In the film A Death of a Gentleman, Gideon Haigh asked the pertinent question: “Does cricket make money in order to exist or is it now the case that it exists in order to make money?.” Now many of the followers of this blog are well aware that cricket has become more of a product than that a game anymore in the eyes of the administrators, who are each looking for their slice of the pie. It has been made mightily clear by those that are in power that this is about sustaining and growing the revenues of the most powerful nations and by setting up various new T20 leagues to try and cash in on the perceived popularity of T20 cricket. Mr. Graves and Mr. Harrison (or Laurel and Hardy as they are otherwise known) can bluster all they want about reaching a new demographic and increasing the exposure of the game, but we know it’s not really like that, it’s the cold hard cash from TV rights deals. Any fool can see through it, apart from the ones in the media, who are singing from their hymn sheet.

I bring this up, as there have been more rumblings from the ICC and in particular from the BCCI this week. Now I’m not a particular expert on this subject (and I hope Simon H amongst others will chime in), but the long and short of this appears to be the fact that the BCCI doesn’t particularly like the word democracy if it costs them money, despite a 13-1 vote in favour of the changes to redistribute revenue, and are now threatening to throw their toys out of the pram if they don’t get their way. Now who knows what is lurking at the back of the BCCI and who is calling the shots, but they have stubbornly refused to back down from the Big 3 carve up that alienated so many Full Time and Associate nations and basically gave them the keys to the castle, or $578million dollars until 2023. You see when money and lots of it is involved, certain boards suddenly don’t feel so passionate about growing the game anymore. To mitigate this, the ICC have offered them $400million dollars, which those at the top of the BCCI (and don’t be surprised if N Srinivasan is still hanging around) still feel is insufficient, they want the whole lot previously assigned to them (bear in mind that the combined revenue assigned to the Associates is around $238), many feel that this is more than generous. The BCCI however, believe that they have the ICC and the rest of the cricket playing nations by the proverbial testicles and they’re going to keep squeezing until someone blinks, with their first threat being to pull out of the Champions trophy. Now before I get angry messages saying that I hate India, I would hold Giles Clarke (who famously only looks after the interests of his board) and James Sutherland equally accountable for this mess. They were the ones that were greedy enough to sell the other nations down the river in order to secure their own financial futures and they were the ones that let the genie out of the bottle and allowed the BCCI to have whatever they wanted, whatever the cost, as long as they looked after CA and the ECB. I don’t envy Manohar one little bit in trying to get that genie back in the bottle.

So what can and should be done, the ICC can of course cave into the BCCI’s demands and reduce the income of those that need it most in the vain hope of keeping the BCCI happy and protecting the huge amount of revenue that India brings to the table. That is one option, but it is not my preferred one, I believe that now is the time to be radical and call their bluff. This is without doubt a risky move and will no doubt have a huge impact of the revenue of all nations in the short term, but surely it’s better to take that risk now and draw a line in the sand before the next negotiations where the BCCI will want more and more and will likely get it. I firmly believe that this can’t be kicked into the grass this time, the ICC should be a democratic organisation that acts upon the interest and votes of its’ members, not a totalitarian state at the behest of one uncontrollable beast. If India wants to pull out of the Champions Trophy because they haven’t got their own way, then let them. Stick a line in the sand, carry on with the tournament despite the loss of revenue, but then sue the BCCI afterwards for the loss of revenue. Again, if the BCCI threatens to withdraw from Test cricket, which is undoubtedly the next step, then again let them do so despite the loss of large television rights deals. All the other nations have a responsibility to each other to try and ensure each stays solvent and in relatively good shape during this period and it can be done, if all are bought into the concept.

After this is all done, then we should hit the BCCI where it hurts, by pulling all NOC’s for international players from the IPL and then withdrawing the TV hosting deals. This normally isn’t the sort of diplomacy that I would normally advocate, but I feel that the BCCI’s position on this leaves the rest of cricket with no other option. Sure, the IPL will still attract the T20 freelancers and there is a good chance that some high profile international players coming towards the end of their careers will also choose to forfeit playing for the country (ABDV and some of the West Indian squad come to mind), but I feel the majority won’t, Test cricket in the eyes of many is still the pinnacle. The IPL will still have their own high profile domestic players, but when you are scraping round the barrel for international has-beens and mercenaries, then it’s hardly going to offer the glitz and glamour that the Indian public have been used to and no doubt this will also hit the IPL’s sponsorship bottom line. In my opinion that is the only way to get India back to the negotiating table as a member of the ICC and not the dictator. Sure there’s a risk that certain members get itchy feet and crave for the BCCI’s money again, but without risk, there is no reward and I feel that on this occasion it could be worth it.

This all brings me back to Dmitri’s post from earlier on this week, I feel out of love with the game at the moment and want to hark back to the days when I knew nothing about the international cricket administration, when there was cricket on FTA and when the England team selection wasn’t based around people from the right type of family and was instead based on talent. I want to cozy back up to County Cricket again, like the old loveable pet that has always been there for you when you need it (I saw a great one day game between Somerset and Surrey today), but then I remember that the ECB is trying to destroy that too. It makes me angry, but also incredibly sad. Most of all, I would like to go back to a time when Cricket was a sport and not a product and when money wasn’t the single driver of every decision made with it.

Have an enjoyable Bank Holiday Weekend one and all.

Well everything is bright and rosy in the Garden of Eden that is England Cricket or that is what we have been told to believe by one of our beloved leaders, the vacuous ECB mouthpiece which is Tom Harrison. Dmitri did a brilliant job of deconstructing the various rubbish that the empty suit spewed in his various interviews over the past week, so I’m going to try and not go over old ground, instead I’m trying to fathom what this actually means for English cricket going forward.

Amongst all the corporate language and boring platitudes that were trotted out by Harrison, the most revealing comment was that “There’s a moment when we need to have a leap of faith, and I think we’re very close to that”. So in other words, it’s a case of sticking your finger in the air and hoping for the best, not exactly a ringing endorsement of the ECB’s strategic capabilities by any means. This is the equivalent of going all in on red at the casino table, hey you may be lucky and win the prize or it may come down on black and hence you lose everything – 130 years of county cricket down the drain because you went on a stupid hunch.

As for the competition itself, it more and more seems to be a bodge job with every day that passes. Surely if franchise cricket (or city based cricket, it’s the same thing to me) is what you believe in as the savior of English cricket then go the whole hog, replace the Blast with the new competition and start aggressively marketing it now – county opposition or not. The fact we will still have the T20 Blast in some form or another in an already busy calendar, which will now be viewed as an inferior competition and the fact that the new ‘Super T20 competition’ will take players away from the County Championship in the most important part of the season, thus making that an inferior product too doesn’t seem to make an awful amount of sense to me bearing in mind the investment needed.

The irony of all this is that the attendances at the Blast have been rising exponentially over the past years, certainly in the South of England, with a growth of 63% over the past four years. This might well be down to the fact that the majority of games are held on a Friday night and from experiences attending them myself, it does seem that a large make up of the audience tends to be younger males looking to throw down a number of beers in the sun before heading out for the evening (though quite why you would choose to consume Foster’s at £5.50 a pint in large quantities is beyond me); however the numbers don’t lie, the Blast has continued to see growth. Now I’m not saying the Blast is an ideal format, there are too many pointless games when qualification has all been assured or not, it is impossible to screen more than one game on TV, so broadcasters have to play lucky dip, hence we all got to miss out on Chris Gayle smashing a hundred at Taunton a couple of years ago and the competition lasts too long to get the top draw T20 players to attend. However, I think it would be fair to say that the cricketing world needs another T20 competition like a shark needs a bowler hat, quite simply it doesn’t. This is the crux of the matter, we have simply missed the boat as every Test playing nation has a T20 competition. What was new and innovative when the IPL came into place has become a dull, yearlong parade of mediocrity in the most part. If the ECB had been deadly serious about a new franchise competition as the only way to save English cricket, then it should have done it 5 years ago before all the other leagues started to pop up, not in 2020, when potentially everyone is sick of seeing Dwaine Bravo or Thisara Perera on their screens for 12 months solid and the format is already stale.

One of the most worrying things for me is the lack of market testing that the ECB has carried out. It is estimated that people will travel between 3-5 miles to attend a Blast game, how do they know that more people will travel to a South London Stags or a Manchester Moose’s game? That is obviously a rhetorical question, as quite obviously they don’t, no matter how much money is thrown at marketing the new competition. Then there is the case of actually alienating current fans. English cricket is fairly unique in it’s structure with so many first class teams and many fans are very tribal about the counties they support and rightly so (perhaps the exception is India, who have a large first class competition, but they struck while the iron was hot with the IPL), so how many of these fans are going to pay extra on top of what they already spend to go and see a team that they have absolutely no allegiance to? I couldn’t see myself getting particularly passionate about supporting a South London side and I guess many are in my boat too. Perhaps we’re not the ones that the ECB wants to get through the door, as the ECB is desperate to get kids involved as shown by the “Chance to Shine” programme, which in my opinion is simply a sticky plaster across an open wound. If the ECB is banking on attracting loads of families to attend the new competition as their main source of revenue, then it is a completely reckless gamble. Cricket has been out of the public eye since 2005, with only a select few that can either afford Sky or have family with a keen interest in the sport that have continued to follow the sport. Throwing a few plastic bats and kit at kids, when club cricket and interest in the game has continued to decline rapidly, is a bit like pissing into the wind. Sure the empty suit might think that Jonny Bairstow or Ben Stokes are the recognisable face of English cricket, but if I went to the average state primary school, with pictures of them, then I would bet 80% of the kids have no idea who they are. Cricket has been forgotten, it has become more elitist than ever and more importantly it no longer resonates with todays generation of kids. The ECB sold the future of English cricket down the river for a shed load of Sky’s cash, end of. It is welcoming to hear that the new competition will have some FTA access, but it is 12 years too late. Sure, you might well get some new younger converts, but how many will shrug there shoulders wondering what this weird game is?

Then of course, we come to the money aspect and that is where Mr. Empty Suit, feels he is best qualified, after all he was heavily involved in the sale of rights to Sky in the first place. Harrison is banking on the fact that they can get enough spin going around the new competition to get £35 million from either Sky or BT and he may well be right, after all, there is history of bidding wars between the two organisations; however even if they bank the TV money, they are still projected to lose £15million in the first year. Now I might not be an economist, but if went to my boss with an idea that was going to lose £15million in the first year, then I’d get laughed out of the room, yet this is the flagship competition that is going to save English cricket? I simply can’t reconcile both the figures and the risk here to make it a going concern.

Perhaps a more sensible suggestion would be to take that £15million and properly market the Blast, reduce some of the ticket prices to make them family attractive and use some of that money to take some of the games off Sky and onto an FTA platform. Sure the Blast could do with a bit of a revamp, as with any product that is 15 years old (2 or 3 divisions perhaps as a starter for 10), but it simply shouldn’t be ignored that it is only part of English cricket that isn’t in decline.

Surely it’s better that than recklessly gambling the future of county cricket on a hunch? Unfortunately logic has famously never been something that influences the corridors of power at the ECB. All in on red please.

Sometimes when contributing to a blog, you need to write an article that you would really prefer not to. It is safe to say that this is one such occasion, as I’m going to call for the unthinkable, put my head on the line and say that Moeen Ali should be dropped from the Test side this summer.

I know, I feel like I’m clubbing a baby seal here, but please do hear me out on this one. Moeen is without doubt one of the most likeable and selfless players in the English set up. He has been pushed up and down the order by the England selectors more than I’ve had hot dinners (I believe he has batted every position from opener to number 9). He put his head on the line back in 2014, when England asked him to be their main spinner, when he was at best a part time bowler for his county. Not once has Moeen ever complained about the constant shifting of his role within the England team and that clearly shows that he is a selfless individual, one who is exceptionally proud to play for his country and hence why it is difficult for me to demand for him to be dropped.

Moeen currently averages 35 with the bat and 42 with the ball at this time of writing and averaged 45 with the bat and 46 with the ball over the last 12 months (before our resident stats expert Simon picks me up on this one). So some may question why I would like such a valuable team player as Moeen to be dropped, especially when he scored a hundred in the last Test in India. However, I’m sure we all remember Shane Warne’s observation about Monty Panesar some years ago “that Panesar, rather than having played 33 Tests, had merely played his first one 33 times.” Some felt it was overly harsh, I actually happened to agree on this point at the time. I also feel this quip should also apply to Moeen with both his batting and bowling. Moeen, whilst it’s wonderful to watch his batting in full flow, is just as likely to hole out to cover with a slightly uppish cover drive or to advance down the wicket a whack one down mid-on’s throat. He has been doing this since his Test Debut back in 2014, some 37 Test matches ago. There hasn’t seemed to be any deep thought about his batting and why he consistently gets out playing loose, wafty shots. Perhaps he is of the mindset that ‘that’s the way he plays, so why change when it’s bought him success in the past’ and that could be a fair point. I mean I remember another English batsman who came onto the scene in 2005 and played exciting, attacking and sometimes fairly brainless cricket; however this individual averaged a whole lot more than 35 in his career playing ‘his way’. Unfortunately the said individual liked to whistle when he got out, so that was that for him then.

I could however, live with the fact that Moeen is as likely to nick a wide one to third slip when looking to save the game as he is as likely to launch a sumptuous cover drive to the boundary that should have an R rating to it. I could live with this, if the rest of his game was in order; however it simply isn’t due to one glaring weakness that sorts out the county pro from the Test pro, the short ball. It’s not that Moeen can’t play the short ball, it’s the fact that Moeen really really can’t play the short ball. One only needs to look at the recent series in India, when he bounced out on slow low wickets both in the Test series and then latterly in the 3^rd ODI against a 40 over old, soft white ball. The tangle that Moeen gets himself into when facing the bouncer is two fold. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to duck and weave against the short ball, something that Atherton in his prime had a fantastic ability to do, nor does he have the natural shot appreciation to deposit it into the stand such as Ricky Ponting did. This leaves Moeen in some halfway house, where he still has to play the hook but it is likely that he’ll either top edge it or place it down deep square legs throat. It sort of reminds me of Yuvraj Singh’s inability to make it in international cricket, he had all the shots in the book, but as soon as word went round that he didn’t like it by his nose, then every fast bowler worth his salt tried to put it there. We only have to see the results of the 2011 series in England, which pretty much ended his career as a Test batsman. This upcoming year, we have a strong and quick South African fast bowling attack coming to England, followed by the Ashes on quick and bouncy Australian wickets. I dread to think what the Hazlewood and Starc will do to him at the Gabba and WACA, but what I do know for sure, there aren’t going to be that many pitched up deliveries for him to cover drive.

Now this could be glossed over somewhat, if Moeen was a premier spin bowler, but sadly most people now agree that he is what we thought he was in 2014, a part time bowler trying his best to cover England’s empty cupboard of spin bowling options. It is often true that when a new bowler comes into Test cricket, he has a bit of a bounce effect, in that the batsmen haven’t seen them bowl too much and quite often there are a few early wickets on offer as batsmen have yet to work them out. As with anything though in international cricket, coaches soon go through hours of video footage analyzing their technique, their weaknesses and where to target them and hence only high quality bowlers will flourish on this stage. This was true in 2014 when the Indian batsmen kept getting out to Moeen, by whacking him into the stands. However Moeen has now played 37 Test matches as England’s main spin weapon, and it would be fair to assume that he would be able to improve in that time; however sadly, I believe he has actually regressed as a bowler. He has all too often been easy pickings for opposition batsmen, milked around for singles at every opportunity and then waiting for the bad ball (which is often just around the corner) to put away to the boundary, thus making it impossible to build any pressure on the opposing side. Sure Moeen might bowl the odd Jaffa, but that doesn’t help too much when you’re constantly going at 4.5 runs an over. I might be being a tad unfair on Moeen’s bowling, as Graeme Swann aside, we have never been blessed with great spin bowlers since I’ve been following the cricket in depth. We won the 2005 with Ashley Giles as our main bowler, who wasn’t blessed with the most talent of an international Test spinner; however the one thing Giles could do was tie up an end and let our battery of quick’s steam in from the other end with an attacking field, because their main spinner wasn’t leaking 80 runs a day. This is something that unfortunately Moeen is simply unable to do.

It seems folly to me, to head to Australia where pitches aren’t exactly conducive to spin bowling with a part time bowler who can’t keep the runs down. I doubt Dave Warner or Steve Smith are losing any sleep about facing him in the middle. Even with England’s stocks of spin bowling being so diminished, surely it would make more sense to take a specialist spin bowler rather than a part time spinner that has regressed? The likes of Leach, Rayner, Rashid or even Mason Crane might not have that much better results in the short term, but I would hope that they would learn a lot from the experience and hence improve as their experience of International cricket grows. After 37 Test’s, I just don’t see how Moeen will improve his bowling sufficiently enough to be of an international standard.

In my own humble opinion, Moeen needs to focus on improving his batting, certainly against the short ball to lock down the number 5 position on his batting alone or somehow for his bowling to dramatically click for him to start the summer in the Test side. England had a preference for bits and pieces cricketers in the 90’s and we all know how that worked out for them then, I simply don’t see a place for them in a current Test side.

Right, I’ve got my tin hat on..