Daniel Brigham: Why Modi will save English cricket
February 11th, 2010 by Daniel Brigham in IPL, Twenty20
Lalit Modi will save county cricket.
Modi, the brains behind the IPL and the Champions League T20, the most important man in cricket, doesn’t mean to save it. In fact, he couldn’t really care less about it. But his decision to overlap the start of the Champions League with the end of the English county season has made something startlingly clear: that our county game is horribly archaic and run by people who consider a Jacuzzi at a match as modernising. This fixture clash serves them right.
Let’s not forget that in the summer of 2008 the ECB flippantly ruled out MCC chief executive’s Keith Bradshaw’s well though-out and argued proposal for an English rival to the IPL. Nine teams, 57 matches, 25 days with estimated profits of £47 million in its first year. Rejected.
At the time the ECB’s haughty reaction to Bradshaw’s idea appeared to be a death-rattle for county cricket. The only surprise is that it’s taken two years for another killer blow.
The ECB told this website that they had received no formal invitation from the Indian board for counties to participate in the Champions League. This will be worrying news for counties who have spent a lot of money bringing in star names in order to qualify for the tournament.
They shouldn’t worry too much though. Modi wants English teams in the Champions League – it will keep the TV companies happy and the English always bring travelling support. But Modi also knows that he’s the man in control of the bargaining – the English counties need to be part of the Champions League more than the Champions League needs them. It will be the counties who need to accommodate the scheduling of the Champions League and not the other way around. Add to that the poor performances from Sussex and Somerset in the inaugural Champions League and the counties have no leg to stand on.
Whatever the county chairmen say about Modi being arrogant, they’ll be very aware that there’s little they can do other than bow to him. Modi may go about his business with little thought about cricket or anything other than how much money his tournament will make but, well, that’s just how it is for now. At least he knows how to successfully market a product.
So, what are the counties and ECB going to do about it? Probably just grumble and moan a bit. Then wander back, heads bowed, to their offices where time stands still and cricket remains inert.
As Edward Craig points out on his blog, Modi hasn’t disrespected the counties, he’s ignored them. Well, he’s not the only one. County cricket is ignored by spectators and increasingly so by newspapers. Yet little is being done about it.
It’s time that the ECB and the counties realise that to keep up with the rest of the world, a more marketable number of teams – 10 or fewer – is a must so that the talent isn’t so thinly spread. A shorter season is also necessary, running from May to the end of August. This way it will avoid the rain, the cold, the football and fan burnout.
A severe kick up the backside shouldn’t have been needed to stir the counties into action, but that’s what Modi has provided. History tells us it won’t provoke much of a reaction, but surely even the counties must realise something has to be done now.
Daniel Brigham is assistant editor of The Wisden Cricketer
Follow him on Twitter: WisdenCric_Dan
Posted in IPL, Twenty20 | 26 Comments »
February 11th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Amazing. Brilliant stuff
February 11th, 2010 at 8:26 am
Careful, you’ll give CMJ an apoplexy… As a humble but long-since disenchanted customer, I fully agree.
The question has always been how to prise the grip of the county chairmen, whose interests are the survival of their own counties and not the competitiveness of our national team, off the levers of control.
Maybe this deus ex machina will do the trick. It’s a scandal that the country with biggest professional structure and greatest number of full-time professional players is content to field a middle-of the-table Test team that is regularly outplayed by countries with fraction of the resources.
Incidentally, is Modi the real brains? I thought he used one of the big sports marketing agencies to come up with the ideas and format, and of course to negotiate the TV and marketing deals.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:56 am
But Modi also claimed that this was the only gap in the FTP, even though it clearly isn’t. England are playing Pakistan in 5 ODIs during this period, which means Sky, the sole subscription provider who might be tempted to cough up £1-2m for Champions League rights, will pass, leaving ESPN and Eurosport to slug it out for a smaller audience (IPL viewing figures in the UK were c. 40k on Setanta, which is weak).
There is a political dimension to Modi’s decision as he means to keep Pakistani internationals from taking part in the Champions League (Afridi has qualified with South Australia already). The Commonwealth Games are scheduled from 3-14 Oct in Delhi, and security provision is a major issue so perhaps Modi sought to avoid a clash with those too.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:15 am
Good article. The only way to resolve the English domestic cricket mess is to start again. Eight or nine (maximum) franchises for all forms of the game along the lines of Keith’s Twenty20 proposal. Some of the counties finances make Portsmouth FC look like a well run business. It can’t go on…
February 11th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Too bloody right. This should be seen as positive. Thumbs out of arses and get with the program.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Oh Gawd and today Brit Insurance become principal sponsors of England cricket. What a useless, no-mark brand to have as the main sponsors. No one’s even bloody heard of them.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Roger
Even CMJ (just about) sees that what we have now is daft. I have heard him say that if we were starting now we wouldn’t have an 18 County structure. Well we are starting now! Please…
February 11th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Don’t normally reply, but feel compelled because I am fed up to my backteeth of journalists dismissing county cricket like this.
I hate the phrase London-centric, but I can’t help thinking it applies here in some form. It’s fine to advocate killing off 8 or 9 counties but which ones would you bring the axe down on?
I have many problems with County Chairmen and the ECB, but it is their job to represent their members (in theory anyway). Guess what, their members don’t particularly want the clubs they’ve spent time, money and passion following being voted into non-existence in the name of paying double the price for a franchise team 3 hours drive away, while being bombardeded with adverts over the tannoy in order to watch people in golden helmets trying to whack every ball into the top deck of the grandstand.
But, apparently these people who have supported, bankrolled and volunteered for English cricket can just be dismissed now as a bunch of irrelevant fogies who are holding the game back. What an offensive attitude that is. ‘You’ve manned the gate for 20 years, sorry club’s been voted out of existance by the ECB here’s a golden clock now naff off’. ‘Sorry that life membership you bought last year is now null and void cause apparently pro-cricket should only be played in certain places now, I can offer you 2 tickets to watch the London Giants versus the Birmingham Bland logo’s at the Oval instead’.
These are the people that run the cricket clubs, do the coaching, sort out benefits and fund raising. Do the key voluntary work without which the game would struggle mightily in this country. They are about the most passionate cricket fans you are likely to find but apparently their reward for all this is for their county to cease to exist. They are, according to most journalists now, nothing short of CMJ (who I don’t like much by the way) style stereotypes. This article just dismisses them as ’sorry, you’re just not with the programme anymore your opinion is irrelevant we only care about the casual, metro multi-sport fan now because that’s where the money is’. What a depressing, soulless attitude that is.
I am 26, am a proud Bristolian, have no great love for the rural idyll (Bristol’s not exactly a small market town so I think we’d be OK but cheery bye to cricket in Taunton and Worcester presumeably) and have nothing against 20/20 or what Lalit Modi is proposing particularly. But the dismissive attitude that says ‘let’s just get rid of 9 counties’ as if there is no consequences and this would be good for everybody really winds me up. Sorry, rant over I very much doubt many people on here will agree.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Spot on. Reduce the number of teams (I’d go for 6) to improve the quality and stop funding something that should not be termed professional sport. Counties can become a semi professional second tier of domestic cricket and feeder clubs for the regional teams.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
It’s not just journalists Bomber. I love county cricket but it’s stagnant and unmarketable in its present form. Things simply have to move forward to survive, and that just isn’t happening.
If you’re happy to sit at a freezing New Road ground in April with 60 other people then fine, but it’s not doing anything for the greater good of cricket in this country.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Bomber – I understand your point but I am from Worcester and it is obvious that there is no longer a broad enough support base to continue with 18 fully professional counties. They can continue to exist but on a voluntary and/or semi professional basis. I feel sorry for those who have worked to move their clubs forward but ultimately the attendances are generally feeble. There are far too many very average cricketers in county cricket, many would not cut it in grade cricket I suspect. We need the best playing the best to improve competition, generate interest and stiffen the national side. Otherwise without terrestial coverage and state school participation the game will slowly die in England.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
County cricket is ace. They could do with a parred-back season – just cut out games, rounds etc, rather than obliterate counties. It does need a re-jig but Modi’s inadvertent ball of destruction is not the way it should happen.
Daniel – you are the epitome of a London-centric journalist.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Taylor
On your mother’s life, how many county matches did you go to last season?
I’m not London-centric. I was born in Norfolk where this is no first-class cricket for miles, but I was willing (thank you dad) to travel to Essex to watch some. Really wasn’t that big a deal.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Not enough. That is true but also misses the broader point – i have a day job.
The ECB’s county fixture list makes it impossible to see much county cricket because i have to work. Like thousands of other county supporters.
There is big support for counties and county cricket – but from a distance.
There are stacks of people like me who will have the county scores updating as the working day wears on, then scrambling around the internet and broadsheets for reports.
Anyway, the big villain in is the madness that is the fixture list, not the counties themselves. Their elected representatives let them down.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
And i am talking about Championship cricket…
February 11th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Daniel, to be fair I wasn’t particularly having a go at this article which makes a good point. It was more like a ‘final straw’ moment against a kind of media consensus that seems to build on this. There are lots of people who think the same way I do, yet bar a couple of letters to the editor, they’re unlikely to have anyone articulate their views. If you read articles from 10-15 years ago (and probably further back) there was a similar consensus from the CMJ generation of writers lamenting a past golden age and trying to figure how to get it back. That was total nonsense and part of the problem but now everything needs to be hyper-modern. No middle ground allowed, no consensus possible apparently. You’re either a modern go getting type, tapping into the great potential of 20:20 or you’re an old fogey holding back the game. Never mind that it is these people on which the game is largely built.
Among your 60 people at New Road are likely to be a fair few who run local cricket clubs, coach kids etc. They may have supported Worcester for 40 years, they may have supported them for 2 days but they will all be passionately committed to the game. You are saying that it is acceptable to just wipe their club away.
There’s another thing about the journalistic narrative here. The consensus says County cricket is dying on it’s backside (and I’m not saying that it’s in great shakes aby any means), so we’ll only talk about it in those terms. Never a positive story allowed. In my experience those 60 people at New Road are more likely to be 3-400. I’ve seen Taunton and Cheltenham regularly packed for Championship games. But, yet the abiding image always has to be 1 old man with his flask in an empty stand at some test venue. Outside the big venues, the experience tends to be somewhat different to that. If a day’s county cricket is referenced it’s normally a dull bore draw, not an exciting run chase on the 4th day because that doesn’t fit the consensus.
But, it’s the idea that you can painlessly snuff out 9 counties and then the future will be wonderful that I don’t like. For a start the people that would be most hurt are the people that least deserve it, it’s not about the county chairman it’s about the people who go and watch their teams. The idea that cutting sides would be a great thing is just terrible to me, it might have to come but it would be a tragedy. This idea is only ever suggested by people who have no risk whatsoever of losing the team closest to them. It just says let’s have metro-cricket, everyone else can go hang and if you don’t like it you must be a flask carrying stereotype. It seems like a callous attitude to me that completely ignores, belittles and runs roughshod over the passion and views of many cricket fans.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
” it’s the idea that you can painlessly snuff out 9 counties ”
Absolutely not. The mindset that says that you start with 18 counties and then reduce to something viable is completely wrong. You need a root and branch review of second-tier English domestic cricket (second-tier means the tier below International cricket). True you have an inheritance that you take note of (the counties). But, in my view, you do more than acknowledge that they exist. What you then do is decide what professional domestic set-up will most be conducive to helping further a winning England team. That’s the goal. My guess is that the resultant franchise based eight (?) team structure might include a few of the existing counties at its core. But that’s not where you start from. It’s not about “snuffing out” – it’s about creating.
February 11th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
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February 11th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
I think you’re right Paddy, any move in that direction has to be constructive otherwise it will just appear vindictive.
My problem is that we always ape, we never develop based on our own strengths. When the Aussies were seen as the shining light we just copied them. As a result we just became a pale shadow of the Aussies for 15 years. Everything was about attitude and demeanor, you had to be tough, make life difficult for opponents, give nothing etc. It was that Dermot Reeve Warwicks team that did it, ‘don’t give autographs on the boundary’ etc. What a load of nonsense. I was in a junior county squad during that time and it was about as much fun as getting your teeth cleaned. Kids of 14/15 being told ‘don’t walk’, ‘don’t smile on the field it show weakness’ and ‘don’t shakes hands at the end of the game’. Honestly, it was utterly pathetic and put many off the game for life. But, we thought those were the values that produced a winning team and counties were told to instil them right across the board. It was about attitude not ability.
Wasn’t until England broke out of that, and allowed players to be themselves that we started beating the Aussies again. Now some people want to set up a pale shadow of the IPL in this country, with franchises and top flight cricket only being played in big citys. I don’t see that being anymore successful at creating a winning England side. I don’t think the domestic professional structure is the key to that anyway. I think it’s the level below that that is key. It is the talent pool, identification and development of young players which need to be drastically improved. I don’t think County cricket is particularly holding them back, I think they’ve been let down well before they get to that stage.
I wish we’d look at the strengths of our game rather than only ever seeing negatives, and the greener grass on the other side. We have a strong grassroots game in terms of participation and we have a strong following for domestic cricket, which compares well with most other countries except India, and only then for 20/20. We also have 18 professional bases, with deep club structures underneath them.
That should be considered a promising base to build from rather than a millstone round the neck of the game. So I agree that simply cutting the number of teams would achieve absolutely nothing. Anything that is developed should be considered concurrent or on top of the existing structure. The links to the grassroots game, the expertise and the commitment are not worth losing.
February 11th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Bomber
Yep – we are in violent agreement!
The problem is that those who would have to commission a study (ECB committee) are those with a deeply set vested interest in trying to maintain the status quo. So any argument becomes circular and winds up back where it started! The music goes round and round!
February 11th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Props to Bomber Wells on this one. Anyone star*ucking Lalit Modi should have their capacity for reasoned thought questioned.
Bowing to the cheap populism of Twenty20 is an example of the tyranny of democracy. The yahoos chuck all their money at the most overtly, cravenly commercial form of the game and the dedicated core of followers who underpin the whole thing must accept this as progress.
This attitude will be the death of the game. I preferred cricket in the 90s …
February 11th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Going back to the original point, the ECB should not under any circumstance give in to the Indians. Give them an inch, they’ll take a yard and suddenly we’ll have 7-match ODI series every week. It would be like paying ransoms to kidnappers – you can’t do it.
What they need to do is to get round the negotiating table to reduce the length of both the IPL and Champions League. Packing the tournaments in would make scheduling far easier – 43 days for a T20 tournament when you can easily play two, sometimes three games a day is way too long.
As for domestic cricket, I agree the “talent pool” needs strengthening. I think we should have three divisions in the championship, but then some kind of play-off system to get about 12 matches – that would be about right I think.
The other major change if to scrap the current T20 and have a franchise competition of six teams, played over three weeks, month max., overseas stars galore, pack the punters in to the biggest grounds and milk the event for all it’s worth – and then split the profits equally between the 18 counties.
You cannot get rid of any counties, but you can sacrifice their individuality to start a gravy train that will preserve the real cricket.
February 12th, 2010 at 4:23 am
I see no reason why Engalnd could not preserve the county system at least for the basi championship and perhsp one 50-over competetiton.
But I’ve thought for a while that 20-20 should be organized based on global franchises, so that a team like the Royals would have a consistent core of perhaps 10 “international superstar” players. These franchises would play each other in 20-20 competitions around the world, making up the number with a minimum of, say, five local players in each venue and resting those superstars who have other international commitments for their countries. They would play in each of five or six countries for about 3-4 weeks. That way, each franchise would be a consistent team and could generate international support. This system would also provide a possible basis for an answer to the clash in commitment between 20-20 and national teams; a player can miss legs of the 20-20 contest when his national team needs him. There could be an annual “superbowl” played between the two top franchises.
In England, they could be really daring and go for a new city-based system for this, or each of the “super” teams could be affiliated with one or two counties and get their local players and venues based on that.
This makes much more sense than having five different “Royals” teams scattered around the world that might or might not end up playing against each other, and, I think it would be more exciting at the top level than trying to force 20-20 onto the existing international and domestic structure.
February 12th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Thank goodness for the voice of sanity from Bomber. Are we really saying that we should forfeit the end of the County Championship which two years ago went to the wire on the last day? Since Durham took the cup the second time the other counties are now on their mettle. Can’t wait for the season!
And should we also move our ODI season with Pakistan which has been in place for six months? I’ve already booked for it at the Riverside. And the final of the new 40 over tournament? For the sake of two Twenty-20 teams attending another Twenty-20 bash?
You are all so eager to destabilise the County system that you are missing the bigger picture.
India has just arranged an ODI Series with Australia in October – so England has to wreck the end of its season to fit in.
Of course ECB should say no, it is unthinkable. We can’t play cricket in England in October as Modi well knows. If England had been playing ODIs against Australia or South Africa would he have asked them to be moved?
As for the Counties I don’t believe these critics watch many county games – if any. Otherwise they would not be talking in terms of scores of spectators. Durham regularly has good crowds. When Durham took the Championship 5000 turned up to see it. To judge the counties you need to look at the best clubs and the excellent teams they are producing as a guide. Without DCCC would we have Harmison, Plunkett and Onions? – and others are waiting in the wings.
Where are all these mediocre players? I’ve seen some cracking games. Didn’t Langer praise the County set up to the skies? And Warne? Are they wrong and you are right Daniel and Paddy?
I do suggest you both get out more – sounds like armchair criticism to me.
I think without the County Clubs as a magnet and the leagues and local clubs in each area cricket would be really suffering in this country because so many state schools have been forced to drop it in the last decade. As only 7 per cent of our children go to private schools we can hardly depend on our future cricketers from that source.
If you want to campaign – get cricket back into state schools and talent for the future will follow.
Incidentally nearly all Australian cricketers come from state schools, very few from private schools. Information courtesy of a discussion on commentary Australia v West Indies.
February 12th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
India hasn’t ‘just arranged’ a 7 ODI series with Australia, it is part of the FTP. Where do people get this information from?
February 16th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Look, i don’t dispute that India is the powerhouse and the IPL is the future and county cricket has to adapt. What I object to is being dictated to like this, as someone has pointed out the CL wasn’t scheduled because of the FTP, why should English cricket have to reschedule, we were there first (with the fixtures i mean!).