Interesting to see CMJ's views that he's passed on to David Morgan who has reviewed how English competitions and fixtures are structured. I like the idea of scheduling matches to start on set days, as they used to. CMJ wants Championship matches to start on a Sunday, and one dayers to be played every Saturday. I'm up for that although, as he's noted, TV would pay less for this type of scheduling where they don't have cricket every day. It seems like a price worth paying to me.
Not sure about Twenty20 - CMJ would like matches scheduled every Friday night so there is a home match fortnightly. To reduce the amount of the season where the players (and spectators) have to think about 3 formats, I think I'd go for Thursday and Friday nights consecutively. It'll be over quicker which, to be honest, is my main consideration. Twenty20 just gets in the way of the County Championship which should be the main focus for players, if not the casual spectator who likes Twenty20, or the County Financial Directors.
The main thing I like about CMJ's proposals is the on-going Championship cricket throughout the summer. It can't be right that at the height of summer Championship cricket stops to make way for Twenty20. If there is Championship cricket throughout the summer, Counties may tempt back some of those that have given up County membership in protest at the lack of 4-day cricket for a large chunk of the season. Perhaps the Counties can have their cake and eat it?
The only thing I'd be critical of in CMJ's thoughts is this meaningless sentence: "Championship and Test cricket to be innovatively and actively marketed." Andrew Strauss said something similar when asked about how Test cricket could be promoted. As CMJ says "one should always be prepared to offer an alternative when criticising" so I'll have a think about how to market the County and Test game. It'll be slightly more specific than "innovatively and actively marketed"!
I now go out of my way to buy Marston's. Well ok, not quite out of my way, but when I stop at One Stop by Shoreham-by-sea station on a Friday night before walking home (thrilling life I lead), I always pick Pedigree if they're on the chilled shelves. There's normally Old Speckled Hen and Old Peculier too, but I pick Marston's Pedigree because I love how they support my favourite sport cricket.
The video that I just blogged about (which is currently on the Marston's Pedigree homepage) was not a high quality production, but nor did it need to be to appeal to me - a bitter loving cricket fan. Easy brand building which has had the desired impact on me as I always choose Marston's whenever I have the choice now. But possibly more importantly, here I am blogging about Marston's, advocating drinking Pedigree, without any push from them to do so.
Now they just need far more influential people than me to do the same to make an excellent sponsorship campaign a truly sensational one. Marston's - you might be out of sector, but the company I work for can help with that!
While I've been otherwise engaged, the Indian minister Ajay Maken has had his Sports Bill voted out that would have enforced a certain level of transparency amongst Indian sporting bodies including the BCCI. It of course created quite a few headlines in India and it now seems that the bill will be amended in an attempt to push it through.
Overall, it seems a good thing to expect greater transparency (and therefore increase the likelihood of good practice) by sporting bodies. But I can't help feeling that there are a few specifics that seem very strange. If it is correct that the government want to enforce retirements at 70 and stipulate a percentage of ex-players, or even allow themselves a say in selection(!!!) as I saw in one report, then this is clearly going way too far.
One of my pet hates (as readers of Cricket Burble probably know) is the emphasis on giving ex-cricketers jobs instead of running Counties and National Cricket Boards like the businesses they are. So any attempt to have more or less ex-players seems crazy to me - why not interview people on their suitability for the business-based role? If you're going to stipulate anything in terms of experience (which I wouldn't) then ten years+ of business experience wouldn't go amiss. An understanding of sport (ideally cricket) is of course required, but that is very much secondary to the business expertise required.
The business focus can be taken too far as Alan Hamer has shown in his mis-handling of Glamorgan. The assumption when Alviro Petersen was signed was that there was a long-term strategy in place but it appears not as Glamorgan are now trying to work out who their captain will be next year - either home grown pros or Marcus North of Australia it seems. Hamer's actions have actually left Glamorgan in a worse place than they were a year ago and shows what happens when business people push for unrealistic instant success football-style. They've fared badly in 40 and 20 over cricket and are in the bottom half of division 2 rather than being promoted which looked likely at the end of last season. Whatever amount of money Glamorgan make this year (or loss), it would have been better had there been a more gradual change to playing staff, captain and coach with a long-term vision in mind.
It will be interesting to see whether an amended Sports Bill makes it through India's parliament, but whether in India, England or anywhere else, the less the better in terms of enforced percentages of ex-players, enforced retirement ages, etc - just assess people on merit against each other and may the best man or woman win and take the sport forwards.
Is it just me or is there a current feeling of negativity towards the IPL and the BCCI? I mentioned that the IPL hadn't been a total success this year and also that some, like Tony Greig, have started to question the BCCI's seemingly self-centred objectives given that the IPL over-runs the international season.
Now Arjuna Ranatunga has waded in with similar comments and a FICA survey highlights concerns about the BCCI's control of the game. It will be interesting to see if the BCCI listen to any of this negative feedback and adjust, or just keep marching forward in the pursuit of more rupees at the possible expense of the interntional game. What most worries me is the comparison Ranatunga gives with football, where club dominates country. That's not a model for the BCCI to admire, that's a model that it must do it's utmost to steer cricket away from.
This piece at the Wall Street Journal raises the question of exactly who cricketers work for these days, and in what order of priority. A good question, many would say....which I expect means more money for managers as they negotiate the various contracts for top players - that's not a good thing!
It's always good to see company's backing cricket so it's good to see Jaguar's involvement, although they perhaps need to think about the wording of press releases in this cynical age. They've signed up to be the "naming rights partner" for the premium hospitality lounge at Edgbaston over the next 3 years, for use by their premium Jaguar Club of which there are only 100 members.
They may need to rethink their press release copy though, if they want us to believe what the England captain is meant to have said about the Jaguar XJ having test driven it for the brand along with Alastair Cook and Eoin Morgan, while getting tips from Martin Brundle. Apparently he said:
“Taking the cars out today has been great fun and it was really useful to pick up a few tips from Martin and the boys. Professional cricketers do a lot of driving during the summer going from venue to venue, so after a hard day play it’s very reassuring to jump into a car as comfortable as the Jaguar XJ. It’s got everything I need: superb performance, a luxury interior, sleek design and with all that boot space, I can fit my cricket bag in without any problems too!”
Ignoring the typo (hard day play), I can just see the Jaguar client telling their PR agency that they want to get in some comments about the car's selling points, which sadly led to that completely unbelievable last sentence. Of course we know he didn't say any of it, but best to keep it at least vaguely sincere Jaguar, so that cricket fans think he could have said it!!
It seems that Lalit Modi's life goes on generating headlines. This time his name was found on a list found when Indian police arrested a notorious hitman. What can you say? As a convicted criminal (he pleaded guilty to assault and kidnapping back in the 80s it says at the end of this article), he's not exactly squeeky clean himself, so it should probably come as no surprise that there are people in India who would like him dead.
It'll be interesting to see how the IPL goes out in South Africa. I suspect Modi will have thought about how he can get half empty stadiums to look full. Perhaps he will use "Airheads" - the company who create inflatable dolls for crowd scenes in films and recently doubled the number of spectators at a UK rugby match!
No, not because he isn't England's number 1 spinner any more. Because when he does play it seems that the ICC are keen to clamp down on his massively over-excited appealing.
This is a guy who doesn't know the laws of the game (clearly given the way he frantically appeals for LBWs that can't possibly be out), and has proven that he can't work an umpire to save his life.
From here on in, I'd be counting on taking home 75% of any future match fees if I was Monty....
Last year Middlesex's shirts were sponsored by Northern Rock. This year I can only assume that they can find no replacement for them as in a press release strewn with exclamation marks on their website http://www.middlesexccc.com/ they are urging members and supporters to sponsor a set of kit. There are 32 players each with separate kit for each of 4 competitions which means 128 sets of kit. At £300 a pop that means they are looking for £38,400. And you don't get to pick your favourite player - you just go into a raffle. Times is hard.
This will also put an end to my naive assumption that the name change to Middlesex Panthers (away from Crusaders - am I still the only one who thought that that was potentially offensive?) must be to do with sponsorship from Slazengers.
This seems to happen quite a lot at cricket clubs - club officials managing to use club funds as their own and not being able to pay it back or, more dangerously, officials wantonly ripping off their club. Amazingly though, records are often kept so amazingly poorly that there is no paper-trail to enable a successful prosecution and the guilty party gets away with it.
So it seemed only sensible to publicice this case on Cricket Burble to try and reduce the chances of another cricket club experiencing the same problems. Inevitably though, some will.
OK - I now feel ready to post! What a gutter from an English perspective....you shouldn't lose a match that you're in control of. And I'm afraid I'm not in the "well we made a good fight of it" camp - it's amazed me how many commentators have been saying that! In assessing how the match went we have to realise that the toss is worth more in India than in England, so to win the toss and still lose is pretty disasterous.
We should have got 500, preferably more, as was previously Burbled about. The Indians would have been settling in for a draw once they didn't take early wickets on the first day - a win would have been at the back of their minds as they're used to teams racking up 500+ in the 1st innings. But rather than put ourselves in a position where we'd struggle to lose, we gave India a chance with a poor batting performance.
Somehow though we were still in a good position come the 4th day and in a position to win the match so it's hard to blame the whole loss on the 1st innings. Strauss batted like a dream and must be wondering what on earth else he's meant to do to get the man-of-the match award - instead it went to Sehwag for cumulative runs in the Test that totalled less than either of Strauss' innings. Whoever decides these things needs to recognise that the man-of-the-match doesn't necessarily need to be from the winning side, but if it did have to be, Tendulkar was the most worthy winner amongst the Indian team.
Lastly, the spinners. Panesar has come in for a bit of criticism and rightly so as he took 3 wickets in the match which in India isn't good enough. Peter Moores has said that Panesar lacked practice but let's remember that the ECB wouldn't pay Bloomfields £7,500 so that Panesar could have practised in Sri Lanka. Yes, Bloomfields shouldn't have accepted and then tried to renegotiate, but what price on a key bowler bowling well in India? Less than £7,500 according to the ECB.
I hope that Panesar doesn't get too much stick - he took 3 wickets in 46 overs in the match. Compare that to India's spinners who took 10 wickets in 137 overs between them and it doesn't look particularly poor - only slightly worse than the Indian spinners who haven't been criticised in the slightest!
If England are lucky enough to win the toss again in the 2nd Test, I just hope they nail the 1st innings next time. For me that's the lesson - not worries about Panesar.
The BCCI have just announced their central contracts for the coming 12 months and it seems that everyone is well aware what each player is paid. Grade A get 5 million rupees (£62,317), Grade B 3.5m and Grade C 2m.
Grade A: Rahul Dravid (captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Grade B: VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar.
Grade C: Gautam Gambhir, Wasim Jaffer, S Sreesanth, Zaheer Khan, Suresh Raina, Munaf Patel.
Irrespective of the arguments over who should be in which grade, the system of tiering pay seems inherently wrong to me. England do it as well, although at least who is in which grade and how much they are paid is not publised publicly. What is the reason for tiered payment systems?
A payment system that gives the same base salaries across all contracted players, but varies based on number of games played/unfit for would seem to be as complicated and as simple as it needs to get. (That way you don't get divisions in the dressing room. The senior players can make more money than the more junior ones through sponsorship and endorsements etc, so if the only way they feel good about themselves is by earning more money than their peers, they can do so.
New Zealand have found that they have a problem with Hamish Marshall as he was only offered the lowest band of money, so has turned down a central contract in order to play for Gloucestershire. This could be a trend that increases if the tiered payment system continues, but having set up their payment systems as they have it takes an extremely strong administration to change things, and strong administration is not something in abundance around the world of cricket.
Ready yourselves for another rant. Why are Sri Lanka and Pakistan playing in Abu Dhabi from 18th - 22nd May? Yet more strange scheduling brought about by money, much like the World Cup schedule - you can view that particular rant here.
After lots of uncertainty, Zakir Khan, PCB’s Director of Cricket Operations, has publicly stated that the Abu Dhabi series will be played from May 18-22 as the hosts have sorted out all the financial concerns. “The Abu Dhabi cricket officials have informed us that there are no financial issues anymore and the series would go ahead as planned."
Originally the organisers in Abu Dhabi wanted a triangular series to go ahead between Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa, but South Africa rightly refused to enter a tournament so shortly after the World Cup. There is something very different about a tournament held in a neutral country between 3 countries, and a series held as part of a tour to another country such as India are going to play in Bangladesh and West Indies are going to play in England. This particular series should never have been scheduled, and it's no wonder that the hosts have had so much trouble getting sponsors and bidders for the TV rights given the proximity of this series to the World Cup.
As always money is at the forefront of the decisions made by the Sri Lankan and Pakistani cricket boards to send their teams to Abu Dhabi - both teams have been reportedly offered $500,000 each, but this hasn't been enough to stop several top players ruling themselves unavailable - Younis Khan and Shoaib Akhtar from Pakistan, and Kumar Sangakkara, Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas from Sri Lanka.
It will be interesting to see if the cricket produces games that create even the slightest interest. Pakistan can't really be taking the series too seriously - they haven't even appointed a coach for the event following Bob Woolmer's death at the World Cup. Another case of turning up to collect the money then - one wonders if there is anyone that this particular series is benefitting?
Commentators and observers have been falling over themselves in criticising the 2007 World Cup. Simon Barnes might have called it "the worst sporting event in history" in The Times, but was it really? There seemed to be so many things that the tournament could be criticised for that no-one focused on any particular area and dissected what the reasons for that particular failing were and how to avoid them again. Of course the duration of the tournament seemed to be top of many people's list for criticism and Malcolm Speed admitted as much, "We'll seek to reduce this 47-day World Cup by seven or ten days, and hopefully we'll get it down to somewhere between five and six weeks next time."
But did any one of the commentators journalists that have been so scathing about the tournament's duration, go public with their concern prior to the tournament? Not that Cricket Burble heard - if you know different please let us know. The tournament schedule was released well in advance and little was said, except to argue that some of the minnow sides shouldn't be taking part. This, perhaps, is the real issue - there were too many one-sided games and even those that could be expected to deliver a little excitement (eg. England v South Africa) failed to live up to even the most pessimistic expectations.
So the duration then....how does 47 days compare to other sporting events?
2007 Cricket World Cup - 13th March to 28th April
2006 Football World Cup - 9th June to 9th July
2002 Football World Cup - 31st May to 30th June
2004 Football European Championships - 12th June - 4th July
2004 Athens Olympics - 11th August - 29th August
2007 Rugby World Cup - 7th September - 20th October
So the cricket World Cup was undoubtedly very long compared to other world sporting events and yet the event had considerably less teams competing than for example, the football World Cup. Recovery time between matches is often a crucial factor in sports such as rugby, but no such concerns exist in cricket (unless you are Shane Bond), and yet the rugby World Cup scheduled for later this year will be fractionally shorter than the cricket World Cup.
So why exactly was the cricket World Cup so long?
For that, it seems you have to look at the commercial side of the World Cup. The cricket World Cup is, after all, an advertising and sponsorship extravaganza in India. Indian cricket is a 185m pound industry according to India Today. The World Cup was surrounded by various product launches and special edition products such as the Yuvraj Singh Xbox 360 game and special edition Pepsi Gold.
Although final figures for the current World Cup are still to be compiled, revenue is likely to be around $300m of which India's contribution is 65%, despite the early exit of their national team. "It is estimated that over 45m pounds was directly riding on these men through advertising spots that media buying agencies bought on behalf of their clients from Sony Entertainment" (who had the TV rights in India), say India Today, so not unsurprisingly there was outrage when India didn't make it through.
The sheer size of some of these numbers demonstrate why the World Cup was as long as it was. Sony thought that they could cash in on the World Cup in India - the Indian public would watch every night of the World Cup and they would make huge amounts of money through advertising slots. But, even in India, with a population of over 1 billion people, viewers can only watch one channel at a time, so even though Sony had two channels at its' disposal to televise cricket, they understandably wanted to increase their revenue by showing one game per evening. From the players' perspective, of course, there was nothing to stop two or more Super 8 games being played on the same night.
As well as Sony wanting to maximise their returns on the Indian TV rights they purchased, there were of course the 12 sponsors of the event who wanted to maximise their time in the spotlight. In the space of the last 3 cricket World Cups, the number of sponsors has gone from 4, to 8, to 12. All these commercial pressures are undoubtedly what pushed the ICC into creating a tournament schedule that relied upon tight games to keep the public's interest - the fact that there were a lack of close games was not their fault of course, but to gamble on that being the case in pursuit of greater revenues was.
This is not a vote of no confidence issue and it's not a resignation issue. But it is something that the ICC can learn from when scheduling the next World Cup. Malcolm Speed has suggested that they will seek to reduce the World Cup by 7 to 10 days, but why is he putting a figure on it? What the ICC need to do is go away and come up with a sponsorship and media rights deal that takes duration out of the commercial equation. They are then free to look at the duration that suits the players and fans the best.
