If the past, dramatic week proves anything, it is that Twenty20 has become the
central financial pillar of cricket. In infancy, it was a diversion and an
entertainment; in maturity, it is the bread-winner. The sport has never been
so wealthy as it is right now.
Friday evening’s Twenty20 international in Manchester raked in more than half
a million pounds in ticket receipts alone. Hours earlier, Surrey had
announced that ticket sales for their Twenty20 Cup matches had topped £1m, a
figure that a few years ago would have been regarded as staggering for five
county matches.
But these days, everything to do with Twenty20 is measured in millions. Every
stakeholder - from cricketers to counties to countries - is reassessing
their priorities and business plans. The game may be cash-rich, but many of
its wellwishers are confidence-poor. They fear the unknown final destination
of this vast gravy train.
In Twenty20, cricket may finally have a means by which it could eventually
conquer even the United States and China and become as popular as football;
but Twenty20 could also make cricket as vulgar and ill-disciplined as
football. It may be about to find out rather more than it wishes about
pop-star Wags, Hello! magazine and red and yellow cards.
One fears for the players. Some look as though they don’t know what’s hit
them, but there is more money coming their way. They now talk openly about
going to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL) next year because England
coach Peter Moores believes (quite rightly) that it can provide essential
preparation for the world Twenty20 championship. Regaining the Ashes has
become a largely cricketing, rather than commercial, exercise.
Test cricket may be forced to change to appear more contemporary. It has been
in trouble for years outside England, where attendances remain excellent and
may even have benefited from the Twenty20 boom. The world Test championship,
such as it is, is a mess. Administrators invite solutions from a white
knight; only billionaires need apply.
Floodlit Tests may be the way forward, provided the pink ball passes muster,
and if the effect of Twenty20 is to raise scoring and over rates the case
for restricting Tests to four days may prove irresistible. Neutral Tests and
a two-division championship may be other options.
Kevin Pietersen predicted yesterday that we are witnessing the death of
traditional one-day cricket. “Twenty20 will be the new form of one-day
cricket, for sure,” he said. “In the next couple of years, 50-overs cricket
is going to be something of the past. Scoring could speed up and we may see
a lot more four-day Tests. To me, Test cricket is still the best. There’s no
better feeling than getting a Test-match hundred.
“Twenty20 is a game that is at the fore-front of our thought patterns. It has
turned into a huge business. I see [Allen] Stanford as a bonus for England.
He could have chosen Australia, Pakistan, anybody. At the end of the day, if
we go to Antigua and lose, we go home with a tour fee. There is no point
building it up into this incredible game you have to win to set yourself up
for life. You are guaranteed to lose then. If you play well, your bank
balance looks after itself. If we walk away having lost, it was just a
bonus.
“The IPL money is guaranteed. Our players have to play as much Twenty20 as we
can . . . That is an opportunity for the guys to get to India to play in the
IPL so that they can get themselves ready for the world Twenty20.”
Much reaction in England to the deal with Sir Allen Stanford has been hostile,
just as it was when that other high roller, Kerry Packer, swung into town.
The difference this time is that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)
has chosen to meet the entrepreneur in bed rather than in court.
It is an indication of how much English cricket has changed that the ECB
(which, after all, created the format) has never been far from the action
during the Twenty20 Revolution. Even when India hijacked the concept for the
IPL, the ECB hierarchy went to India en masse and took notes.
Plainly, the ECB had its own motives for ensuring the Champions League and
Stanford plans left the drawing board – the start of a new domestic Twenty20
season for one, negotiations for what should be a gargantuan media deal
another. Stanford, too, might be looking for tax efficiency and a return on
his investment in the US, where he is talking to television companies about
screening the challenge matches with England.
Both parties deserve credit for acting in the wider interests of the game. The
International Cricket Council may provide hesitant leadership - as an
organisation representing divergent interests, it always has - but the
Stanford deals are among the more benevolent in cricket.
Forget the helicopter ride, forget the freight full of dollars. These
arrangements could save West Indian cricket, which has given the game some
of its most brilliant and entertaining talents and which simply must not be
allowed to die.
But dying it was. Thanks in part to amateurish management, the West Indies
board had been recording deficits for years before the Stanford 20/20
tournament and the 2007 World Cup cleared arrears. Perennial neglect cannot
be undone overnight and what the Stanford-ECB deal has done is secure £17m
worth of investment in grass-roots cricket in the Caribbean.
This could be the start of the long-awaited revival. The hope is that Twenty20
cricket will inspire the younger generation in the Caribbean, as it has done
in India, where a youthful fast bowler from Punjab, Manpreet Gony, has risen
from obscurity into the Indian one-day squad on the back of his IPL
performances for Chennai. West Indies cricket may be further nourished. A
Stanford XI may play in the new English Premier League Twenty20 in 2010 and
if it does, a reciprocal arrangement would see the English Twenty20
champions go to the Caribbean to play the Stanford 20/20 champions for $1m,
cementing further the notion that the best Twenty20 county would be
preeminent in England.
Without the ECB, the Stanford deal would not have been done. West Indian
administrators did not know how to deal with a man as wealthy as Stanford,
whom they refused to entertain when he first came on the scene. This was why
Stanford was at such pains to praise the efficiency of the ECB.
Nor is it coincidence that the third and fourth countries earmarked to take
part in the inaugural Twenty20 quadrangular tournament at Lord’s - another
scheme hatched by the ECB-Stanford axis - are Sri Lanka and New Zealand.
After West Indies, these two are the most impoverished of the major regions.
In February this year, the Sri Lankan board was overdrawn by £3m, while in
2006-07 New Zealand Cricket operated on a very small budget. Although this
year’s inaugural Champions League involves cricket’s richest countries in
England, Australia, South Africa and India, other countries intend to enter
their top sides in future years. This should further bolster the game’s
poorer relations.
There are problems with the Champions League. The Indian board wants to play
hard-ball with anyone who appeared in the Indian Cricket League (ICL), or
any team that selects ICL players. But Cricket Australia, which is drawing
up the regulations, may take a softer line and simply bar any players
holding existing ICL contracts, rather than the teams employing them.
The other concern is that several players are apparently eligible for more
than one qualifying team. However, several employers had anticipated this
problem and drew up contracts that specified that in the event of a conflict
of interest the player must be available for them; such is the case with
Hampshire captain Dimitri Mascarenhas, who has also turned out for Rajasthan
Royals, and Francois du Plessis at Titans, who is now turning out for
Lancashire.
Both of these issues are, in reality, mere teething problems. The chances are
that soon enough the ICL will have collapsed altogether and one perceived
problem will cease to be an issue.
It is on the home front that the ECB has played its hand less assuredly. For
too long it has focused on the preparation and remuneration of the national
team at the expense of the counties who produce the players. Many county
clubs feel neglected by the ECB. They feel they have seen less than they
might of the game’s new riches while the ECB has built up its reserves from
the negative positions of 2001-04 to £22m at the end of the past financial
year.
They are aggrieved that Moores will supposedly decide who plays in the IPL
next year when they, the counties, hold the base contracts for international
players. They are entitled to release players to the IPL and negotiate fees
for doing so. They are aggrieved, too, that they give up players to England
during the domestic Twenty20 Cup for a pittance.
In the past this did not much matter, but now that there is Champions League
qualification and a lot of money at stake, it matters a great deal. The
chances of Hampshire and Nottinghamshire reaching the Champions League are
severely affected by them losing
