“The the world continues to end, but every year new people who are too dumb come to know that it’s going on as if the fun has just begun. ” The creation of John Updike, Harry Angstrom, the antichrist of Rabbit novels, may have been contemplating life as a tired middle-aged car salesman in a rust-ridden America. But speculating on the fate of English cricket over the years could be just as easy: a sport that is always in crisis, that is constantly dying, that is dying of some kind from the day it was born .
Undoubtedly the 18th century Broadhalfpenny Down Hambledon family spent their evenings sighing around the inn fire about the failure of batting techniques, the impatience of youth and how the invention of the electric telegraph does not survive. Even The Ashes, a memorial to the golden age of test cricket and a commercial life force, was born out of a funeral rite.
Zoom in and be tempted to conclude that End Times and lost idylls are the natural state of English cricket, a function of where it sits in the calendar, a sporting season that dies every autumn and the dark skies, where there are only sunny days spinning. in between the gloom.
That drum has started to beat much louder in recent years. And with a feeling now that the usual doom notes come with real contraction and decline, the departure from schools, the marketing surveys that rank cricket just below lacrosse and eating sand in lists of favorite activities; together with hard, irreconcilable evidence of racism, elitism, exclusion, monoculture sealed behind its high garden wall. At what point do we reach critical mass?
For all the minor chords, here’s something else. With the current season going high in the summer, with the crowd dripping and shouting at Blast games sold out, and Test cricket starting to roll out into the summer corners without football, and the Hundreds promising that the first season full of new. new stuff and sound (along with heavy marketing and cheap tickets), it’s hard not to conclude that this thing is very much alive for a dying sport.
The patient, against all expectations, seems to be not only critical, but – quietly, and in certain defined spaces – treating with good health. Because of all its flaws and its basic awkwardness, people want this thing. Cricket may or may not really be the problem with English cricket.
The IS Guardian and Observer Sports Desk has commissioned a series of articles exploring the current state of English cricket. While a warning note will always be present, just as deep is the depth of will to preserve this game, the impression is that the game itself is good, that its struggles are structured and self – imposed on many ways. Are we really confident that the England and Wales Cricket Board is the best solution?
It’s time to have this discussion. The ECB has no chief executive or chairman. The driving force over the last few years has been Tom Harrison, who kept the lights on, but also oversaw a major racism scandal, the management decline of red-ball cricket, who took a huge personal bonus out of the game and alienated many . traditional cricket fans (this is not always a bad word). Is the ECB, as constituted, still able to address the issues? Are we happy with it? Do we need to dismantle it and find something new?
This is not a great suggestion. It is easy to forget that the ECB is relatively new; and that the counties are not the only ones whose subjects. It is the counties that underwrite and endorse the ECB, not the other way around. It is a construction, which plays a defining role at the top of the English cricket administration, but without deep cultural roots.
The ECB is 25 years old. Its successor, the County Test and Cricket Board, lasted 28 years. Previously, English cricket was regulated by the MCC and the Governing Body of Test Matches. These two bodies were later called to exist for very specific reasons, each time related to money and control.
The TCCB was set up to allow English cricket to draw down government funding, which it could not do as a private club run by the MCC. Its center, the ECB, was set up as a mechanism to manage another new cash flow, the 1990s pay-TV markets.
The ECB was therefore well established as a negotiator on broadcasting rights and hence as a more professional means of distributing this powerful new source of funding. For the playing field the aim was quite simple: to win for England by introducing stability, core contracts and a high – performance environment, thereby making its own TV product more valuable.
This has worked very well for a decade. It worked well with some distractions for the second decade. Currently, it is a model that is more challenging. All of these things have a span. And the world has changed again.
Franchise cricket is the coming power. The ECB’s golden goose, England’s team, with its cycle of satellite broadcasting rights fixed, is no longer the main driver of future revenue. The ECB understands this better than anyone, so it was a good idea for the First. And so in the midst of this changing landscape we have a situation where the ECB’s movements often feel designed to promote and preserve the ECB’s power, rather than the health and spread of what others might call the “English crook ”.
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It is the behavior of a declining classic dictator. I am the state. What is good for me is good for all of you. So the drive to create that panic franchise product, cut out the counties, the need to go in search of the sunset and create its own piece of intellectual property.
Does the ECB, a body obsessed with instant growth, eyeballs and revenue streams, really understand what is needed? Because those needs have changed. A real priority for English cricket as a whole is not to spend a little more money away from its broadcasters, but to preserve and spread it and find a way to share (not sell) a sport that has already made money in its senior audience. captive.
The role of any new governing body would be outreach, properly addressing the ECB’s problems since exclusion, barriers to entry, institutional racism, invisibility and perceived the public this sport no longer.
These are not side issues to be managed by twisting and puffing. They are critical to survival and require a dedicated and dedicated hand. The ECB has tried to address all of these with the hope of a game and a slogan. But at the bottom of the page it is run by marketing people for marketing purposes. It cannot solve these problems or find a way to do that which is not a sales action, also at the bottom.
Any new governing body will also have to properly engage with India. The ECB has always had a cultural fear of being cut off and under the auspices of the Governing Body of Cricket in India and the Indian Premier League. But it must be understood that the center of power of India is just the reality, that things like the new IPL abolition rights deal are good for cricket, because this is where cricket is now, which the game of England must face that way, a feature of it and a satellite to this mega-series, not its edible aunt.
The original articles of new cricket governance have many other tasks to do. Breaking the core contracts, related to the old ECB model, in favor of simply paying handsomely for all Tests played, opening the pool to all active players, re-energizing the county’s red ball cricket as a corridor.
Engage and nurture the interests of the counties, without struggling with them, accept that they are the counties where the game can be spread and diversified, where access can be fostered.
It would be a good thing for a new company to remember that cricket will always remain a legacy product to some extent, odd and troublesome, yet strongly attractive; that this is strength, not something to embarrass or bluntly dilute. Above all, a new governing body would have to enjoy cricket.
Sport in general in this country is very hungry. The largest crowds from Test matches are still smaller than the largest weekly crowds in the third tier of English football. It shouldn’t take too long to make the game viable enough, healthy enough, open enough. What is needed is a will, leadership and a body fit for purpose.