From Ogilvy to the IPL: The Piyush Pandey idea that turned cricket into a carnival
A decade later, Zee TV launched the Indian Cricket League (ICL) — an unofficial attempt at city-based cricket. It stumbled, but it made noise. And that noise made Lalit Modi, by then a powerful BCCI figure, revisit the past.
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When cricket met creativity, it didn’t happen in a meeting room. It happened in the mind of a man who believed a game could become a grand celebration — Piyush Pandey.
The man who gave India some of its most loved advertising moments — from the dancing Cadbury girl to the unforgettable Fevicol bond — also quietly planted the seeds of what would become the Indian Premier League (IPL). His moustache, wit, and irrepressible love for cricket were not just trademarks of his personality — they were the instruments through which he imagined one of India’s greatest spectacles.
Long before Piyush Pandey was Ogilvy’s creative titan, he was simply a cricketer who played with heart. In the dusty lanes of Jaipur and on the manicured fields of Delhi, he learned lessons that would one day shape how he led teams, brands, and ideas.
“Cricket was my first school of creativity,” he would often say. It taught him strategy, timing, teamwork, and the courage to improvise — lessons that would later become the foundation of his creative genius.
But for Pandey, cricket wasn’t just about runs and wickets; it was a form of storytelling. Every innings was a narrative, every partnership a relationship, every boundary a burst of emotion. And somewhere deep within that belief was born the first spark of a revolutionary thought — that cricket could be more than a sport. It could be a national carnival.
In the mid-1990s, while most of India was still watching matches on boxy colour TVs, Piyush and two close friends — cricketer Arun Lal and sports administrator Amrit Mathur — started sketching an idea that seemed almost fantastical.
What if cricket wasn’t played between countries, but between cities? What if local pride — not national borders — drove fans to stadiums? What if floodlights, music, and merchandise gave the game a theatrical heartbeat?
Together, they drafted a concept note that read like a prophecy. They took it to Lalit Modi, who was then running Modi Entertainment Networks and collaborating with Walt Disney. Modi, intrigued by their vision, carried it to the BCCI.
But the board wasn’t ready. The world of cricket still moved to a slow rhythm, suspicious of anything that looked like entertainment. The idea was politely shelved — too wild for its time.
Yet good ideas, like good players, wait for their pitch.
A decade later, Zee TV launched the Indian Cricket League (ICL) — an unofficial attempt at city-based cricket. It stumbled, but it made noise. And that noise made Lalit Modi, by then a powerful BCCI figure, revisit the past.
He dusted off that old note — the one with Piyush Pandey’s dream scribbled across it — and decided to make it real. The idea that had once been “too radical” was suddenly perfect for a changing India — young, hungry, and unafraid of spectacle.
The Indian Premier League was born, and with it, a new era of cricket — fast, glamorous, and unapologetically fun.
Ogilvy’s Close Call and the 48-Hour Sprint
When the BCCI invited pitches for the IPL’s first-ever branding campaign, Ogilvy almost didn’t make it. Due to a mix-up, Piyush’s team arrived with a presentation about the agency rather than ideas for the tournament.
Embarrassed but determined, they begged for another chance. The BCCI gave them 48 hours.
What followed were two sleepless nights in the Ogilvy office — whiteboards filled with scribbles, coffee cups multiplying by the minute, and Piyush’s booming laughter echoing through the chaos. Out of that creative storm emerged a line that captured the soul of what the IPL would become:
“Carnival outside the boundary, pure cricket inside.”
It wasn’t just a slogan. It was a promise — that amidst all the glamour, the game itself would remain sacred. That behind the fireworks and fanfare, cricket would still be the beating heart.
The campaign, titled “Karmayudh”, sealed Ogilvy’s place as the league’s creative partner. And for Pandey, the IPL became not just a client, but a cause — a way to celebrate the very game that had shaped his life.
Piyush often told a story from his St. Stephen’s College days. His team was struggling at 53 for 6 in a crucial final. His friend Arun Lal looked at him and said, “For ordinary people, 53 for 6 is a problem. For someone who wants to be great, it’s an opportunity.”
Piyush went on to score 71 that day. That spirit — of seeing opportunity in adversity — became his creative philosophy.
Years later, when his father once scolded him for wasting time on cricket, saying, “You can’t eat a bat for a meal,” Piyush would laugh and say, “I wish I could tell him that now I’m eating a bat for a meal.”
Piyush Pandey never wrote ads. He wrote emotions. Whether it was the joy of the Cadbury girl dancing on a cricket field, the warmth of a Fevicol bond, or the energy of an IPL anthem, his work spoke a language everyone understood — the language of India.
He didn’t look to London or New York for inspiration. He looked to local matches in gullies, the smell of rain on a pitch, the laughter of children playing with broken stumps. He made advertising feel like life itself.
Even when India bid for the 2011 ICC World Cup, Piyush was there, turning vision into victory. Instead of PowerPoints, his team created a coffee-table book filled with raw photographs of cricket in South Asia — boys in narrow lanes, makeshift pitches, and barefoot dreams. The images said what words couldn’t: Here, cricket isn’t a game. It’s a heartbeat.
That presentation helped India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka win the bid.
Today, the IPL is worth billions, its matches watched by millions. But behind the glamour, there’s an untold story — that somewhere in the 1990s, an adman with a cricketer’s heart dreamt of a world where every city could have a team, every fan a reason to cheer, and every match a story to tell.
That man was Piyush Pandey.
He never held a bat again after his playing days, but in a way, every ad he wrote was a cover drive — graceful, instinctive, and unforgettable.
The IPL may have become a global phenomenon, but its first spark was lit by a man who believed that emotion sells better than anything else — even cricket. And in a country that worships both, he gave us a festival where the two could finally play together.
