wont have banned pakistani players in the 3rd edition).

Obviously players also wanted to play because a good performance adds to their 'brand value'.
Taking the perspective of marketers or the companies, this was a kind of catch 22 situation. SAHARA group which was the sponsor of national cricket team, had its commercial interests directly interjecting with the South African Airlines-which sponsored the ICC Champions trophy.Similar was the case with Samsung and LG, having their commercial interests vested in different parties. I opine that the decision by the sponsors of team India to let the players play in the tournament without wearing their logos was a brave as well as a long sighted decision. Just relinquishing the relations with the players on this ground would have been an imprudent and immature.

But what about the players? Have they got no right to use their brand values to make some quick buck. If that is the case, I think india will stop producing more Dhonis and Pathans, who come from very humble backgrounds and aspire to play cricket, not only because its a pride, but also they see a promising career as a brand endorser!
Cricketing fraternity can take lessons from other sports bodies in this regard.

Football world Cup 2006 in Germany has sponsors like Adidas and Coke, whereas players like Thiery Henry had Nike and pepsi as their sponsors, which directly had conflict of commercial interests.

What one needs to understand here is that which party can extend its control on what. ICC is holding an event, so the discretion of selecting sponsors lies with the ICC. On the other hand players are using their own image. If they play good, they will get highly paid, if they perfom bad, they will not get too many takers.
In this case, players should have a right in the sponsorships deal of the events, even if the player's performance was nothing to talk about, because it is these players only who make this event hit/flop and because of whom any event happens in the first place.

And as Dipanwita pointed out, ICC owned events, not players.