Money is the Driver, but New York beckons
You can still pick and choose your pleasures
“They’ll say it’s all about money. Of course it’s about the money. These young players want to make as much money as they possibly can, and I’ve no problem with that,” said my old friend, Darren Gough, former Yorkshire and England fast bowler turned broadcaster.
In the next sentence he spoke about appreciating the “traditional values of the game” and how much Yorkshire County Cricket Club meant to him and the importance of first-class cricket. And the supporters who love it and whose lives would be genuinely empty without it. Or even, with less of it.
He was merely exemplifying the contradictions many people within the game are currently experiencing with the landscape shifting so fast, so dramatically.
Elite cricket fought for years against maximising its earning potential. It has regularly evolved on the field but painfully slowly off it, preferring such concepts as tradition and dignity which were handed down and accepted through the generations like heirlooms.
Even in the late 1980s and early 1990s professional cricketers were paid less than middle-management office workers and were always required to seek alternative off-season employment in order to make ends meet, everywhere in the world.
The change started in the mid-90s when BCCI president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, was the first to truly appreciate the value of television rights and tripled the board’s income in a couple of years. But it was just the beginning and set the tone for England and Australia with the other, smaller nations, doing their best to catch up on their own scale.
The gallop towards making as much money as possible is now in full swing and those who find it objectionable might be reminded of how much catching up there is to be done. Gate receipts controlled administrators for over a century, followed later by television rights. Now there is the digital market.
“Cricket provides a unique platform of exposure, especially the 50-over format,” a former sponsor of the SA national team told me over chicken wrap lunch last week. “We enjoyed excellent leverage with the national team when we were onboard but, when the shit hit the fan three years ago we had to pull out. It wasn’t our decision here in SA, it was made at head office. We’re a global brand and couldn’t be seen to be part of any corruption.”
There is a reason, he said, that CSA can only attract an Indian sponsor for the national teams and none for their domestic competitions: “They haven’t done anything to assure any potential sponsors that it won’t happen again. My impression is that they’ve tried to sweep it under the carpet and hope that people forget, but they don’t. Big sponsorship budgets mean long memories.” But I digress.
If India qualify for the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup next month, it has been pre-ordained that they will play in the second semi-final in Guyana on Thursday June 27, a day game starting at 10:30am, a TV audience-friendly 8:00pm in India. The first semi-final will be played in Trinidad on Wednesday June 26 starting at 8:30pm, which is 6:00am in India.
A reserve day is scheduled for the first semi-final and the final but not for the second semi-final which will, instead, be given an extra four hours to reach a conclusion in the event of rain. The winners will then have to travel from Guyana to Barbados on Friday for the final on Saturday.
It’s all about maximising profit for the administrators as well as the players, even if that means compromising the integrity of a global tournament. So be it. There are many, ‘traditional’ cricket lovers who are falling out of love with the game as it modernises and makes loads of money, but I can’t afford to, literally. It’s been my life and bread and butter all my adult life.
It’s time, perhaps for all of us, to pick and choose the bits we like and focus on the pleasure they still give us, identifying the source of that pleasure. For the moment, South Africa is, realistically, no longer a Test playing nation. Rather than allow that to break me, it’s about making the best of the new world.
It is not the opportunities to travel and watch cricket that has sustained me all these years, but the opportunity to share the journey. Many thousands of hours on radio and millions of words written – that is what sustained me. Thank you to all who have listened and read over the years.
So, New York it is, arriving in just under two weeks for the first time, suitably nervous and excited. T20 isn’t my favourite format but it is a ‘World Cup’, although there’s one every year now. But my career in cricket has allowed me to visit the Big Apple, and for that I’m extremely grateful. It’s 20 hours in the air on KLM and a $60 AirBnB room, but that adds to the excitement. Not really.
If you haven’t already done so, I’d be equally grateful if you’d consider upgrading from free to paid-subscriber. It’s only £4 per month. There’s a pastrami and cream cheese bagel I need to pay for, and those yellow taxis are ferociously expensive, I’m told…I’ll try to make it worth your while!