Indian Cricket’s Growing Relationship With Saudi Arabia Strengthens

India, undisputedly cricket's most powerful and richest nation, has strengthened its relationship with Saudi Arabia after confirmation that the Indian Premier League's mega auction will be held in Jeddah.

The mega auction of cricket's biggest and richest franchise league is obsessively followed in India and beyond. It is something like an American sports free agency/trade period on steroids.

Mega auctions take place every three years and spread over two days. It is of major consequence for the 10 franchises, who strategize over building their lists for the next three years.

A total of 1574 players, including 409 from outside India with some from emerging cricket countries including the U.S, have registered for the auction which will be held at the Abady Al Johar Arena.

Hosting this event is coveted and India's cash-rich and all-powerful governing body has decided to look beyond the cricket mad nation in a sign that it wants to extend the IPL's footprint into new terrain.

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Last year's auction was held in Dubai, the site of the International Cricket Council's headquarters and a popular base for cricket matches. But the IPL has this time gone outside traditional boundaries and selected Jeddah, a port city on the Red Sea increasingly popular with Indian tourists.

Vienna, strangely, with Austria not a cricket country of note, had also been apparently explored as hosting the spectacle and so too Singapore - further underlining recent efforts for the South East Asian country to re-emerge as a major cricket destination as I reported last month.

But the choice of Saudi Arabia will be polarizing. There has been speculation that Saudi Arabia, amid an apparent sportswashing campaign, will try to infiltrate a sport that by some metrics is the second most popular in the world.

Saudi Arabia have increasingly tried to appeal to India, the country with the biggest population in the world and an emerging financial powerhouse, through tourism and business.

Wooing the country through cricket - by far India's most popular sport - is something that has obvious appeal. There had been reports that Saudi Arabia were interested in starting its own T20 franchise league - which would tackle head on the money-spinning IPL - but authorities have evidently wisely decided against that and instead focused on investment.

A natural step could see IPL matches eventually played in Saudi Arabia to add to the country's ever growing list of high-profile sporting events.

An IPL armed with copious amounts of Saudi money - who have even deeper pockets than India's rich governing body - will inevitably lead to expansion stoking fears that the league is set to extend to the lengths seen in major American leagues and take up over six months of what is already a cramped cricket calendar.

It's a thorny subject and something that the sport's power brokers at the ICC seem helpless at doing anything about. But there will be suspicion at this blossoming relationship between India and Saudi Arabia with a whole lot of cash flying around.

Cricket is deemed a minority sport in Saudi Arabia with fandom mostly confined to South Asian expatriates. Saudi Arabia Cricket Federation previously had issues with non-compliance relating to incomplete audited accounts for 2020, but were subsequently deemed to be in the clear.