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Test cricket in serious danger
By Will 2 years ago, mid-October, 10 Comments »
I have accepted Twenty20. I even like it. But watching how powerful the newly-formed tournaments have become is like witnessing a teenager push a pensioner over on the street. It’s rude, wrong and has an air of danger. You want to stop it; you don’t quite know how.
The pensioner, if you’ll allow me to extend this frankly ridiculous analogy, is Test cricket. OK, so the doddery old bugger hasn’t yet been floored by IPL’s gang, but the news this week that Sri Lanka could be sending a second XI to tour England next year is the most significant effect Twenty20 has had on the game as a whole. The Twenty20 World Cup has been a success, and will eventually replace the ageing 50-over wreck, but Test cricket has so far remained swaddled in its own security blanket of tradition. Until now.
The reason, if you’re not aware, is that Sri Lanka Cricket has proposed a US$70m deal with Lalit Modi, the oligarch behind the IPL. In addition, Sri Lanka’s sports minister has said that his top players are therefore committed to fulfilling their highly lucrative contracts with Modi – at the expense of Tests. The teenagers are jeering at the old pensioner. “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough,” they rant.
By 2010, almost half the County Championship fixtures will be done and dusted by about May 15, to accomodate the English Premier League, the Twenty20 Cup and whatever else the ECB’s bean-counters decide upon. Where does this leave four and five-day cricket? The Championship remains the most coveted title in England. Test cricket remains the atlas of most cricketers’ aspirations. And yet they could soon be marginalised by the unsavoury appetite for money.
Once dollars are involved, it’s very hard to stop the rift widening. Who can blame players when they’re being offered life-changing sums? Happily, the ICC president, David Morgan, has brandished this decision by Sri Lanka as deeply worrying, so there is still hope that his organisation can stop the rot. But if Sri Lanka do decide not to tour, their relationship with India thus strengthens, and the BCCI’s clout over world cricket becomes even more encompassing. Even more worrying.
The whole face of international cricket could be about to change very dramatically.
10 Comments »Stanford close to luring ECB
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of April, 59 Comments »
Allen Stanford and Lalit Modi. Two entirely different characters, both from opposite ends of the world – geographically and, arguably, morally – but both with a shared love of money and cricket. Why do I worry less about the Wild West cowboy, and more about Modi’s modus operandi?
Perhaps it’s because he’s American and has no historical connection to a cricket board. Maybe it’s because he appears to have no dirty agenda to the politics of the sport: he’s seemingly happy to pile money into the flayling West Indies cricket, and anyone else who wants to join in the fun is more than welcome. This sounds naive – of course, billionaires crave and adore money: it is their driving force – but his come-follow-me attitude is refreshing and progressive, which cannot be said of Modi. Modi’s business is power and politics; the IPL has already made him millions, but it is a vehicule to global dominance. We’ve seen this season how the ECB have been tied up in knots banning (and subsequently unbanning) various players who represented the Indian Cricket League – the antichrist to the sanctioned IPL – which demonstrates just how much power the BCCI wields.
Anyway, I digress. I like Mr Stanford and am quite excited by what he could do to counter Modi’s unquenchable thirst for dominance. He has met with the ECB – significantly, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board, Dr Julian Hunte, was also present – to finalise plans for an England v West Indies All Stars XI later this year (and possibly running over five years). The matches themselves aren’t too significant, but it could signal the start of a business relationship which expands far beyond any of our imaginings. Stanford’s 20/20 in the Caribbean was a rollicking success – some say he should be in charge of ICC’s World Cups – so it’ll be fascinating to see what he and England come up with.
59 Comments »BCCI flex their muscles
By Will 2 years ago, mid-February, 24 Comments »
There is yet more evidence of the power that the BCCI wield, and the influence of the Asian bloc, with the news that the Indian board have bluntly warned Australia not to pull out of their tour of Pakistan. What right do they have to “warn” Australia? Not a lot, you would think. After all India is only one of ten members. But such is their immense financial clout, they will always get support from the Asian bloc (and support any Asian country who, in the BCCI’s opinion, need it) and Zimbabwe, West Indies and South Africa are easily swayed to help give India a 7-3 majority.
BCCI vice-president Rajiv Shukla said Australia would face major repercussions if it abandoned the six-week tour, due to begin mid-March.
“There will be serious consequences because you can’t just pull out a committed tour when the host board is giving you assurances about security and so is the government,” he said.
“If the host board and government is willing to give assurances, you have to accept that you can’t just cancel a confirmed FTP tour,” he said.
From Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
A deeply worrying development. Cricket is as unstable now as it has ever been, and I have absolutely no idea where it will all end up in five, 10, 20 years. Asian bloc v the rest? You wouldn’t bet against it.
24 Comments »Flintoff v Gayle
By Will 6 years ago, at the end of November, No Comments; be the first!
This made me smile…
“I don’t really consider myself a big-hitter. If you want to talk about power, talk about Chris Gayle of the West Indies – that boy is strong.”
That’s Andrew Flintoff talking – good thing is, I think Gayle would say the same about Freddie…and for what it’s worth, I think they’re both as powerful as eachother.
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