Ranting at the New World Order and Cricket's post Apocalyptic future...

[nexxus]

Between the Olympic rejection and their disdainful attitude to the associates, it see it hasn't taken long for the triumvirate to show their cards. Money is officially now the be-all and end-all of the game. Expect to see a slow squeeze to sideline the non-profit vestigial centres Zim, NZ, Bangla, WI, PAK & SA & SL. It's all happiness now, India will tour and show a good time, the coffers will be as full as they were. They'll eventually become warm-up fodder for bigger tours like the Ashes, the India/England/Aus tours will dry up to one-off tests with a couple of ODIs & T20s thrown in. Rewards will be granted for good behaviour and bad little nations will be punished by having their tours withdrawn or curtailed (like SA discovered last year.)

WI are already almost a basket case stuck in a vicious circle of decline, they're probably a couple of decades away from oblivion. Eventually I suppose they'll become feeders for the various T20 leagues with the odd few going over to qualify to play for one of the big 3. There will be sporadic bursts of talent, simply due to chance but the die has well and truly been cast and like idiotic grass-greedy sheep, we'll all just meander gently to the abattoir.

Already, Cricket has declined to such an extent in SA that the national team performances don't even make it to the back page over provincial Rugby and can't even fill a third of the ground despite having the one of the best teams in the world. You get better analysis of the First Class / List A scene in SA on this forum than in the country's media. Maybe the system will produce players of quality for the next 2-3 generations but that'll dry up.

It's pretty similar to the Spanish La Liga, where Real & Barce have made their beds and damned the rest of the league to be their perpetual vassal states. Atletico, Valencia, etc. occasionally stick their heads up, but just trying to compete results in so much debt that eventually they're cut down and usually end up worse-off than they were to begin with.

Arrrrrgh! I know this is a bit ranty but I'm just really pissed off at Cricket at the moment!

Probably gonna go through all the phases in the next few years...

 

[uvelocity]

oh hey its backlash guys

 

[Shri]

KNEEL!
z

 

[nexxus]

Ok, yeah, it's a bit melodramatic.

But seriously, does anyone feel this change will be beneficial to Cricket in the newly christened Tier 2 countries? West Indies routinely struggle to attract a sponsor of any kind, NZ cricket is losing ground to Football, Zim is a basket case. Pakistan haven't played at home for a long time now and will Bangladesh develop quicker with less money.

Just for me, South Africa's test sponsor is a cooking oil that isn't even nationally available. Stadiums are rarely full, domestic T20 doesn't sell out never mind ODIs & First Class games don't even merit a mention in the papers anymore. Most of the unions are scraping along with scraps, it's just the Titans, Lions & Cobras who are relatively well off. Pitches are ageing because there isn't money to relay them. Just locally, the little cricket fields that had to booked for games go unused for so long that the pitches have been ripped out and been converted to football fields.

The IPL is going to take care of the very best players, potentially to such an extent that their priority becomes that rather than international cricket as is already the case for many. The Big 3 have always been well off, their little power play for me has been nothing but a cynical, selfish move that they're fully aware benefits nobody but themselves. It's the equivalent of a mob strong arm, the rest had no choice but to just grin and bear it. Player demands will not go down in the face of their Australian, English and Indian colleagues earning an order of magnitude more and it's always ultimately development in these countries that will suffer the largest hammer blow.