A Beautiful Game

by Mark Nicholas

  CHAPTER 13

  A crystal ball

  Spring in England, 2016 . . .

  A funny thing happened in London today: the sun came out and there was no need for layers of clothing to enjoy it. I thought of the county cricketers peeling off jumpers and swapping hand-warmers for suncream in their pockets. Well, maybe not. This is Britain, not Bangalore.

  Spring is the most glorious time, bringing as it does the rebirth of cricket and blossom. In attics, men look out old boots, leather dried and cracking, soles with September’s grass still sticking. Once, it was the time to pour linseed oil over a bat’s face, but now they barely knock ’em in before smiting sixes and missing straight ’uns. Groundsmen tend emerald-green turf, still theirs for now but soon the possession of white-clad warriors who prod and poke, land, pitch, run, fall and scuff.

  Cricket pavilions have their doors opened to that scent of stale kit and clothing, and of damp wood. Shafts of sunlight evoke memories of previous deeds that led to a walled garden of photographs and a club dinner of jokes about first-ballers and no balls and free hits and the young lad who made neither head nor tail of his pitcher of ale. Upon old hooks are old shirts and in lockers lie the odd sock and a pair of batting gloves that number two lent to number ten, who forgot to return them. Spiders emerge with stealth, aware that summer brings warmth but no peace.

  What of practice? Nets abound, so many on astroturf now. Boys play away in shirt sleeves and their fathers in woollen jumpers that betray their history. Joints scream and muscles twitch but eagerness wins out. The wonder is that winter has been survived. (Written with apology to Neville Cardus.)

  In Bengaluru right now, and all over India, there is a very different cricket from the nostalgia invading British senses at the start of a new season. British rule has long gone—hooray!—and the 9th IPL has the nation in thrall. Back in February 2008, the first IPL player auction offered untold riches to cricketers from far and wide. Each franchise was permitted to spend millions of dollars on attracting players with high levels of skill, power and appeal. Almost overnight, the game moved away from a long-established set of institutionalised parameters to a free market. Sony Pictures Television bought the rights for close to a mind-boggling billion dollars, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the world was dipping its toes in these sparkling waters. Nearly a decade on, the IPL has survived all manner of distraction and accusation to remain at the forefront of commercial cricket.

  While county cricketers wheel away in front of next to no one, crowds flock to matches between teams about whom most of us know nothing. In some cases, we haven’t even heard of them. Who does Brendon McCullum play for? Gujarat Lions, of course. And Kevin Pietersen? The Rising Pune Supergiants, naturally. After all, M.S. Dhoni is a Supergiant these days (I’ve always seen Dhoni as a giant), lest you had lost of track of the Chennai Super Kings’ suspension from the tournament during investigation into their practices. The players swap teams faster than my mates and I once swapped Dinky Toys. What does this tell us? It tells us about market forces, that’s what.

  The IPL cricket is louder, larger, more insistent and more addictive than anything before. Players have attitude; it is the ‘new’ thrusting India. They are promoted to stardom long before they have achieved anything of real significance. Some of them may ask what is ‘significance’? American gridiron football has a player who does nothing more than come on to the field to try to kick a goal, after which he leaves. Is this act significant? You bet your life it is. So when a kid from the backroom of Dhoni’s newly acquired empire comes on to take the catch that wins the day—a kid called Deepak Chahar, say, or Ankush Bains—don’t be surprised or begrudge him. The kids serve their apprenticeship at the coalface these days, not in a void beneath the bowels of the capped players dressing room. And when they do so, millions of people depend upon them.

  You have to love it. Switching between channels is a surreal experience: two utterly contrasting designs, methods, styles, wardrobes and support of exactly the same game. Sort of. Sky shows Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire at Trent Bridge, where the otherwise flamboyant Alex Hales is admired for the disciplined way he survives 52 balls to reach double figures and goes on to accumulate a total of 34 runs in 115 balls spread over 145 minutes. There are only 120 scheduled balls in one whole innings of the game on the other channel. Goodness knows what Cardus would make of that.

  Press the remote and Sky also shows the Gujarat Lions against the Delhi Daredevils in Rajkot where Rishabh Pant plays ‘normal cricket’ (his own words) to score 69 runs in twelve balls fewer than Hales’s double-figures milestone. It’s either crackers or it’s cracking entertainment. I’ll barrack for the latter, though I suppose it’s a bit of both.

  Face it, cricket is coping remarkably well with its time lapse—one form of the game is played in the past, the other in the future. Both have relevance for the follower and commitment from the participants. One looks after traditional technique and values, the other revolutionises both. One can define a man, the other can make him rich: the lucky few have definition and money.

  How did Lalit Modi, the businessman who founded the IPL, do it? Kevin Pietersen, for one, has called Modi a genius. He was talking, of course, about the introduction, deliberately or otherwise, of the freelance cricketer within the franchise model. Chris Gayle, when first approached, was so aghast at the amount of money that he could barely compute: ‘I’m like, how much?!’ And who is to say he is not worth it any more than any elite player who is hugely highly paid in any other sport.

  Most likely, Modi set out to create an electric, modern tournament, something so bright and sassy that the new generation could identify and interact as it does with popular culture in general—music, fashion, celebrity. From it came unimagined spin-offs, as the law of unintended consequences provided opportunities so extreme that county cricketers are now excused their contracts in England to honour their contracts in India. Modi’s timing was as good as Kerry Packer’s nearly 50 years ago.

  Back then, the secretary of the ACB responded to Packer’s heist with extraordinary arrogance. Wisely, this time around Cricket Australia handed out ‘no objection’ certificates as if they were confetti. Cricket has moved fast, every bit as fast as it did when Packer first made the ‘Lights, camera, action’ call at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Once Packer got what he wanted and what cricket so badly needed, he moved aside and the game settled down to find its rhythm for modern times.

  Which is exactly what must happen now. Cricket needs a global common ground; it needs sympathy, rhythm and union. Modi’s call of ‘Lights, cameras, auction’ has shown the way forward. Cricket’s leaders must respond while the game is still trending. There is a place for all people and for all formats, but not for self-interested governance.

  International cricket is run by the ICC, whose board is made up of people with vested interests in their own country’s health and progress. Recently, India, Australia and England broke away to form a cabal that compromised those left behind. The big three bullied their way into a takeover of all immediate ICC tournaments and, more generally, wrested away hostile control of the governance, finances and future of the world game. Some might say good riddance to the pusillanimous ICC as we knew it. Others would argue that the game cannot be truly represented without a reconstituted ICC, whose main board should consist of independent cricket people and followers who are prepared to take responsibility for a long-term view.

  To survive the move into a commercial marketplace and at the same time remain artistic, cricket needs a clear vision. I say this with some confidence, because classical music has survived the invasion of popular culture; books have survived the assault of social media; and true art has survived its pretenders. The age in which we live is fast-moving, but it is not one-dimensional.

  Test cricket needs to adapt, in the way that concerts and galleries have adapted. It has to reflect the space and time available. T20 cricket has lifted cricket’s morale and introduced new audie
nces to the game. It has found sensible commercial models and applied them to a successful experience for the viewer. There is a view that it is modern, gauche and contradictory but so were Jackson Pollock, George Orwell, David Bowie and the Sex Pistols, and they all became a part of our lives.

  The T20 behemoth can lead cricket into its next era. More than anything else, T20 and the structure of international cricket in general needs clarity. What do we have at present and what do we want of it in the future? The IPL, for example, is now too long—not for its own sake but for its place in our hearts, minds and a sensible global schedule—and yet it still has the power to make us peep behind the curtain. Then, when the final stages come, we settle down to watch, however long it has taken us to get there. The Big Bash League competes daily with Test cricket, an unnecessary collision when Australia has the space to separate it and allow them both to breathe. England desperately wants an equivalent. The Caribbean Premier League needs further profile and investment. It is the route forward for West Indian cricket, leading a revival in the game that is inherently loved and followed by proud people.

  Broadly speaking, most cricket lovers have no problem with a divisional structure for Test cricket, as recently mooted by the ICC. Frankly, they would run with anything that brings narrative to an important and historical game that is being overrun by T20. Promotion and relegation provides general interest and new teams might rise to the challenge of justifying themselves at the high table. As much, though, as aspiration would be rewarded, the danger is that the more vulnerable countries will be compromised beyond their control. There are three or four teams in the second division of the County Championship in England that seem destined to stay there. Were these teams New Zealand, Sri Lanka or West Indies—all of which have found life hard at Test-match level at some stage during the past five years—would they, or the game at large, find themselves unable to sustain their participation? The standards between the two divisions have grown wider in county cricket, and they would surely do so in Test-match cricket as well. One argument says that is a good thing, a natural cull of sorts that allows the elite few to concentrate on one another. The other argument says that there is only a limited number of teams. Given we are trying to broaden the base of the game not narrow it—while at the same time maintain high standards—we should not ask too much of those with limited resources, in case they become a victim of the cull.

  I much prefer a World Test Championship, played within a four-year cycle of international cricket’s major competitions. This allows for the retention of the Champions Trophy—which, incidentally, was abandoned to make way for a Test-match championship, then reinstated as a cash cow—but not for more than one major T20 event in the cycle. After the tremendous success of the recent World T20, the ICC’s chief executive, David Richardson, said he was not in favour of increasing the number of World T20s for fear of killing the golden goose. Now we hear there are to be two every four years. Thus, I worry for the goose.

  T20 is the zeitgeist. It has financial muscle, global audience appeal and television commitment. Franchised domestic tournaments are beginning to take a shape, though non-negotiable windows in the calendar would improve that shape further. Freedom of movement for the players is better understood as an essential part of the game’s future blueprint. T20 can help the game grow, but it must not become a monster, devouring all in its path. The ICC should set the parameters for T20 in every corner of the world and adapt Test cricket and one-day cricket to sit alongside it.

  If one-day cricket is to have sufficient profile, it needs a less-is-more policy, and quickly, before the public’s patience wears out. We know the World Cup works. We think bilateral series are still attractive, though ticket sales are no longer quite so convincing. One-day series should be restricted to a maximum of three games, making the tickets hard to come by and the memory sweeter and clearer. All bilateral one-day cricket should be World Cup cricket, as proposed by Australia a couple of years back, with the points making up a league table that decides entry and seeding for the World Cup as we know it. The Champions Trophy is a useful tool for 50-over cricket, reiterating the essential bridge it provides between the shortest and longest forms of the game, and reminding us of its ability to parade a full complement of cricket’s skill sets within the time frame.

  A World Test Championship need not be complicated. Every four years the top four teams during the course of that period would meet up for a festival of Test-match cricket played over a month or so in the country that leads the table at the point of its conclusion. At this event, they would all play each other once and then the top two contest a multimillion-dollar final. If matches were drawn, the team highest in the original table would go through. The same tie-breaker would apply to the final, thus providing an added incentive during the ‘league’ stages.

  In the way that Test cricket needs a story to tell, it is really no different from the IPL. Time is required for a crescendo before focus switches to the climax. Over four years there is space for the ten full member nations to play each other home and away over a minimum of four matches and a maximum of ten. The ten-match scenario is there to allow for the Ashes, the series that has done more than any other to keep Test match cricket alive and mainly well. This makes for a minimum of 36 matches per country or, in the case of England and Australia 42, over four years—fewer than the big boys play at present (India have 13 home Tests in the 2016–17 season alone). Ideally, bilateral tours would consist of three Test matches, three one-day games and three T20s, but in reality that may be too much cricket to fit in the timeframe. There will be a price for England and Australia to pay, both in terms of player fatigue and fiduciary responsibility. Money made from extra Ashes matches must surely go into the pot for the staging of the month that we might come to know as the ‘ICC Test Championship Festival of Cricket’—and assume a sponsor’s name in there somewhere too.

  At the end of this four-year period, the team that finishes last in the Full Member League table would lose its Test-match status and the team that wins the Associate Test Championship—staged concurrently with the World Championship to include finals during the same period and in the same country—would gain Test-match status.

  Above all, the ICC and all the member nations must be empowered to market this with the same enthusiasm as they market T20, because unless the game sells its vision passionately and extensively, we cannot hope to persuade outsiders that we have something relevant and attractive on offer. Then we need to sell the tickets at a sensible price, offering packages for families, kids and schools. Finally, a proportion of these new matches needs to be seen on free-to-air television, in a simultaneous broadcast with a satellite network if need be.

  Somehow, Test cricket needs to be given back to the people. To mix proverbs, the horse will have to be dragged to the water because in most parts of the world it has long bolted. The key is not to give up but to believe in its potential ourselves and improve the model. A suspicion lingers that key administrators have lost faith in the five-day game, preferring the ease with which they bankroll their problems through T20.

  The costs of a World Test Championship will be high, but the Champions Trophy pot and a share of the proceeds from the franchised T20 tournaments that are dependent on the players provided by the full member governing bodies, is the only way forward. Everybody must buy in to this bigger picture, or the moment will pass us by—and that is everybody: the world of cricket in union.

  FORWARD TO THE FUTURE

  Now, let’s take the game deep into the 21st century. Test cricket has survived, but only within an elite circle of players and continents. There is now a collective called the Superpower Series, which is played once a year over short dedicated periods by Europe, Africa, the Asian subcontinent and Australasia. It reflects the slick round-robin model shown us by Kerry Packer during cricket’s first great revolution and, backed by multinationals, it is richer and more glamorous than even the IPL. The players who reach the final earn fi
lm-star status and companies battle for the rights to use their image and sell their brand.

  The matches are scheduled over four days with a minimum of 100 overs bowled on each of those days. No innings may last longer than 120 overs. There are two breaks of half an hour but no official drinks breaks during play. A second new ball is available whenever the bowling team wants it. No more than five fielders are allowed outside the 30-yard ring at any stage of any modern-day cricket match. The Superpower Series is allocated by rotation and the home continent gives up the right to choice of innings. Only in matches between the three guest continents does the toss of a coin take place.

  The dissolution of the Test-playing countries as we knew them was both controversial and painful but has proven to be a master-stroke in rejuvenating the purest form of cricket. At the same time, there was a strong lobby to get rid of the draw, which the new age fans see as anachronistic. Their view is that the team that scores the most runs over four days wins the match and their determination forced a global referendum on the subject. The vote was open to all cricketers in the world who had played a first-class match, everyone who had umpired in one and anyone who had sat on their national board of control, for however long. Surprisingly, the hawks who wanted to oust the draw got a right thumping. The overriding view was that the drama and tension brought about by saving a game was often as thrilling as the excitement of winning one. In addition, it was pointed out that the draw offered an escape clause for the team that was on the wrong end of the pitch or conditions, or simply played poorly for a session, and provided the opportunity for a display of the character that makes Test cricket unique.