India, Australia, England attempt to take control of Cricket

[MW1304]

Pretty sure self-aggrandisement is the role of most organisations tbh, so this is hardly surprising. Good post.

 

[brockley]

Aren't we shooting the Gun,these bilateral arrangements have been round for years look how often Australia plays India,South Africa and England,and how less we play the others.
Same with the big 4.

 

[Prince EWS]

This afternoon there were seven full international men's games of cricket going at the same time (and some women's games too I think), and usually that would make me giddy as a schoolgirl but since this news has broken, every single one of them seems a different type of empty. I've struggled to get really interested in any of them

I'm legitimately not sure what will become of my support of cricket. I genuinely love the game itself at all levels so I doubt I'll just walk away from it - I'll whinge but adjust - but it's really not going to be the same for me. It'll certainly be reduced in at least some areas, and I don't really think I want Australia or England to win international matches anymore either.

 

[Muloghonto]

So it seems the 'administrators' of the game have decided that their role is not in fact 'to minister to' the game of cricket but instead is self-aggrandisement, to play empires, appeal to jingoism and maximise short-term money for their own organisations and in certain cases no doubt personal enrichment too. Given the reigns, they've decided they are no longer servants of the game; instead the game is servant to them.

While your post may appeal to the idealistic child in all of us, it certainly makes the realistic 40-something brain in my head feel sardonic. I will spare you the lecture on how rose-tinted heavenly-hippe your post sounds, so i will just stick to some choice corrections.

1. The job #1 of 'ministering' an entertainment product ( be it sport, reality tv, gameshow,etc) is to make money. If you don't make money, you don't get to exist on what is a limited real estate space (stadiums) and even more limited virtual estate space ( television).
Cricket is a product, it must sell. If it fails to sell, it doesnt get to stay-nay, it doesn't deserve to stay. How do we judge whether cricket sells or not ? by following the money for sponsorships and advertisements. They constitute 70% of the revenue of the sport or more. And those numbers are very clear- it is the limited overs format that is most popular and sells, not the 'test' format that is a relic of the amatuer era.

2. Almost all personnel involved in delivering the entertainment product known as cricket- administrators, coaches, players and support staff- are professionals. To be a professional, implies greed. You are in a profession when you choose to gain financial rewards for the relevant services rendered.
If you wish to persue something with no financial reward in mind, then you are not a professional, you are either a hobbyist or a volunteer.
Since the personnel involved in cricket are professionals, the uber-honchos of cricket owe it to them to seek avenues to gain greater financial benefit for all the professionals involved with the game.
As such, to persue policies that enrich cricketers, is to further the game, as you cannot enrich cricketers without increasing outreach.

As per the other FTP thread, we need to consider the ICC's purpose; once The Goal of the organisation is understood then all means are arranged around the achievement of that goal. The Goal is in the name: International Cricket Council - the goal is Cricket. Money is not The Goal, it is merely a necessary condition to achieve that aim. Some business sensibilities are required to ensure the game can stand up economically, but for these to overwhelm the purpose of the organisation is the tail wagging the dog.

The goal of furthering cricket involves getting more fans for the game. This automatically leads to further enrichment of the people involved. The game exists to make money and be a financiall competetive product to compete with other entertainment products.

There is no way Cricket is best served by this proposal; any cursory examination of the dynamics involved would forecast that the nations outside the top 3 will be marginalised, resulting in the self-perpetuating cycle of a loss of interest and competitiveness. In the short term this represents a revenue increase for the top 3 (play each other more often) and a cost saving (don't have to play other nations). In the medium to long term it means one by one the marginalised nations fall victim to that negative feedback loop are no longer functional - and it's very hard to reverse that. That's bad enough - the goal spectacularly not achieved in those countries. What's left of the international game of cricket is robbed of it's diversity, and whether people in the big three countries are satisfied still getting served up the same **** sandwich year after year is a further question (probably are tbh).

This is true but your analysis is rendered meaningless without considering the fact that the 3 markets that are colluding to further their cause are the top 4 markets in the world currently for cricket ( the real 2nd largest market, Pakistan, is unteneble in the immediate future due to socio-political reasons).
Of these 3 markets, one market (India), constitutes 80% of the entire market.
To persue policies that will further the cause of the sport in the dominant market, even if it comes at the detriment of the fringe market, is the standard & logical policy of any business venture. Coca-Cola makes Coke to sell it to the millions of city dwellers. Not the nomads of Mongolia. Hollywood makes movies with an eye on their popularity in the theatres in New York, not their popularity in the drive-ins in middle of Alabama. Cricket is no different.
Ideally ofcourse, everyone would like to win but sacrificing the smaller market for gains in the bigger market is the logical choice to further the sport.

Test cricket is the other component that is marginalised and possibly eventually left to die. While I love test cricket, I appreciate that many particularly outside this forum do not. That's ok. However the test format is the wellspring from which a depth of expertise, passion and skills flows downhill to the T20 format. It's a marine reserve that spills over to make the surrounding fisheries profitable. It's the repository of expensive and experienced seniors that a company must keep around because they're the ones that understand the company and it's clients. It's the fine wine that people move into when they're no longer satisfied with sweet cordial, and then they sit around discussing the ins and outs of that fine wine for hours afterwards and go to wine-tasting events and make up flowery words to describe it. But this is not just flowery talk - get rid of test cricket and you gut the cricket world of the people that care most about the game and provide much of the interest and expertise that makes it work - that's a monumentally stupid strategy from any perspective.

A weird analogy that I couldn't disagree with more. Test cricket is not the venerable experienced seniors pool who are the best paid policy-makers of the company. Test cricket is more akin to the intern at a technology firm: their number-crunching is essential but they do not contribute to the bottomline of the company directly, are underpaid and always squeezed out.
What Test cricket (and by extension, FC cricket, which really are the same format with differing timeframe allocation) is, is the training ground of temperament and technique for the format that really matters: limited overs cricket, the format due to which cricket exists today. And that is why Test cricket will not die out completely but just as an intern doesn't run the company, neither should Test cricket be central to cricket.

Cricket, as a sport defined as two teams of 11 players taking turns (sometimes multiple turns), with one team intent on bouncing a ball on the ground at the direction of 3 sticks (wickets), while other team tries to whack the ball with another stick(bat), always out in duos and retain their right to keep whacking the ball (ie, not get out),had existed before the format of test cricket and will exist after it too. Cricket exists today due to the largesses of the limited over format and as far as Test cricket is concerned, cricket exists despite of Test cricket, not due to it.

Particularly when there's already masses and masses of lowest-common-denominator entertainment out there. On that note, it's a fantasy that domestic T20 is going to become big in England and Australia; two countries that are already super-saturated by dominant domestic football codes with broad-based passionate appeal. And if we must use market-speak, frankly T20 is just not as good a product as those football codes. It's taken hold in India most likely because cricket already held a privileged position and didn't have quite so much competition as elsewhere. And forget other markets like the US that are themselves hyper competitive for the sporting entertainment dollar. Any realistic proposal for the good of the game needs to accept as a starting point that the Indian market does and is always likely to make most of money, and the IPL is a big part of that, and then move forward from there. Domestic T20 elsewhere will continue to be attended by people mildly interested in a bit of light amusement and a beer or two on a balmy summer night - not people that care passionately about a result one way or another.

The excellent success of the BBL in Australian market has gone to prove that 20/20 certainly has the potential to break into and one day dominate the Australian market. As for England- oh England! Just like with 50 overs cricket (which is the top earner for ECB, not Tests. Shocking!) England too will yet again prove the adage of 'better late than never'.

Besides, cricket is participated in as a highschool sport in over 80% of Canadian highschools and not just by south asian or caribbean kids. While it is true that the 'big four plus two' of the sporting world dominates the north american sporting entertainment scene ( Baseball, Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey, Golf and Tennis, respectively), it is nowhere close to the locked-in hyper-competetive impossible-to-break-into market that you imply.
MMA has already carved a stunning nitche in the sporting market (if one classifies beating grown men into a bloody pulp as a sport that is) quite well in North America over the last 4 years.
The fastest growing participated sport in North America these days is Lacrosse. The fastest growing sport in North America, in terms of network times, is soccer.

Cricket definitely has potential to break into this market but if it has even a snowball's chance in hell to 'stick' in this market (or markets such as Europe or South America), it will be due to 20/20 cricket, not test cricket, a format nobody in the developed world actually has time to see in its entirity.

And even if we are to concede that expansion into these new markets is a wishful pipe dream, lets look at these two salient facts about the reality of the current cricketing market( you are correct that its had an easy time expanding in the subcontinent due to lack of competition from any other major forms of sporting entertainment):

1. The subcontinent represents, by demographics, over 90% of the current cricketing market.
2. This market has a stunning growth potential, where with the rise of the subcontinental economy, we can safely add anywhere between another 200-500 million viewers in our future lifetimes and 10-100x more participants in the sport.

It is also a well-established fact that the growth of cricket in this market is far more favourable for the limited overs (particularly 20/20) format, not Test cricket.
The uber-honchos of cricket owe it to the game and to the people involved, to implement policies that maximises this potential fanbase and by extension, revenue stream.
The mandate of any administrator of an entertainment product, is to increase its outreach amongst humanity. Not to pander to its traditionalist & static growth base at the expense of the emerging market potential.

Also can the person clogging this thread with ideological the-free-market-is-God babble please **** off. Just so much bull**** that I don't have time right now to ridicule for the counter-to-reality nonsense that it is.

That would be me. I can only leave you with this Churchillian nugget that has reflected my 40+ year of life and its ideological trajectory quite well: If you are twenty and not a communist, you have no heart. And if you are 40 and not a capitalist, you have no brain. I can only hope for your sake that you are not forty yet.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

If yours is the future of the game we can expect if cricket wants to appeal to North America, I'd prefer it if cricket refused to court that market.

I take great exception to your view that all professionals function on greed. The implication is absolutely vile. I'm a professional, and I could certainly earn more money by doing a different job, but I enjoy my job and like the people I work with so I have no desire to pursue additional money. For one so obsessed with the market, have you ever come across Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Why do all individuals have to be motivated by money? I'm not far shy of 40 and quite frankly, I think Churchill is completely wrong. If you have no social conscience and are wholly motivated by greed, then please only speak for yourself, not for the rest of us - and let others speak for themselves. You still haven't explained why if $ is the only motivation why more players haven't given up on Test cricket for the IPL dollar alone. I consider myself a cynic but I sincerely hope that I don't come across as cynical as you do.

 

[Muloghonto]

If yours is the future of the game we can expect if cricket wants to appeal to North America, I'd prefer it if cricket refused to court that market.

That may be your preference- but it certainly does not imply that you are a well-wisher of cricket or the ethos of sporting entertainment if you would rather keep a failing product to satisfy the traditionalists rather than tweak your product to appeal to the demands of the market. This is not just about breaking into a new market like North America or Europe. This is also about maximizing the potential of the current markets cricket is involved in- all of which universally show that it is the limited overs cricket that has any growth potential, with continuous decline of the relic format of the amatuer era(test cricket).

Don't get me wrong. As a player, it is the most satisfying format to play. It is also the format that requires the most wide range of skills and temperamental soundness to succeed at. But it is also a failed product that continues to fail in every single market, despite having presence in the said markets for decades.

I take great exception to your view that all professionals function on greed. The implication is absolutely vile. I'm a professional, and I could certainly earn more money by doing a different job, but I enjoy my job and like the people I work with so I have no desire to pursue additional money. For one so obsessed with the market, have you ever come across Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Why do all individuals have to be motivated by money? I'm not far shy of 40 and quite frankly, I think Churchill is completely wrong. If you have no social conscience and are wholly motivated by greed, then please only speak for yourself, not for the rest of us - and let others speak for themselves. You still haven't explained why if $ is the only motivation why more players haven't given up on Test cricket for the IPL dollar alone. I consider myself a cynic but I sincerely hope that I don't come across as cynical as you do.

Note that i did not say that greed is the *only* motivator towards being a professional. Intangiable perks, such as camaraderie at workplace,job satisfaction, etc. are all part of the process- a process that fundamentally revolves around marketing your skills for financial gain. You may choose to forego the optimal financial gain due to the abovementioned intangiable perks but you are a professional only because you get financial compensation for your skills in your relevant field. To deny that, is to deny the very spirit and definition of the word 'professional'.
If you are not motivated by money, I'd like to hear that coming from somoene who lives in a yurt in middle of asia, living off the land and his/her animals. Until then, it comes across as sanctimoniously hollow and no deeper than the varnish on wood for a professional, existing in the material-capitalist world that is the industrialized world, to claim that he/she is not motivated by money.

PS: I've answered your query already, it is several pages back.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

\
If you are not motivated by money, I'd like to hear that coming from somoene who lives in a yurt in middle of asia, living off the land and his/her animals. Until then, it comes across as sanctimoniously hollow and no deeper than the varnish on wood for a professional, existing in the material-capitalist world that is the industrialized world, to claim that he/she is not motivated by money.

How is that relevant when we're talking about people who are well paid anyway. The choice for your man in the yurt, so to speak, is to take up cricket for a reasonable financial gain, challenge himself in the toughest contests the game has to offer (Tests) as well as potentially gain the megabucks from the IPL or a slightly smaller chance of megabucks, but very little chance of that reasonable financial gain. You seem intent on throwing away the history of cricket in order to appeal to new markets when the opportunity for megabucks is already there. Some take it and that's what they're after and some don't as they prefer the challenge. Why does the tap have to be fully on or fully off, why is a hybrid model (such as currently) not feasible?

As for myself, I also give away my professional skills for free to a number of organisations who need the sort of skills I have to offer. My paid employment is a means to an end which I have to adhere to in a capitalist world to support my family.

 

[Prince EWS]

Cricket would probably be more popular if the rules were tweaked to completely mirror the rules of association football and the BCCI used their riches to sign up some of the best footballers in the world, but I don't see anyone proposing that. High level cricket is played over multiple days with the only limit on overs being that of which a match is to be completed by; to me T20 is scarcely more of a cricket match than football would be.

When T20 was first gaining popularity, we kept being sold the line that the money made from it would be used to cover the expenses incurred by actual cricket and ensure our elite players were well-paid. That people have finally stopped pretending this is the case is in no way good for cricket; it's only good for T20.

 

[Muloghonto]

How is that relevant when we're talking about people who are well paid anyway. The choice for your man in the yurt, so to speak, is to take up cricket for a reasonable financial gain, challenge himself in the toughest contests the game has to offer (Tests) as well as potentially gain the megabucks from the IPL or a slightly smaller chance of megabucks, but very little chance of that reasonable financial gain. You seem intent on throwing away the history of cricket in order to appeal to new markets when the opportunity for megabucks is already there. Some take it and that's what they're after and some don't as they prefer the challenge. Why does the tap have to be fully on or fully off, why is a hybrid model (such as currently) not feasible?

As for myself, I also give away my professional skills for free to a number of organisations who need the sort of skills I have to offer. My paid employment is a means to an end which I have to adhere to in a capitalist world to support my family.

I did note that just like the intern in a technology firm, there is a place for test cricket too. I did not advocate for the extinction of test cricket, i advocated for the marginalization for it, which I've provided reasoning for: you can keep history and tradition alive, but when the history and tradition are losing money instead of making money and failing to gain new markets, it does not deserve to be the central flagship model of the product.
The flagship model of any product is the one that keeps the product financially relevant. To deny that, is to deny basic market forces- which leads to inevitable extinction. I am a person who'd played cricket in my lifetime. Against some who were part-time hobbyists like me, against some who've represented themselves at the test level. I do not want the sport to die, i want the sport to grow. And that is possible only with making Test cricket ancillary and complementary to the limited overs scene, not the other way round as it exists today.
In the current setup, Test cricket is the domineering and entertaining but ultimately useless vampire that exists solely by sucking sustainance out of the actual breadwinner of cricket: limited overs cricket.
Yes, I get it that we are rather used to and fond of this vampire. This vampire represents living history of the sport, a link to our past. So keep it. It does have its uses. But it cannot be allowed to be the central focus of the game from any perspective that genuinely cares about the sport of cricket, the definition of which is far beyond the format of the contest.
Cricket is fundamentally about offspin & legspin, fast bowling and legcutters, cover drives and hook shots, bouncing a ball on the ground towards the stumps, running between wickets. 11 players to a side. Slips and Gulleys. These are some of the many attributes that defines cricket. It is the engine of cricket. It is not defined by two teams taking two turns spread over 5 days, bowling 90 overs a day and taking as long as they want to dismiss ten batsmen.
That is just the packaging, the delivery system of what cricket truly is.
And as we have found out but refused to accept, our delivery system is out-dated and leading to the death of the sport unless we give more focus to the newer and far more successful delivery systems- namely, one day and 20/20 cricket.

 

[Muloghonto]

Cricket would probably be more popular if the rules were tweaked to completely mirror the rules of association football and the BCCI used their riches to sign up some of the best footballers in the world, but I don't see anyone proposing that. High level cricket is played over multiple days with the only limit on overs being that of which a match is to be completed by; to me T20 is scarcely more of a cricket match than football would be.

When T20 was first gaining popularity, we kept being sold the line that the money made from it would be used to cover the expenses incurred by actual cricket and ensure our elite players were well-paid. That people have finally stopped pretending this is the case is in no way good for cricket; it's only good for T20.

High level cricket is whatever has the most competetive pressures to succeed at for the players. At the moment, it would be IPL. The bidding & free agency process of the IPL (and other 20/20 leagues) ensures that it remains the competetive cutting edge of the sport, where the professionals face the most consistent pressure to either produce acceptable performance or lose their jobs.

You may not consider 20/20 to be cricket, but that is missing the forest for the trees. Test cricket or the format that is Test+first class cricket does not own the definition of cricket. It is simply a format of presentation of it.
Kicking a ball towards a goal would still be soccer- it wouldnt matter if we made the fields bigger or smaller, changed the goal from rectangular to triangular, what is fundamental to soccer, is kicking a ball towards a goal while having opposition from 11 men (and help from 10 others).

Similarly, cricket is a sport of hitting a ball with a flat bat, while most balls are pitching on the ground and the ones not pitching are not higher than waist level. It still remains cricket, however fallacious your attachments towards traditional formats may be, whether it is 20/20 cricket, 50 overs cricket, 3 day cricket, 4 day cricket, 5 day cricket or timeless cricket.

 

[Garson007]

Absolute nonsense. Flagships exist so as to generate a halo effect for the rest of the range. Rarely if ever is the flagship model the most profitable for a company.

Is Test cricket preventing cricketers from enjoying T20? I highly ****ing doubt it. Test cricket will always be the flagship model to the market that actually counts - the players, and in turn it will get them into T20.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

I deny basic market forces, Milton. I deny them and I defy you and your narrow views. I don't doubt there will be greater shift towards T20, but Test cricket can and does make money and does not require marginalisation just to suit some soulless economic theory.

 

[social]

This afternoon there were seven full international men's games of cricket going at the same time (and some women's games too I think), and usually that would make me giddy as a schoolgirl but since this news has broken, every single one of them seems a different type of empty. I've struggled to get really interested in any of them

I'm legitimately not sure what will become of my support of cricket. I genuinely love the game itself at all levels so I doubt I'll just walk away from it - I'll whinge but adjust - but it's really not going to be the same for me. It'll certainly be reduced in at least some areas, and I don't really think I want Australia or England to win international matches anymore either.

So you're telling us that youre naive

 

[Prince EWS]

Kicking a ball towards a goal would still be soccer- it wouldnt matter if we made the fields bigger or smaller, changed the goal from rectangular to triangular, what is fundamental to soccer, is kicking a ball towards a goal while having opposition from 11 men (and help from 10 others).

You may not consider soccer to be cricket but that is missing the forest for the trees.

Point is, when you change the fundamental rules of the sport then you risk diverging it from the sport altogether. Where do you draw the line? For me, if you can't bat out a draw then it ceases to really be cricket; it's a fundamental aspect of the game, much like "hitting a ball with a flat bat". You may not consider it such but I do, and in the end what you consider fundamental is entirely irrelevant to your argument. Your argument is that market forces should determine how the rules of the game change.. and market forces would dictate to adopting the rules of association football for cricket worldwide. Much as you say that playing limited overs is more marketable than playing five days with no guaranteed results, kicking a ball towards a goal is more marketable than hitting a ball with a flat bat; neither is really more or less intrinsically cricket than the other. If you take your ideology to the nth degree like you're trying to then you'll end up with absolute absurdities like I'm pointing out. In the end you have to draw the line somewhere and you draw it in a different place to me; that's fine as it's opinion-based but this cannot be tackled but pure ideology as you're attempting to. There's no inherent correct answer to where cricket ends and something else begins.

 

[Garson007]

I just find it astounding that someone who so deeply cares for the free market is espousing a league structure that is inherently unfree.

Yes, the franchise system is more competitive - that's not free market ideology, that's straight up big governance monopoly. It's probably also a big indication of what is wrong with American capitalistic ideology.

 

[Prince EWS]

So you're telling us that youre naive

Only as much as I was naive for being sad when my grandfather died. Sure it was inevitable and sure I saw it coming a mile away but that doesn't mean it didn't feel like a kick in the guts and decrease my enjoyment of family functions when it did.

 

[Muloghonto]

Absolute nonsense. Flagships exist so as to generate a halo effect for the rest of the range. Rarely if ever is the flagship model the most profitable for a company.

Is Test cricket preventing cricketers from enjoying T20? I highly ****ing doubt it. Test cricket will always be the flagship model to the market that actually counts - the players, and in turn it will get them into T20.

The term 'flagship' comes from the British Navy, where the ship that was the most robust, powerful and often the latest model was designated the job of flagging, namely, carrying the admiral and 'flagging signals' to the rest. True enough, the current flagship of the navies are the most powerful ships at their disposal. In a business context, the flagship model of any product has been the model that has generated the greatest sales. Toyota's flagship in North America is the Camry. Honda's flagship in the same market is the Civic. Pepsi's flagship is the Pepsi Cola, the most selling product, not Fresca.

The current setup is preventing the optimisation of the 20/20 product- which earns far more than Test cricket but gets less than 50% of the playing time afforded to it.
The correct model for a cricket calendar would be to have 3 months of 'off season', 3 months of 20/20, 3 months of 50 overs cricket and 3 months of Test cricket- and that is being generous towards the pomposity of the traditionalists to afford the least productive product the same playtime as the most successful product.

T20 setup does not require competence at Test level, neither does success at Test level garantee success at T20 level. and with each passing year, we will see a bigger shift towards 20/20 cricket. If Peterson is not allowed to play in the IPL, i garantee you he will retire from English cricket by the time he is 35-36 and play IPL for atleast a season or two. Chris Gayle already prioritizes IPL over West Indies duty. Over time, such activity will increase as 20/20 or IPL establishes itself as a stable & viable avenue. We are already noticing this trend, we have no reason to assume that this trend will not accelerate with the further rise of 20/20.

 

[Muloghonto]

I deny basic market forces, Milton. I deny them and I defy you and your narrow views. I don't doubt there will be greater shift towards T20, but Test cricket can and does make money and does not require marginalisation just to suit some soulless economic theory.

Defy away. But then understand that you are working against cricket, not in favour of it, by an irrational deference towards the format that is the most stagnant and leading towards erosion of cricket's marketshare in the entertainment industry.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

 

[Muloghonto]

I just find it astounding that someone who so deeply cares for the free market is espousing a league structure that is inherently unfree.

Yes, the franchise system is more competitive - that's not free market ideology, that's straight up big governance monopoly. It's probably also a big indication of what is wrong with American capitalistic ideology.

Its like choosing between Hitler and Saddam. Both systems are not free. But the franchised league structure is free-er than the national setup of the sport.