Big-time cricket all looks so rosy. It isat the start of a $1.1 billion (£550m) tele-vision rights deal for international tournaments, which should keep the wolf from the door until 2015.
It is weeks away from the quite astonishingly lucrative Indian Premier League, a Twenty20 competition from which most of the leading cricketers in the world will reap rewards beyond their dreams and avarice.
Money has done a lot of talking. Couldn’t be better? Don’t believe it. The game is hurtling towards a crossroads and not only might it struggle to know which way to turn, it might also have little choice in the matter.
One country, India, is setting the pace and plotting the direction. Other countries are wondering how to respond. They recognise the new league as a hithertounseen cash cow but in some cases are casting envious eyes. There are reactions and knees jerking everywhere.
New Zealand bowed to the inevitable last week by allowing five of their players to arrive late for the tour of England so that they could earn some of the Indian money. In England, there is mild panic, with talk of the big counties trying to form their own breakaway league.
Test cricket, the blue riband version of the game, is under impending threat. In six of the 10 countries where it is played, it is virtually unwatched most of the time by live audiences, while in a seventh, Zimbabwe, it has not been played for almost three years and may never beso again.
Vibrant though the game might be in three countries – England, Australia and India – there are profound concerns that most of the power, influence and, crucially, money will all belong to India.
The International Cricket Council are probably worried, but what their officials possess in gumption they lack in influence, especially where India are concerned. It might be time for the players to intervene, but hard though they try, their voice appears frequently to be paid lip service.
David Morgan, who will take over as the ICC president this summer after five years as chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, is determined to give the players a greater voice, to which the ICC will listen. He might care to heed the beseeching of Tim May, the chief executive of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Assoc-iations (Fica), who said last week that there should be an immediate and comprehensive review of cricket’s structure.
”We’ve got to sit down and see where we are going,” he said. “There has to be deep due diligence about the impact of Twenty20 and of the Indian Premier League.” Since this is unlikely to happen – the last survey produced little change except an alteration to the Future Tours Programme – Fica are conducting a survey of all international players in the next few weeks.
The trouble is that India’s players do not have an association and do not come under Fica’s umbrella, which automatically weakens the organisation’s voice. The IPL – and to some extent their unofficial rivals, the IndianCricket League – are casting a huge shadow.
Before a ball has been bowled, before anybody can even be sure that there will be spectators, they have created a revolution. Morgan, like everybody else in the ICC, gave it a cautious welcome. “I see it as more of an opportunity than a threat,” he said. He denied that the ICC backed it.
“It is approved by its host board, the BCCI [Board of Control for Cricket in India], and therefore is no different from the ECB’s Twenty20, so it doesn’t need the blessing of the ICC.”
But he must know the difference is obvious – big bucks. Those bucks, however, might be limited. There is concern in the game that the funds poured into the IPL are not new money but merely a redirection of funds.
May said: “When you see the figures about global revenues, a lot comes from India already. The people who already invest in global ICC events are also those to some extent investing in the IPL.
“The question is whether that is an incremental investment. If there is a finite ball of revenue which is being redistributed for the benefit of one rather than for the benefit of all, we will have a big problem in a few years.”
The future of Test cricket in all this remains uncertain. The ICC, while protective, also appear to be sanguine. Morgan said: “I think it’s important that at any one time you have five or six members who are capable of beating the others. It needs to be competitive but I believe there will be an appetite among full members to have a balanced mix.
Whether Test cricket can be played over four days is something we need to address.” Four days or five, too few people are watching it in too many countries. The recent Test matches between New Zealand and England were watched by relatively full houses – but on tiny grounds and only because of the large contingent of England fans.
In terms of broadcasting rights, a five-day Test match is now worth considerably less than a single one-day international. An unspoken – at least by the ICC – prospect is that the number of Test-playing countries might reduce rather than increase.
May said: “Test cricket is very much the traditional part of cricket, and we’re looking at societies that as a whole are very much less traditional, so why should Test cricket be any different in feeling the effects of that? So what do we do? We need to find out what is important to us, and why.
It may be that in 20 years, Test cricket is played in only six countries, where it is alive and kicking.” In every country, Twenty20 generally and the IPL specifically are exerting an effect. The ECB are hardly exempt. They are already examining their domestic structure to see if a wider version of Twenty20 can be accommodated, perhaps involving more overseas players. But they cannot hope to compete with the millions swilling around India.
This has prompted talk of a county breakaway. The game is in turmoil everywhere and it might be the calm before the storm.
By Stephen Brenkley.
Sunday, 30 March 2008
Source: The Independent
