The structure of elite-level cricket competition is virtually unique. Soccer, rugby, the various American codes – you name it, they’re all based around clubs which are free to recruit players from where they choose, rather than representation from the country or state where one was born – though at the sub-elite level, England’s county teams have been full of Australian players for decades.
The recent Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition was strikingly different, with many of the world’s elite players distributed around the various teams like a schoolyard pick-up game. And, according to cricketer-turned-businessman Neil Maxwell, it’s the way of the future, and the cricket establishment must deal with it or miss out:
WORLD cricket is on an irreversible path towards a franchise club system in which players will be free to participate in three Twenty20 competitions and earn millions from contracts alone…Maxwell also believes that if Test cricket and player development are to feature in the revolution, governing bodies such as Cricket Australia must act fast.
Maxwell argues that the popularity of Twenty20 cricket will, at the very least, result in three annual elite leagues – the IPL, an English summer league, and a southern hemisphere league in the spring, presumably a little like the Super 14 rugby competition. His view is that the cricketing establishment will either have to sign up, or risk losing elite players entirely and ending Test and one-day cricket as places where the world’s best players play.
Cricket’s establishment has made peace with interlopers before – with World Series Cricket and, indeed, with the IPL, and I suspect that the same would happen here if the popularity of Twenty20 cricket continues. And, to be honest, I think that it could be very good for cricket.
One-day cricket, as shown by the last World Cup, is in a rut. The optimum formula for winning a one-day game – bash for 15 overs, push singles for 20, then bash again for 15 – has been stable (and very dull in the middle overs) for some years now, and tinkering with the rules with “power plays” hasn’t livened things up much. Nothing can be done about the fact that there are too many mismatches amongst the international teams. And the one-day game is still too long to take people who aren’t super-interested in cricket along to. So replacing interminable, lop-sided one-day internationals with shorter, more evenly balanced Twenty20 games sounds like a good idea to me.
That’s making the possibly false assumption, of course, that it would be one-day cricket, rather than Test cricket, that would suffer under such an arrangement. But, at least in Australia, Test cricket is doing fine in terms of crowds. And if Test cricket became the exclusive, or nearly exclusive, place you could see all of Australia’s elite cricketers playing together, it might actually help the game.
Interesting times in the world of cricket. I tend to agree that the 50 over one-day format will be most at risk due to the Twenty20 cricket. I think Test cricket is pretty safe as a format.
I watched my first ever game of cricket a couple of weeks ago, a IPL semi-final, and found it surprisingly fun. The length is a very very big feature of the appeal for me. I wouldn’t have bothered even trying to negotiate a whole day away from the family to watch a game, but a couple of hours in the evening is much easier.
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We used to have imported international players in the Sheffield Shield (I refuse to call it the P*** Cup) for ages. Players like Viv Richards, Ian Botham and Graeme Hick all tried (and failed) to win the Shield for Queensland, and likewise for the other states e.g. Richard Hadlee for Tasmania. And Australian players have always moved from state to state to get a better contract (though for much of that time a ‘better contract’ meant ‘a job with an employer who will allow you to play cricket’) – Allan Border, Greg Chappell, Jeff Thomson among others all moved to Queensland; others like Dirk Wellham and Trevor Chappell played for at least three different states.
Just tweaking the opening of what was otherwise a thought provoking piece (well, for cricket tragics like me anyway).
I reckon this argument is predicated on the top 2020 players being the top Test players. Which is not necessarily so – Andrew Symonds will never be as good a Test player as he is a 2020 player, while Simon Katich is the reverse. And an ultra-accurate medium pace swing bowler who can also slog with the bat is the ideal for 2020, while Test cricket will always want tearaway seamers for the new ball and leggies for the last day even if they’re batting rabbits.
If indeed 2020 becomes more popular and also beomes more franchise-like I think you’ll see more specialisation amongst players. Test cricket may decline, but I don’t think it will die; too many players and fans (including me) much prefer an epic struggle to a slap-’n-bash fest. They don’t call them “Tests” for nothing.
While I see the overall point of the piece, it would be sad to see too much of a shift away from state representation though. I for one have been very proud of the achievements of a majority Tasmanian born and bred Shield team, far more so than when we were filled with NSW rejects.
I guess any shift in the way we are doing things has to take into account the positives and negatives that will be gained. Part of this has to take into account that our most successful periods have always coincided with incredibly settled state teams with heavily regulation on player movements. This cannot simply be coincidence.
I watched a fair number of the IPL games and they were not necessarily slogathons. Bowlers, including slow spinners, were dominant in many of the games, but they needed to really mix their deliveries across four overs.
But it is the money and the franchise, especially the single entrepreneur owner that worries me. The Texan who is putting up $20 million for a one-off series between the West Indies and English has a touch of the Firepower petrol pill about it. I would hope that each nation cricketing authority keeps a firm handle on future developments particularly the money. No agents and no lawyers might be start.
Further decline of the nation state?
Will this mean an end to sporting-nationalism? Or will nationalistic loyalties be derived from the location of head office?