Memories of the Masterful

LordCanisLupus31 Comments
australia-2006-sim-2-210-02.jpeg.jpeg
Sometimes the joy of Test Cricket is not immediately obvious…..

On Sunday night those who didn’t value their sleep were treated to sport at its finest at Augusta National. Two men fighting it out for their first green jacket. Two men who knew that their legacy would not be truly complete without winning a Masters title. Two men who played brilliant and ordinary golf, fought tooth and claw, but also never forgot that how they conducted themselves and how the event was perceived was pretty important too. I have a healthy disregard for the people who run Augusta National and how much of the authoritarian, snobby behaviour is tolerated, but you have to say this. They absolutely know how to run a historic, important golf tournament. Although not to the same levels of arrogance, the same can be largely said for the Royal and Ancient in the UK, with the Open Championship. They haven’t played the tournament on a truly inland course (is it Lytham that is the only one that doesn’t look truly like a links course) and maintain the traditions of seaside golf in a major championship.

A few decades ago US golf set up the PGA Tour and created their own tournament. It is The Players Championship. They have the strongest field of the year (or if not, one of the strongest). Like the Masters it is played on the same course every year (TPC Sawgrass). It even has an iconic hole, the 17th, the Island green. It has one of the richest purses outside the Tour Championship. Who the hell cares who wins it, though? Sandy Lyle once did, and was asked by the TV interviewer “what’s the difference between winning this and the British Open, Sandy?” to which he replied “about 100 years of history.”

So, Dmitri, why are you wittering on about golf? This is a cricket blog.

You’d be right, but there are a number of interesting parallels between golf and cricket. Like cricket, participation numbers in golf are declining in the UK. Like cricket, playing the sport to any sort of competence is expensive. Like cricket the sport is disappearing rapidly behind a paywall – make the most of the Masters because there isn’t anything else live on FTA for the rest of the year. Like cricket the authorities in Europe are in crisis because the US PGA Tour dwarfs everything, and the European Tour is a very poor imitation. Like cricket, golf in Europe thought it needed to jazz things up, and we now have the race to Dubai, which has hardly grabbed the world’s attention. Cricket isn’t exactly the same as golf, but there is no doubting that in terms of this country, there’s a lot to compare it to.

The Masters is a majestic piece of sporting theatre when it is close. I flitted in and out for the first nine holes of the final round, before getting really into it for the back nine, and transfixed from when Sergio Garcia got that par at 13. There’s not a lot artificial in its construct. The course is manicured to death, but with the exception of some modernisation, never seems to be beaten. -9 to win a tournament is, in my view, how it should be. The course can be a bit tricked up, some of it resembling a crazy golf course, but players love it (and hate it). What made yesterday was the tradition, the heritage and the prize. The coveted prize. A bleedin’ awful jacket. This prize appeals every bit as much to the young golfers, the millennials like Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth, than it does to the old lags that Rose and Sergio now fall into. It doesn’t treat its watchers like idiots, but also doesn’t let them besmirch the event either. Commercialism, although rampant in hospitality etc., is kept out of the way everywhere else except on the golfers themselves.

Then I thought back to the Friday evening I spent at The Oval. Like Augusta it has a long history. Like Augusta it has embraced modernity, but not been taken over by it. It also hosted a long, but not so cherished, institution like the County Championship and holds a test match every year. It opens itself up to T20 and built a successful, if a little boorish, brand to it. Those players out there, even those now not in the international limelight, like Kumar Sangakkara, Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott don’t have to be there, but I presume play because they still enjoy it. It’s not the Masters, of course it isn’t, but it felt like sport in as near a pure form as cricket can get. I got to see a legend bat, carefully, respectfully, diligently, but then let loose a shot of such beauty and class that you were overwhelmed for a single moment. How could this not be loved?

But it isn’t by authorities because it is not commercially viable. It isn’t loved by enough people at all. The format is changed to fill in around the commercially viable and the TV audience, rather than those who stick by it. Lack of attendance at The Oval, which holds 25000, is seen as a lack of interest. Cricket does not command a whole page in the tabloid newspaper now, like it used to. A childhood memory would be scouring the Sunday papers to see who had gone big the previous day. We don’t need that now, the internet does it for us, and papers are a dying game – in some ways much more so than cricket (so the angst that papers don’t send reporters to cricket matches should be put into proper context). I saw John Etheridge and Dean Wilson at the Oval on Friday, but didn’t see a match report on line on their websites for that day. There’s a view that counties and a sport that lasts more than one day isn’t viable any more, yet the Masters lasts four days, and that was thrilling.

I watched some of the IPL over the weekend. This is, after all, what the people want if you tell them enough. It was bright, vibrant, loud, atmospheric and played to full houses. What it wasn’t was good.  At times it looks like the Seniors Tour out there. But we have screaming commentators, on one occasion turning into car salespersons, telling me how the odd well connected shot was out of this world, while I wondered why I should care at all about what was being put in front of me. Carlos Brathwaite, remember the name, got out to a shot that our club number 7 would have been embarrassed about – he had got away with an LBW decision the ball before, so closed his eyes, launched his bat at the ball to the next, hit the ground on his downswing and was bowled. It was ghastly. Now, I know the IPL is not aimed at me, but if it is aimed at the next generation what is it telling them? I love how Eoin Morgan is interviewed by Sky prior to the tournament and saying how the IPL is so unique (run for cover), but he’s finding it jolly nice not having to play and picking up a nice salary for so doing. Very nice that he is being rested. We are supposed to be interested because there are eight England players out there. This is what we want.

T20 has its place, but it isn’t, and never should be the pinnacle of the sport. Test cricket is the pinnacle, and it is not measured by how much revenue it generates, how much money is in it, or even how many people attend. Your place among the all-time greats isn’t sealed by T20 performances. We might remember Brathwaite’s name for that four six salvo last year, but he’s not going to be a legend of the game, is he? When we mention the top batsmen in the world, it’s because they are all proficient, brilliant test batsmen, not a T20 or even an ODI legend. It’s because, over time, test cricket has found out those not quite up to it – Michael Bevan, a phenomenon in limited overs, a failure at test; Hick and Rampraskash, the last to a hundred first class hundreds who never clinched the deal in tests; Yuvraj Singh, a fearsome limited over plays, a limited test one. Tests make players, like Steve Waugh, Steve Smith et al, when there are flaws which can be over-ridden by application, ability and temperament. I am no fan of T20 cricket, but I’m even less of a fan of those who seek to change test cricket.

There is a lot wrong with test cricket, but there’s not a lot wrong with it that doesn’t involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We have our issues with over rates, the teams can be slightly precious about over rates, I don’t give a stuff if TV can’t fit in certain times – that’s their problem, not the game. Trying to shoehorn in a four day test is just so utterly cretinous in this day and age that I don’t know where to start, but I’ll have a go. If you get a full day’s play rained off, and especially if it is Day 3 and one team has batted well, then the game is shot to pieces. Some of the best tests lasted four days – Edgbaston 2005 and Trent Bridge the same year come to mind – but others would have perished on the vine in four days – Adelaide 2006, Old Trafford 2005 immediately from an England perspective. Forget cramming in extra overs, the TV companies don’t want play past 6:30, the players can’t get in 90 as it is. Five day test cricket evolved because it worked. Because it gives the game, the modern game, time to breathe. A test match is a longform story, and should go at its own pace. If you want to play fast, play fast, but if you can grind, well then do that to. It allows all sorts to play, and to play all sorts of games. There are bad games, of course there are, but there are some superb ones to. Test cricket is about sport. Great sport is entertaining. T20 is about entertaining, and entertaining isn’t always great sport.

I don’t believe tradition, heritage, longform, nuanced, high level sport is the preserve of some crusty old timers like me. I don’t believe the love of test cricket that I cultivated at an early age is just something that applies to people over the age of 40. I am probably guilty as most, but we need to place more trust in our younger people. They might develop test cricket into a form that is different, just as the 1990-2006 Aussies played differently to the previous champion team, the West Indies. By shutting off access to the greatest form of the game, the authorities in this country are guilty of putting the heritage of the sport at greatest risk. A new T20 league is not a cure-all. It isn’t even a gateway drug to test cricket. The ECB betray their trust in the brand of test cricket, and I hate using the word brand, by talking it down. They betray the sport by playing too many games, turning the latest cycle of Ashes test into a best forgotten era of poor quality games played by knackered players, and then tell us it is our fault for not being with the times.

If you think I’m being melodramatic compare two other veritable English sporting institutions. Wimbledon is a fuddy-duddy, up your own rear-end, tennis tournament where certain traditions have to be maintained, but where the club can modernise (a roof of the Centre Court) and where winning a title there is viewed as the Masters is in golf. It is in the rudest of health, remains on the BBC (for the time being) and it is venerated in the sporting calendar.

Then look at the FA Cup. The premier date in the football calendar for supporters of my age. If you couldn’t win the league, you could have a go at the Cup. It was a marvellous occasion, it was the game families got together for. It was special. Now it has been pretty much demolished. The Premier League teams outside of the top six treat it like a dose of measles. The top six muddle along with second XIs until the business end. The prize of getting to Wembley is now for four teams rather than two. The Final used to be the finale of the season – recently they played a full programme of league fixtures around it. Now we pretend it is important, when it is really isn’t. They took the magic out, and expected people to still buy an inferior product. It mattered if you won things, not finished 11th in the Premier League. Ah, they say, but Leicester won the Premier League so magic can still happen! Check out what the Big Six clubs have done since then very quietly behind the scenes. They don’t believe in sport at all, they believe in a rigged game, and they are trying to rig it so they get even more of a ridiculously generous pie. Despite beating them all in the league last year, and gone further in the Champions League than their rivals, Leicester City aren’t big enough. Quick reminder – one of those “Big Six” hasn’t won the league in 56 years.

 

This long old piece has gone on a bit, I know, but events like yesterday, fewer and further between, inspire me and remind me why I love sport. Why I love the competition. It’s all a game, and winning matters, but not at the cost of everything. Where quality competition between evenly matched foes, in a perfect setting, is compelling without being forced. The drama naturally evolved, with other actors flitting in and flitting out. Even when the tournament is won comfortably, there’s still a feeling a player could implode. Sometimes, like Jordan Spieth, Greg Norman and Curtis Strange to name but three, they do. Sometimes, like Adelaide, “boring” test matches explode into life into compelling finishes. Sport is wonderful, sport evolved over time, and sport can easily be ruined if not taken care of, is party to short-term cash grabs and made the preserve of an elite few.

So getting misty eyed over a golf tournament is understood through the prism of this being an event that is given context by history. Chicago Cubs fans will feel the same about the World Series last year. Leicester City in the Premier League, which, like it or not, is the same format, more or less, than top flight football for the past, oh, century or so. I felt like that with the Boston Red Sox in 2004, Millwall getting to Wembley in the same year, Edgbaston 2005, and many more. It can’t be produced at will, it has to be natural, and people have to care.

There are morals to these tales, and the reaction to sport is individual in nature. Maybe, just maybe, in cricket, we might understand that, and as a governing body they should not countenance radical tampering with the highest form of the sport. It is five days for a reason. Just as it is four rounds for a reason. It is two weeks on grass for a reason. It is seven games at the end of a 162 game regular season for a reason. Sport. Top level sport is a thing of beauty, framed by history, and savoured by those who watch it. Money, no matter how hard you try, cannot guarantee that kudos. The Super Bowl evolved. The World Cup (football) evolved (and now threatens to eat itself). It was just good to be reminded how great it can be. Food for thought.

 

Epilogue…

As if this post wasn’t long enough, I had a couple of extra thoughts to add.

As you know, I won’t listen to that Flintoff and Savage podcast, but one clip was posted on Twitter and it was interesting. Take it at face value for starters. (dash – can’t find it). In it Freddie basically said he wanted to score runs and take wickets for Lancashire and England. When he played for the Chennai Super Kings he felt no attachment and didn’t care.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04sv3py

Found it. Flintoff isn’t pure as the driven snow. He was commercially very aware (remember how he held the bat up when he made a hundred at the bit the Woodworm bat tapered in? Never short of showing something different, our Fred). But it says a lot about the mindset of your sportsman. Love him or hate him, but Flintoff always laid his body on the line for England.

The other thing is that despite the superb entertainment last night, the Masters drew a very disappointing TV audience. The NFL saw a drastic decrease in viewer numbers this year. The NBA regular season looks to have a smaller audience. Baseball’s World Series bucked the trend last year, but only because of the long-standing story of the Cubs, but regular season numbers are low. In England we see decreasing  numbers – the Grand National drew a low number this weekend. Yet all we see is sports rights rise and rise. The fewer are paying more and more, while the sports get further out of reach to a watching public in the UK, and to a less interested market in the States. There is a ton more choice on TV these days, but still, this gravy train has to stop, doesn’t it?

Finally, and with all due health warnings about the source (barely sentient Charles Sale), there’s this story…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-4377230/Sky-s-golf-coverage-driving-rugby-rough.html

With this point very important to note, if true.

Sky are revamping their service this summer with cricket, Formula One and golf getting dedicated channels. Football is still seen as the big seller and will have two channels, one for the Premier League and one for the rest.

The new format will allow a cheaper entry price for one package of £18 a month but viewers will pay significantly more if they want to purchase the whole of the Sky Sports output.

This is interesting. As I said on Twitter, what this will mean is I would cancel pretty much everything else except cricket. Not quite sure this is a great idea by Sky.

We have a very complex landscape, a world that seems to watch sport less but be asked to pay more, and be treated with even more contempt by governing bodies. Where the hell do we go from here? Hoping for the best, but fearing for the worst.

Community Service

thelegglance27 Comments

In this part of the world, and for a certain category of person, April is a special time.  The arrival of spring in itself can warm the soul as well the skin; the profusion of life, the sound of birdsong and the explosion of colour signifies new beginnings.  Yet for some, a small collective, it suggests something rather more.

Across the world, the dates may change, and the climate may be very different, but the principle is identical, and the approach of the cricket season brings out the same mentality and activity wherever it may be.  For those who care start to get ready.  That might include players, who went to indoor nets in January and February, but it also includes all those who do the legwork, who prepare the fixture lists, who seed the grass on the ground, who put up the outdoor nets, who re-wire the pavilion or remove the mildew from the showers.  Those who spend the first part of the month repainting the picket fence outside the pavilion, or who have silently spent the winter ensure the square is ready – year in, year out.  Who go on courses to learn how to do it better, who wince every time the ball bounces badly.

When April itself arrives the same group of people then plan the coaching evenings for the kids, in full awareness that many parents regard this as free babysitting, and they do so on the off chance that one in twenty of the children who turn up may fall in love with the game and therefore could go on to be a playing member for the next thirty years.  They do this even though if that player becomes exceptionally good, they will leave and go somewhere else to play a higher standard.  Possibly and potentially, that might include the county programmes, meaning that all their hard work goes not to their club, but to the wider game.  They will joke that what they really want is a good young player who isn’t very bright, who won’t go to university and who will stay in the area.  But they know they will, and they know they will lose them.  But they pay it forward, in the hope their club will benefit from the hard work someone else put in somewhere else.  The circle of mutual support is a wide one.

And then there are those who have had their cricketing career, who captain the Sunday 2nd XI, batting at number nine and standing at slip, not enjoying their lack of contribution, frustrated at their waning powers, but deeply aware it was done for them in their youth.  They get little thanks for it, and may well be dead before the 40 year old they introduced to the sport thirty years earlier fully realises what he did for them, who then laments that they never told him quite how important to their life he was.  It was a he, mostly, but in decades to come it will be many a she too.   It already is.

Or there are those who despite their full awareness of the affectionate contempt in which the players hold them still volunteer to do the scoring, a thankless, dull task at the best of times, hated by most, loved by a very few.  They may have no cricketing ability at all, but choose to be involved and choose to help out.  Perhaps instead they go on an umpiring course, to give up their weekends to annoy players by being human and getting a decision wrong.  Come September those same people will compile the annual reports, with statistics, averages and club records.

A further subset go and watch a county match, aware of their small band of fellow travellers with whom they are often on first name terms, despite little in common but a shared passion for a game that passes most of the public by.  They go when the weather is cold and grey, and they go – and are joined by a few others – when it is warm and sunny and the appeal of a cold pint with appropriate on field background entertainment is available – the crack of ball on bat, the cries of fielders as they appeal for a decision to another who has given up a substantial proportion of their life to give back to the game they were brought up with, and who are able to make a modest living from doing so.

For five and a bit months across the country, this pattern prevails.  Some make the teas, traditionally they are tea ladies, more recently not so much.  Many will have little interest or concern, but will drive past a village green filled with cricketers and know that a traditional element of their national character is being played out in front of them.  Like Morris Dancing, they may not wish to be part of it themselves, they may even sneer at those who do it, but it is a precious part of national consciousness.  John Major was laughed at for his references to it, but as definitions of a desired national character go, there are many worse that could be chosen.

Each week the same group, always a small number of people in any club, go through the same process.  They prepare, they work, they give up their time for no other reason than a deep seated love for a sport.  Even within their own organisation there aren’t enough of them, they do several jobs not just one.  Sometimes they may get frustrated at the lack of respect they get for the contribution they make, but they do so not for fame or fortune and not for recognition, but because it needs to be done and if they don’t do it, then who will?

The rarefied atmosphere of the highest level of any sport is a world away from the day to day that makes up virtually all of the game.  Yet professional sport relies on the amateur to a far greater extent than the other way around, even though they both need the other for it to flourish.  But take away professional cricket, and the game would survive.  Take away amateur cricket and there is simply no game at all, which is why the dismissive behaviour towards it remains one of the more despicable attitudes pervading the corridors of power.  They deny it, but all involved know it is there – the ECB won’t even give the “recreational game” as they put it, elected representation to their organisation.  That is the reason this band of brothers and sisters quietly get on with things, with little help, and less interest from above.

These people do it all.  They are the backbone without whom nothing, nothing at all, would exist.  They are a minority within a minority, they provide everything and in return get little except perhaps personal satisfaction for making a contribution to society.  They are denied the right to even see their chosen sport at the top level without paying again for the privilege,  they are belittled and even laughed at.  Decisions are taken that make their lives just that little bit harder, and their response is to give even more time, and make even greater efforts, for no reason other than they feel it is the right thing to do, and that it matters.

Cricket is a sport first and foremost.  It isn’t a business, and it isn’t the opportunity to make vast amounts of money.  That may be a by product for a chosen few, but it is not the driver, it is not the raison d’etre, and those who behave as though it is should be ashamed.  Those who allow it to happen should be even more ashamed, for they could speak up yet do not do so. They betray the work done across the country, across the world, to provide a background for all those who care little for their efforts to exploit.

These are the obsessives.  The fanatics who move heaven and earth to ensure there is something for successive generations to complain about.  They do it in many different ways, from the park in the city centre to the village Common.  They support, morally and financially, all rungs of the game, and they provide the base interest that in turn creates the next level, be it County Championship, T20 or 50 over.

Yes, Mr Harrison, they are obsessives.  Every single one of them.  And you should get down on your knees and thank them for their very existence.  And so should we all.

More Snaps From An Evening In SE11

LordCanisLupus11 Comments

I do believe later on this weekend that we’ll be having a piece from The Leg Glance, but in the interim I thought I’d stick up a few more pictures from yesterday.

Weather permitting, and enthusiasm in place, I hope to get to one day of the Easter weekend match at The Oval against Lancashire.

Matthew Engel has penned a piece for The Guardian. While I don’t agree with all of it, Engel remains a clever voice on the sport and it is worth a read.

But cricket gave two great things to civilisation: the idea that the umpire’s decision is final, which has now officially been abolished by the review system; and the delicate interplay of individual and team success that really exists only in cricket and baseball. Neither of these exists in the ECB’s big-city game. Nor will there be any vestige of the sense of tradition and loyalty that has sustained this game through centuries of optimistic spring days like this one.

Engel does get it. The county game is in trouble but…

But it also created internal expectations. The players’ pay exploded; the ECB turned into a vast, impenetrable bureaucracy. Hence the constant revolution: the game cannot maunder on pleasantly; it must keep coming up with ever more eye-catching gimmicks.

The players aren’t being rewarded for achievements etc, they are making the supporters pay more to keep them in clover.

An Evening at SE11

LordCanisLupus9 Comments

I took the opportunity to join quite a few people at the Kia Oval for the opening day of the County Championship as I caught the evening session of the day’s play against Warwickshire. Ian Bell had elected to put Surrey into bat, and the result was the hosts finishing on 327 for 3 in 96 overs. Given the presence of a number of the media’s finest, including Charles Colvile, George Dobell, John Etheridge and Dean Wilson (the last three came very close to me as I left the ground this evening) you won’t need a match report. The bare bones are that Mark Stoneman made a debut to remember with 165 runs before tiredness did for him:

P1070991
Stoneman nicks off for 165

Sangakkara played very sedately. He announced himself to the post-tea crowd with a magnificent drive, but then played an anchor role, never looking particularly ill at ease, and stayed to the close on 47 not out.

I took a load of pictures, as always, and after using my favourite photo software, here are some of the results. Hope you enjoy them (Click on each for the full size version).

Hope the people going tomorrow enjoy themselves. They could be in for a very good day.

The State Of This Blog Address

LordCanisLupus53 Comments

It seems that time of year for awards, the dawning of a new season, and the end to a pretty long dry spell in terms of things to really write about. So in the self-regarding, introspective manner I’ve brought to my epic scale of self-indulgence over the past few years, I thought I’d set out where I see this blog, the cricket writing landscape in general, and more importantly the game itself from this writer’s perspective. You might like it, you might not. But here goes.

The excitement is growing for the traditional start of the domestic cricket season, with the first game in the IPL starting today (Wednesday). Of course our County Championship starts on Friday with a lot less hoopla than I recall this time in the last three years. This may not be an accident, given the ECB’s and County relationship could be filed under the Facebook status “it’s complicated”, but there has not been the traffic on other blogs I read or the newspapers and their BTL sophisticates as the last couple of years. I think we all feel rather beat up by the relentless demeaning of the county scene by people who should know better, culminating in the downright offensive “obsessives” muttered by the Empty Suit a couple of weeks ago.

I found out last year that county cricket really doesn’t float the boat of those who read this blog – and it was pointed out to me! We did a bit of a preview and the interest wasn’t great. Now, I don’t write to generate hits, but because I think I have something to say, but this year I just can’t be bothered to do anything in depth on a competition that the governing body has messed about with again, with a team relegated reinstated to the top division (and by pure coincidence, a toadying owner who did the ECB’s bidding), and a second division with an oddball format which is justified by “this happened 20 or 30 years ago, so why are you moaning?”

The governing body clearly wants first class cricket, but it is determined to strangle it until it pleads for mercy, and quite possibly to control it and concentrate it. I have concerns, and Durham should be the canary in the goldmine. As a Surrey fan I think it is terrible that Stoneman and Borthwick, who sound like a firm of accountants, have had to leave Durham and play for my team. I welcome them, of course, but wouldn’t it be better if they were playing for the county they should always be associated with? But Durham have been the victims of the ECB expansion programme, despite arguably having every bit as sustainable a business model as the team that stayed up in their place.

So while I will definitely attend some county cricket this year, and if you fancy meeting up for a light beverage and some decent cricket, get in touch (current plans are Guildford on 9th June, the Surrey v Essex T20, a day of Surrey v Middlesex in the August Bank Holiday week, and a couple of post-tea visits to the Oval if I can nip out early enough) this blog won’t concentrate on it unless something makes us. You can, of course, put any relevant thoughts in comments and open threads which I will repeat from last year, but it is clear this blog is here to address three or four key points:

  • International cricket, and England in particular
  • ECB and ICC governance
  • The press and TV coverage of cricket
  • Nostalgia, and how it WAS so much better in my day!

We’ve a busy and interesting next 12 months ahead. It could be the make or break of us. We will probably look back on the past three months as a period of rest, and in Sean’s case, purgatory. We will jump into a Champions Trophy in a couple of months’ time, followed by the test series against South Africa and then a series of international cricket against a team purporting to represent the West Indies. There’s a short break for England before we go into Ashes mode again (was it really 2 years ago) and then we play New Zealand after that, do we not? It’s kamikaze scheduling and like the previous Ashes cycle, who knows how many will survive it and come out the other end intact and reputations enhanced? And I might be talking about us here on the blog!

Which means the blog needs to up its game if it is to stay in the vanguard (hark at me) of the malcontent world. I have felt that the blog has drifted this winter, and not just because of the lack of cricket I am very responsible for this as I have to say that at this time cricket is not in the front of my mind. It has been a hectic last three months in my life – health issues within my family causing time to be seriously constrained, and at times, really worrying – but things might be stabilising a little.

But I’ve also not been myself on here. For the first time I pulled an article because I was not prepared to attack someone who I thought deserved it. It was, for once, Lawrence Booth, for the Cricketer article on Paul Downton, and one line in particular regarding you might “question his actions, but you can’t question that his heart was in the right place”. A man, Downton, who brought the world the title of our blog had his heart in precisely the wrong place – that there was an inside and outside cricket – and he absolutely needs to still be called on it. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to do it. I’ve stewed over that draft article and never finished it.

I can’t let that happen again. As you might have noticed, I’ve not pulled my punches on Tom Harrison or the cabal putting the T20 show together. It’s always much harder to hit the ones you have more time for than the ones you don’t.

I have to say that the cricket blogging world frustrates me at the moment. A few years ago I thought we had tacit support from some, and an undercurrent egging us on. Now, not so much. In many ways I feel that we are looked upon as some sort of mad outlier, and if there wasn’t anything to moan about, then we would find it. When HDWLIA, which I still see as this blog but with a different name, got traction I was, behind the scenes, approached quite a lot by a wide cadre of cricket “insiders”. Sure, we got our enemies too – having forthright opinions and not putting up with nonsense does that – but we see a fair bit of what we said then, and how we said it, reflected in some of the mainstream journalism.

There’s no credit to be claimed, and none would be given anyway, but the dial might have been pushed by the resounding way we, and you, put the cases for the prosecution. I don’t see that now. Did you feel much blogging anger at the way the T20 league is being imposed? I didn’t. I saw a bit BTL, I saw a bit on Twitter and in some of the papers. The comments were more on Twitter where key proponents of the new way (some of the old school) were lambasted by all and sundry.

Having said I played safe with one piece, I see a lot of playing safe now by others. It’s a shame. I see bloggers drifting away. I see the new bloggers mentioned in Wisden are not the regular content deliverers but more considered writers. I congratulate them all, and know what it did for me when I got the mention. I really, sincerely, hope they keep on going.

There are some others that disappointed me, who perhaps used the rage we had, and the wave we got on to, for their own purposes and now ignore or degrade us. I’m still a pretty sensitive soul, and believe in being true to yourself. I have never been cocksure about my own position, but drive content by the way I feel. I try not to act like I know it all, because I don’t. It’s something I can’t say comes across with others who I once thought were fellow travelers. Maybe they never were. Us and the Full Toss produce content, we think it is decent content, time after time, while never talking down to you (I believe) and yet I feel others don’t act that way. Just a thought.

The blog itself is ticking along nicely with hits. Where, on a really quiet day, in the past we might struggle to get 200 hits a day, and 50 visitors, we never get less than a hundred visitors each day and we get over 450 hits most days. That’s our worst days. It means we are read regularly by a decent number of people. We don’t have vast networks, we rarely go overboard publicising our posts (I find it somewhat depressing to see people new to the field go to the celebrities and ask for a retweet – I sort of did it once, and regretted it) but we have longevity and stickability. We rarely go a week without something being put up, and during peak season we try to limit ourselves to one post a day (the catchphrase on Whatsapp between us is “let it breathe”) because often there are more talking points. I’m glad we are a niche, I’m glad we offer something a little different to the mainstream. I’m also absolutely indebted to the two other editors, and to all the loyal support and comments we get. I say it often because I never take it for granted.

I am not motivated by hits as the main purpose. Writing a piece that goes down well, gets people talking, and I feel resonates means more to me than the volume of people who see it. We could bombard Twitter and Facebook with this, but don’t. Not really. I love the guest posts by people who love the sport and want to contribute, and we’ve had Simon, Andy and even NonOxCol put posts up. We’d love to see more, so drop us a line if you have any thoughts. You might even want to do one of our Test Match or ODI reports as these are quite often the difficult ones when it comes to availability of scribes. This involvement is what keeps us ticking over.

The journalistic landscape is definitely changing, but also there is still the resonance of the big beasts out there. I don’t think anyone with a clue can think that Nick Hoult, George Dobell, Ali Martin, Jon Hotten, Tim Wigmore, Lawrence Booth et al are not a vast improvement on the Selfey/Bunkers/Muppet axis. They will write things I disagree with, and even try too hard for my tastes at times, but those six, off the top of my head, are people I read because I find they have something interesting to say. I have to say that a lot of the others disappoint, concentrating more on being safe with the authorities than being honest with their readership. I mean, love him or loathe him, and you know where I stand, Newman at least has something to say and is interesting to read, and I owe him royalties for the amount of posts he has driven on here. Given I’ve lost three of my key ingredients, I need Newman to stick around.

Which brings me to the others. The one thing, as you know, that drove me nuts was Selfey saying he was going to do a blog, and not only that, he wasn’t going to do it for the love of it, but to monetise it. I wonder how long that market research took. Denis, with one n, put him straight with an “it doesn’t work like that”, but no. I’ve not seen it yet. Perhaps, just perhaps, someone like Mike will realise how much bloody hard work goes into blogging, and that it isn’t just a nice old recreational pursuit that any old sap could do. This blog is maintained, one way or another, nearly every day. I never, for one minute, think of myself as a journalist. I am a blogger. I never pretended that I was one of them. Nor, for one minute, should they think they are one of us. I won’t let that little beauty lie on here. Selfey’s blog is going to be up there with Alastair Cook’s promise to tell everyone why KP was sacked.

One of the seminal posts on here, the one that got the most attention in the last 12 months, was the Outside Cricket List. Obviously the idea derived from the pretentious, tone deaf, totally ludicrous list in the Cricketer magazine. Of course, the one that got to me most was the editor of that publication anointing himself as one of the top 50 movers and shakers, and not conveying any ounce of humility in doing so. It wanted attention, it got it. It also begged to be parodied.

This is the sort of thing Chris, Sean and I do best. Chris is the calmer head, the incisor, the homing missile of the blog. He is also the one who gives the least shit about what people think about him. Sean has my anger gene, definitely, and has the advantage of giving less of a shit than I do. I’m the worrier, believe it or not. I’m the one who thought a couple of the names were unwise, but they convinced me (not that I had a veto) to go for it. The result was a spectacular success in terms of feedback and hits. It could be a little OTT, but we weren’t being entirely serious. What we watched for most was the reactions of the names contained within it. It told us a lot. It will take a lot to top that for co-ordination, speed of writing, editing and cross-checking. I worried, I needn’t have. I’m in safe hands with those two. I learned to give less of a shit what people thought of me, but then, I am who I am. The diva to his driver.

That’s blogging. We’re not after awards, or to be awarded a writing gig for someone else. If that’s your thing as a blogger, then fine. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s also not a quick route to stardom and fame. To those fortunate enough to get mentioned in Wisden today, keep your feet on the ground, continue the hard work, and write about the game. We need more people to write about it, to show the world there is a core of fans who love the game, and aren’t in it for something else. It’s why I admire Tim Wigmore a lot, because he keeps his feet on the ground and writes for the supporters of the sport better than most. I had a fascinating chat with him at Lord’s about the way he worked, and what he went through at a Cricket World Cup, and it wasn’t the life of bleedin’ Riley. He’s a reporter, but working on a lot of subjects others won’t touch. I appreciate him a lot.

So, on to the next year. It’s been a tough year. A year where we have done our thing, got the people on board, passed 750000 hits in just over two years (but I’m not obsessed about it) and all being well we’ll make it to a million later this year. Not bad for a bunch of social media zealots, bilious inadequates and vile ignoramuses.

Have a great season.

In The Year 2028

LordCanisLupus46 Comments

It is 2028. English cricket is in turmoil. There’s a new report out that says after the 2029 Ashes, England will play any test cricket in May and June, including future Ashes series, and all other test series will cease. India has decided to extend the IPL into a six month competition, with 20 teams, playing each other home and away ending during the Northern Hemisphere summer, and at the risk of the test matches being played by effective 2nd XIs (or 3rd XIs in the case of the West Indies) it has been decided to cease playing test matches. The unspoken word is that key international players like Morgan Owen and Peter Kevinson are about to announce they will playing for the Ranchi Rubber Factory and Ahmedabad Reliance respectively instead of the 2029 Ashes, despite averaging well over 40 in the tests they’ve played.

Meanwhile the eight owners of the “franchises” (the teams were sold by the ECB to raise money after the disastrous 2026 summer, when England held home tests against Sri Lanka and South Africa without the visitors’ top players and crowds and TV audiences tanked) have joined together to announce, a la Premier League 1992, that they were breaking away from the ECB and forming their own English T20 Premier League company to run and administer their competition. Their first announcement after this would be to announce that two new teams would be added to the competition. Liverpool would get a new team, to create a rivalry with Manchester, and a third team would be put into London as the Olympic Stadium had been made available after West Ham had moved out to move back into a proper football ground. Given Lord’s and the Oval had sold out regularly, once the pesky Blast had been dispensed with in the 2022 Harrison Review, it made commercial sense to stick a team there, rather than the competing bids of Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin.

As a result of the breakaway, the eight current franchise owners announced that players would not be released for international or county cricket, and that given they were paying these players vast sums of money to pay T20, they would devote their careers to that format. Emboldened by the competition filling stadia throughout the land, the owners knew they held the whip hand. The ECB banned all T20 players from playing international cricket. The players shrugged. Kevinson’s contract with the Southampton Stars, the Ahmedabad Reliance and Melbourne Stars more than covered his needs without playing exhausting test cricket.

The franchise owners negotiated their own TV contract, with Sky taking 90% of the fixtures, and ITV4 having the rest. They also set to capture the internet interest by setting up their own ET20 website where cricket fans could pay £100 for the year to watch every game on streaming video. With all TVs getting their signal via the web, this was seen as more important than selling to a media company. The owners realised that not only could they contract out the technical side to one of the burgeoning private production companies, but it also got to keep all the subscription and advertising revenue for itself. Some people pointed out that MLB had been doing that for 15 or so years prior to the formation of the new T20 league in 2020, but now someone with a clue was in charge, the sport might get into the 2010s in terms of media coverage.

The sport had never had a more visible product, but traditionalists were left in the cold. Having seen the county championship abandoned in 2025 through lack of interest and quality, as many of the better players got minor IPL contracts in the expanded 20 team league, the only route into test matches was to shine in one of the T20 competitions. While Morgan Owen and Peter Kevinson had made sparkling returns, Roy Jason, a perennial scorer for the Kerala Kangaroos in the IPL, and for the South of the River Lagers in the ET20, had flopped in the last tour of South Africa. Graeme Cygnet, a promising young spinner for the Sherwood Foresters in the ET20 and the Canberra Crybabies in the 10 team Big Bash, found that bowling flat darts wasn’t a way to get top players out in tests, and we bemoaned the dearth of English spinners as Rashi Adil had retired the year before.

One problem loomed on the horizon for the ET20, and that was India’s announcement to have another league in the winter months now Test cricket had been shelved. In doing so they would insist that all players contracted to their teams would be to them only. World superstar Kooli Tendravid, a magician in all forms of the game, announced he would be the exclusive preserve of the Mumbai Billionaires, and immediately the ET20 team that had benefited from the relaxing of the Indian restrictions in 2024, the Birmingham Bears, went to the wall. Head of the ICC, Tom Harrison, said from the rented offices in the IPL HQ, that change was necessary to futureproof the game in India, and that the obsessive fanbase created in England needed to adjust to the new world. The following day Morgan Owen announced that he would be signing an all year contract for Ranchi and his putative ET20 team (he rarely played for them), the Marylebone Cricket Club Fancy Dress Party, would no longer be able to play him.

The ICC were left to fill the one event allowed per year in the timeslot assigned. The World T20 would be shoehorned in to the programme in September and October and would be played only in India. It is an annual tournament, with 6 teams representing England, India, Australia, Sri Lanka, South Africa and the winners of a qualification tournament between everyone else, played during the IPL and ET20. Each team played each other twice, before a Semi-Final and Final. Three time winners West Indies had dissolved as an international federation, but Barbados did squeak in as the 8th best qualifier for the straight knock-out qualifying tournament. Their top players, Brathwaite Carlos, Brathwaite Craig and bowler Tino Mediocre, were all playing in the IPL and ET20, earning £500k and more each. When Barbados demanded they play for them for a match fee of $50, they were branded mercenaries for turning it down and banned for life by Cameron David, the head of the Barbados Cricket Association.

Wisden, henceforth known as the Bible of T20 cricket, has shortened to 100 pages and is an online resource only. The real bible has become CricViz, with the stats obsessed franchises utilising the data for the annual draft for new international players. Cricket blogs either looked back in joy at the exploits of Alastair Cook, laughed at the inefficiency of Brian Lara’s backlift, or went to town on Morgan Owen’s Fielder Utilisation Coverage ratio. Paul Newman still maintained Kevin Pietersen should have been sacked, George Dobell had been made patron of the Chris Woakes Charitable Foundation and Derek Pringle and Dmitri Old had a bar fight with their zimmer frames after a chance meeting at the ET20 exhibition at the Olympic Stadium. Mike Selvey and Giles Clarke, seeing what had become of the game, had driven off like Thelma and Louise, pursued by angry obsessives, bilious inadequates and the quaint social media zealots who still used Twitter.

In a sad reflection of the state of the modern game, Alastair Cook, aged 43, scored 205 not out for Essex against Sussex in the successor to the County Championship, the Southern League. He took the attack to the assortment of 30+ and under 20s left playing second tier cricket. When asked why he was still playing, Cook said “you know why? Because I love playing cricket, and batting for more than an hour”. The audience laughed at him. “I once got a century in T20, you know” he added. “That didn’t count” said one media pundit. “It happened before the year 2020. Cricket didn’t exist before then”. That media pundit had ascended to #17 in the cricket hotlist. Below the ten franchise owners, the head of the ET20, a couple of player agents, the MCC (who owned a franchise, a ground and still had a 200000 waiting list), media personality Ben Stokes and head of the IPL, Ravi Jadeja. Simon Hughes had come a long way.

OK. It is a bit hit and miss, and I did it in one take. Some of it might be nonsense. But you’ll be fooling yourself if you don’t think some of it will come true. Like if the competition is a success it will be flogged to owners for cash. That’s how we do things here. Add your own ridiculous thoughts to the comments.

“Do SOMETHING! ANYTHING!”

LordCanisLupus115 Comments

Sean’s excellent piece on Saturday captured the arguments over the plans to introduce a new T20 competition succinctly and accurately. I must put my cards on the table here. I just don’t think T20 is much good. It’s not particularly memorable in its own right, and because it is so frequent, with game after game after game bombarding you, a tournament like the Big Bash just feels like it goes on too long. Which means the IPL has got to a serious “what the hell” phase long before it gets to its knockout phase, or whatever it is that concludes it. I went to the first ever T20 at The Oval, back in the day, where the sheer shock that the ground was almost full and the club had catered for half that, still sticks in the mind more than the game did (Comma made a 50 I see). It’s interesting to see how the articles refer to the same concerns on show now.

Questioned about a shorter format, almost half were against it but of the 34% who expressed approval, most had never attended a county game. And for Robertson and the ECB it was the possibility of attracting new fans – and crucially families – that convinced them to press on.

“I just couldn’t see how it wouldn’t work,” John Carr, the ECB’s director of cricket operations at the time, said in 2004. “But it took a lot to convince the counties. Fair play to [Robertson]. It is one thing to have an idea like we did, but quite another to sell it. And that is what he did. And not only to the public, because I thought that one of the most important things was that it was sold to the players. It would only work if they took it seriously and did not dismiss it as ‘hit-and-giggle’ cricket.”

I used to go to a few of them back then. I remember Andrew Symonds tearing some attack apart at Beckenham (it was Hampshire’s), a very well contested quarter-final between Surrey and Worcestershire when it was skillful bowling that saved the day, and the “penalty bowl out” between Surrey and Warwickshire. I was a member back then, and felt absolutely no desire to go to Finals Day, and I had a culture of following my other sporting love all round the country.

For me T20 was there for a one-off “hope something good might happen” but often disappointed. I got a couple of free tickets to see Surrey a few years back, and KP was playing so it was a rare chance to see him in action, but the games themselves weren’t very exciting to me. I realise I’m not the kind of supporter this new competition is meant to get to, but also I wasn’t a fan of playing it when I had the chance, and thought it wasn’t that great a concept. It was cricket for cricket’s sake. I remember going to a Surrey v Middlesex game on my birthday, and Middlesex barely got 100. It was cripplingly dull. Even the most boring day at a test was better than that. No amount of fire machines, dancing people and loud music could make up for the fact it was a rubbish game.

The clubs saw the chance in the immediate aftermath of the initial success to go from the five games they had planned in season 1, and they continued in Season 2, to more. Remember those lazy hazy first season matches at East Molesey and Richmond Park? This increased to 8 in Season 3 and went up to, 10 in its 6th season. The counties became dependent on it to continue, seeing it as a necessary income, and could not resist the temptation to overkill. In its eighth season, in 2010, it became a league of 16 games, with quarter-finals? Even then they sensed they were killing the golden goose, because it reverted to 10 games after two seasons, before settling on the 14 we have now with the Blast (from 2014).

What that showed is the counties had no real idea on what to settle upon, and I know a number kicked up fury when it went from 8 home games to 5 in 2012. The Blast has seen some improvement in the attendances and there appears a fair buzz towards it this year. The “appointment to view” with a Friday night fixture was actually, in hindsight, a decent idea, but that’s been watered down now we’ve decided to play the fixtures in more of a block.

Then we have the IPL and the Big Bash. Envious glances were cast at these two competitions. Both play in considerably larger grounds than we have in this country, and both, therefore, attract the money makers. The IPL was very much set up as the Premier League of cricket, and the BBL followed with a different kind of league, but in sun-kissed stadia, free to air TV, and the teams playing just 8 games each. Both played one game a day (occasionally two at weekends), but all were televised live, and that’s what has got the attention of the ECB and their influential friends in the media. There wasn’t a Big Bash occasion that seemed to go by without Shiny Toy doing down our competition and bigging up theirs. The aim to copy the IPL wasn’t possible – we didn’t have the money, or the calendar slot for it – hence the waltz down the Sandford cul-de-sac. But the Big Bash? Why not?

I have always said that new leaders have to have a new idea to be remembered by and it has to be a big one. There is no place in this world for staying still, because the world moves without you if you do. For some, the sheer fact that Test Cricket has been in existence for 140 years is anathema in itself. The English football authorities changed in 1992 to the Premier League, which, we are told, has made our competition the best in the world, but in doing so, virtually killed the other main crown jewel, the FA Cup, dead. As a football fan of a non-Premier League team, I despise this. There’s nothing in the top heavy structure for me, and the FA Cup is a joke. We beat three Premier League teams this year, all playing reserve XIs, before Spurs put us out by taking the game vaguely seriously. The FA Cup is seen as a consolation prize now. In twenty years the culture of it being the biggest single day out is now relegated to big clubs saying it is not enough to win it.

What will a new City-based (or whatever it is) do the Blast which seemed to be standing on its own two feet, was a competition anyone could win (see Northants and Leicester – it’s great Yorkshire, the mighty Yorkshire, haven’t won it) and people seemed to genuinely enjoy it? I think there’s an overly rosy picture painted of it, the Blast is not perfect, but it’s working out for all concerned and there is a rise in interest. I wish it were a little shorter, but then I already said I’m not that bothered about it. But when Michael Vaughan is wetting himself every time the Big Bash comes on, it’s hard to resist. If you look at how recent ex-pros, who didn’t play much county cricket towards the end of their careers, react to the onset of a new competition, it’s noticeable how many do their old breeding grounds down.

The new competition is designed to get new followers in to watch the game. Tom Harrison, the Empty Suit, is carving out quite a niche for himself as an absolute weapon. In selling this “vision”, his new management brings radical change “thing”, he’s not just in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, he wants to fit someone else up for the incident. In a series of responses to Sean’s piece, I picked out a few of them, but two stood out.

Obsessive

‘Counties have been incredibly successful having an audience that is obsessive about the game but our county brands are not cutting through so this is all about creating brands that are relevant to our target audience of families and children. We have to connect to their very busy world.”

I know, over the years I’ve been doing this, that I can take a throwaway line and make too much of it. After all, we aren’t called “Being Outside Cricket” for nothing, eh Paul Downton? But the choice of the word “obsessive” here is an interesting one. Obsessive has very negative connotations. As if you shouldn’t be doing something. If you obsess over something the inference is that you shouldn’t, or you should dial it back a bit. So if you are “obsessive” about the county game, maybe you shouldn’t be? Harrison, despite playing some county cricket, clearly has some negative perceptions of the people who follow it. Demographic perhaps, social class perhaps? It’s an issue that won’t go away. County cricket, last I looked, provided all but one England test player in my lifetime (ole Muppet Pringle came from the Universities when he made his debut). The County Championship has, I think many will say, flourished so the top division is now seen as a rival to any first class competition in the world. I watched some last year, and although we’re not getting the top world pros any more, the underlying quality of the home talent is pretty decent. It’s not for all, and it is based on what some would see as arcane old structures, but it kind of works from a cricket perspective. It also instills loyalty in it. That, Tom, is no bad thing. It is a positive, not a negative.

Harrison could, if he had a modicum of charm, had called the denizens of the county game “passionate”, “devoted” or “enthusiastic”. Instead, because they don’t worship at his sharp empty-suited altar, they are obsessive. They are also obstructive. They don’t go on “leaps of faith” or “Futurebrand presentations” but live in the here and now. Many have never accepted T20 but see it as a necessary evil, and their counties have kept the show on the road because of it. Now they see a new competition as a threat to their very existence. And so they should.

Harrison and his cheerleaders and parrots in the media are selling the by-passing of these views as a virtue! Not all of us are “county championship or nothing” fans, but I respect the hell out of those that are. They are the people who will tell their kids, and their grandkids, about the feats of the past, just as my Dad told me about his era. It is they who will tell kids born now of the majesty of Tendulkar, the brilliance of Lara, the dominance of the great Aussie teams, and yes, things like being at Adelaide, or seeing England hit the bottom of the Test table (though for me it will need to be my nieces and nephew). These obsessives are your core support, Empty Suit. Why piss them off even more than you have to? I feel insulted by that statement, and so should anyone who will be there in a week or so supporting their county as the Championship starts. The ECB can call it #realcricket if they want on their mildly annoying Twitter feed, but when the voice at the top thinks it is OK to use “obsessive” I think he gives away what he really feels.

It’s Not About The Game, Dummy

“Twenty20 is short and sharp. The actual game is secondary to the entertainment and fan experience.”

I remember watching Star Wars, the original, back in the day at the Odeon in Lewisham. It’s been long since destroyed. It was smoke-filled, the seats were crap, the service worse, the film quality passable, yet I still remember it. It was shorter than a T20, it was new-ish (I mean, we’d all seen Star Trek) and the thing that stuck out was that it was an entertaining film that I still recall.

I went to see Phantom Menace in a lovely multiplex cinema, massive screen, comfy chairs, all mod cons, expensive food and drink, and the film was garbage. Just because my “fan experience” was good, and there was much more comfort, the “product” itself, what you go for, was ropy. I didn’t go to the cinema to see the next two, or even the new one.

Harrison here is giving the game away. On the one hand he wants a competition to capture the buzz, the excitement, the thrills of the Big Bash. But on the other he says this is “of secondary importance”. What the serious you know what is he on about? What the Blast has, no matter how little you feel about it, is when you get to the latter stages of it, it clearly matters to a lot of people. Northants and Leicestershire should tell you that. They couldn’t give a flying one about a “customer experience” and more about are they going to win the competition, as do their fans. You can’t just, in this country for sure, astroturf supporters. It’s called grass roots support for a reason. Harrison isn’t trying to get new people involved by a meaningful competition, but by some sort of high entertainment exhibition. Again, you watch the Big Bash and there does appear to be, especially with the Perth team, an affinity between the team and the supporters, and they are playing their matches at their worst test ground for amenities.

The argument, it seems the only argument, for this competition is to bring new spectators to the game. Now this is going to be interesting to see how this is done. Let’s say, for instance, that The Oval is hosting a fixture against the North London team. I could see how a rivalry might develop, and both those counties have a relatively short commuting range to get to the grounds. The Oval has a bit of a rep for becoming a drinking den during the T20 games. Up the ante on the supposed quality, and those supporters would be interested in more of the same in the late Summer months. How are you going to keep them out? Because that’s what Tom and co seem to be implying. These guys are good at getting tickets – better, I would suggest, than families, mums and dads. The city boys who make The Oval “what it is” on Blast days won’t mind shelling out a few extra quid. Are we going to make large parts of the ground “alcohol free”? How are you going to police that? How are you going to ensure families get tickets, even if there is no idea if that market actually exists? Are the ECB, in effect, going to take over the running of the ground for that game, something they don’t even do for international fixtures? Why would Surrey let the ECB take over the Oval for 4 or 5 nights a year? And good luck trying that with Lord’s!!!!!

It’s OK for fancy dan presentations by Futurebrand, or whoever they are, telling the ECB how to run things, giving them what they want, but what does Harrison actually want? There’s woolly aims about growing the game, future-proofing it, putting it on terrestrial TV. There’s much out there saying the status quo isn’t an option, and that county cricket isn’t a brand that sells. It’s much like test cricket. If you talk it down enough, you end up with even the supporters having little long-term faith. Harrison has fancy ideas, but no idea what will happen. He’s taking a leap of faith. If you are asking me to have faith in an ECB leap of faith, then you are asking the wrong person. The ECB used up my web of goodwill ages ago. All I see are charlatans at the top, keeping the man who did the most to sabotage long-term growth (Clarke) in gainful employment, and his successor locked firmly in Downton’s cupboard in case he says anything more out of order than the Empty Suit. When you have Comma, with a straight face, saying this competition could produce the test players of the future (yes, lots of “spinners” bowling darts is just what we need), my eyes rolled. They want a Big Bash. Michael Vaughan wants a Big Bash. Nasser Hussain wants a Big Bash. #39 wants a Big Bash.

It would just be the most honest thing to call it Big Bash, wouldn’t it. I can’t wait for the South London Scum to play the North London Toffs, and I hope many families will come for the “customer experience”. Let me hear them make some noise…

Gambling the Family Jewels

Sir Ronald136 Comments

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.

Just Who Is This Clown?

LordCanisLupus62 Comments
Tom Harrison
Comical Empty Suit

You know me. I’m calm. I’m placid. Nothing much riles me. This blog has always been about keeping an even keel, being steady as she goes. But sometimes, just occasionally, someone pushes me too damn hard.

And in the past couple of days that person has been Tom Harrison, aka The Empty Suit. Here’s this no-mark’s latest missive from his saintly pulpit:

Speaking as the ECB launched All-Stars Cricket, which aims to get 50,000 five to eight-year-olds excited by the game this year, Harrison said: “The England teams are very clear that part of their responsibility in playing this bold and brave cricket – this commitment to playing an exciting formula of cricket every time they go on the park – is linked to this.

I don’t like unique, Simon H doesn’t like statements, I don’t have a lot of time for either formula or brands, and Mark doesn’t have a lot of time for any of them 🙂 . But this is arrant nonsense, and if I were Trevor Bayliss, or Andrew Strauss, I’d tell this effing bean counter to do one, or I’m resigning my post. If he wants to set the direction of travel for English cricket, then win the job as the absentee landlord coach, his laugh-a-minute deputy, or the man who put the comma into Director, Cricket. Until then, the way they play is up to them whether you like it or not.

One has to think what Alastair Cook must be thinking now. His job in the new England team, and my, we have a new England team every couple of months these days, is to be our anchor man. He has a promising young partner who appears to come to test cricket with an oven ready defensive technique and temperament, and we’ve got an Empty suit spouting off like a screaming child at a Bieber concert!

“Joe Root and [one-day and Twenty20 captain] Eoin Morgan understand their responsibility to be playing exciting cricket for future generations to connect with and for fans of the game to get behind us. It’s a very deliberate strategy. It doesn’t work every time you go out on the park. But we understand that it’s more likely you’re going to be forgiven for having a bad day if you’re doing everything to try to win a game, as opposed to not trying to lose it, which is a very key difference in positioning.”

I want to bang my head against a wall. Look at Australia on the same day as Harrison is uttering this wibble. They’ve played magnificently to draw a test and stay in the series when they could have blown it. Like another team failed to do and did blow it not so long ago. Someone pointed out in the comments that isn’t this opening up players to play so-called “reckless” shots and being able to quote “that’s the way I play”. I seem to recall that not going down too well not so long ago. Not just with the powers that be, but with the media as well. Harrison is not some wet-behind-the-ears media newbie like Downton.

Harrison said it was “100 per cent correct” that growing the game mattered more to the ECB than England winning a one-off Test playing boring cricket.

Then you are wrong. If we win an Ashes test playing boring cricket, then good on us. You won’t be finding me ever criticising the 2013 Ashes team.

“We’re in a competitive world now. The reason why T20 blows other ratings out of the park on television and attendances – and this is not just in the UK, this is around the world – is because people want to watch. They know they’re going to go there and see some dramatic cricket, they’re going to see some amazing skill.”

Oh fuck me. In one paragraph he’s given the whole game away. He’s not concerned about cricket over and above everything else. He cares about revenue. T20 revenue. Competitive world it may be, but you are saying you are giving up on tests, and that T20 has to make money to fund it.

“We know that we’ve got a relevance issue with five to eight year-olds at the moment, as many sports do. We know that we’ve got a sport which can appeal to these audiences if we position it correctly and we deliver experiences that makes sense to parents and makes sense to kids.”

So in doing so, we’ll pay no heed to the preachers of the game – the parents, the people who play and run the clubs the ECB seemingly have just discovered since Matt Dwyer came into the fold – who seem to quite like test cricket, enjoy watching it, and would like to actually, you know, get to watch it without selling a kidney for a ticket, or their kids for a TV subscription. He’s still not mentioning the elephant in the room, is he? He can’t be this empty, can he?

Harrison said that the ECB’s controversial creation of an eight-team city-based Twenty20 competition was driven by similar motives.

“We’re trying to connect everything we do with this new audience that we’re trying to attract to the game,” he said, adding that it was about “making sure it’s relevant for mum and the family to go and spend some time at the county ground watching, taking their children along, watching a fantastic, phenomenal, exciting game of cricket”.

And throw the baby out with the bathwater. Make those mums and families travel further, to see teams made up of players thrown together at random, and who will all fly off to play in another league where they are all thrown together at random and rinse…repeat. It’s not putting a lot faith in the competition, it cares more about “individual skill” and “phenomenal, exciting” games of cricket. Watch Day 5 at The Oval in 2005. Watch Day 5 at Adelaide in 2006. Watch tension and pressure ratcheted up to the hilt. It’s what makes the Ryder Cup great. You know it means so much. Playing for England rather than some corporate whoredom like the Premier League, and its fans, have become.

Harrison revealed that whoever won the rights to the competition would have a say on which eight cities ended up with teams. He also disclosed that the ECB’s various rights would be split into packages, with at least one made affordable for terrestrial broadcasters, who have been starved of live coverage since 2005.

“The last time we went to market, we did not have international T20 as a product which was really packaged in a way that excited broadcasters,” he added. “We’ve got the new T20 tournament, which is designed to grow the sport in this country. And that will excite broadcasters. It is exciting broadcasters.”

Notice how the supporters have only been invoked as meaningless children carrying fodder, there to get the mums and kids (patronising as it is that mums don’t already like cricket – my mum, for example, loved it. Breaks my heart she died just before the 2005 Ashes) to come along. But no, the rights winners “would have a say on which eight cities ended up with teams”. This is like someone has put the worst ingredients of every single focus group inspired marketing consultant into a sports authority and then added steroids for an enhanced performance.

Harrison denied that English cricket had become less visible since live coverage vanished from free-to-air, insisting players such as Ben Stokes had “huge profiles”.

Well then he’s a liar as well as a clown.

This article was based on the reportage from the Telegraph article – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/03/20/joe-root-told-england-must-play-exciting-cricket-even-leads/