Awash with Cricket

Too much of a 'good thing'?

Awash with Cricket

    Run outs at the non-strikers end (RONS) are terrific and I look forward to the time when they are accepted as a natural part of the game. If a batter can be stumped while on-strike why should it be any different when they are off-strike? The advantage gained by the non-striker in leaving their crease is probably greater than any advantage gained by the striker.

    Cricket Australia’s decision to withdraw its men team from a three-match ODI series against Afghanistan in ‘support’ of the women and girls of that country may be a well-intentioned protest but it is also a soft and ‘convenient’ one which does nothing, literally and figuratively. If the Australian really approved of CA’s decision it might do more to accept immigrants from the country. Playing the fixtures might, at least, ensure the Taliban’s abhorrent treatment of the country’s female citizens would not be forgotten or ignored.     

     The global game is beyond saturation point. It is now merely a question of which competitions, tournaments and national boards can wade out of the quagmire to the shores of safety. The amount of cricket being played is disorientating and unsustainable.

    Despite its late entry into the bog of matches South Africa has made a tremendous start with the first week of the SA20. Using the basic principle that full stadia is the single most important ingredient for a successful sporting competition, the marketeers focussed their energy on filling seats. Television productions and advertisers are drawn inextricably to large, live audiences and levels of performance on the field are inevitably improved.

    Tickets were skillfully bundled and cleverly priced to appeal to groups of fans and families and the ‘fun’ aspect of the tournament – complete with fancy dress and music – was carried out with and enthusiasm and expertise typical of South Africa. If any nation can laugh in the face of adversity and have a party in spite of power-cuts and an economic depression, it is South Africa.

    Merely seeing Kingsmead and St.George’s Park sold out was a boon to the spirits. Being part of the crowd was obviously even better. Selling and buying tickets for R20 or R50 isn’t going to make the slightest difference to solving CSA’s financial problems and it won’t make the ‘tip basket’ for the IPL Franchise teams, but that isn’t the point. Having all of those people in attendance is worth many millions of dollars more than gate receipts by the message it sends to the electronic audience and the companies wishing to sell their wares.

    There has been considerable discussion about how this new revenue stream may regenerate and improve the rest of South African cricket, notably the first-class structure and the Test team, and Women’s cricket. This discussion has yet to include SA20 League Commissioner Graeme Smith and the Franchises, naturally, as they are only a week into a ten-year project to establish the tournament. But for the rest of us it is clear that the world as we knew it has changed and will never be the same again.   

    Perhaps the new landscape gives Cricket South Africa an opportunity to engineer a jump on the rest of the cricket playing nations by completely rethinking the concept of national contracts – if not abandoning them if, as I suspect, they have become obsolete, at least for senior and established players.

    What was their original purpose? To look after the country’s best players or to control them? To manage their workloads or to ensure that they were available for every international fixture? The financial reality is that CSA cannot, and will never be able to offer its best players a retainer remotely close to what they can earn as freelancers. Even the security of medical insurance for lost earnings cannot compensate for what they can earn when fit.

    If Test cricket is to survive in South Africa, let alone flourish again, the processes by which it is organised and managed need radical re-evaluation. Like New Zealand’s Black Caps and the other ‘small seven’ Test nations, the Proteas are now on an irreversible course of two-Test series with the very occasional exception. Three Tests might be played once every four years against one or two of the ‘big three’. If the ICC World Test Championship is scrapped, the five-day format will become nothing more than an occasional ‘exhibition’ contest, without context, watched fleetingly, by a disbelieving generation wondering how, or why, it used to be played so much more.  

    England all-rounder, Chris Jordan, has played ten T20 matches for five different teams in the last five months. There are surely many more similar examples. It is impossible to keep track. Cricketers leaving tournaments prematurely to join other, more lucrative leagues, is a parody of ‘teamness’ and competition rarely encountered in any other sport, anywhere in the world, in any era. If supporters are required to support, how long until they ask the same of their players?