Last week we had the news – and I use the term loosely – that the IPL franchises will soon be making their play for teams in the Hundred. If we hadn’t woken up to it already, this inevitable move reveals everything about the state of the game – globally, nationally and locally.
Traditional cricket followers are a predictable bunch. Some will have enjoyed pulling the comfort blanket of this summer’s Test mismatches around us. There’s also a sturdy band of hardy perennials – blankets and thermos at the ready – stoutly propping up the county championship. Plenty will have ignored or evaded the sugar-rush confection of the Hundred and enjoyed some excellent games in the one-day cup. This, they (we) will tell themselves, is real cricket. The rest is just frivolous and disposable – and not to be taken seriously.
To believe that is to be looking at cricket in 2024 through the wrong end of the telescope. What we witnessed in the Hundred and in the globalised franchised leagues that fight for every inch of broadcast space, is cricket. Real cricket. Not just a hit-and-giggle, disposable version to get people into the real thing. This version is the real deal.
TV-packaged, smothered from boundary edge to shirt collar with adverts, monetised within an inch of its life and with once respected pros on comms bellowing that the rustic heave to cow-corner is as good as Lara caressing the ball soundlessly through cover. This is cricket as it now is. And in the unlikely event of your not having realised, it’s not run from the Long Room at Lord’s, but from boardrooms from Mumbai to Miami.
For top players, it’s an exercise in self-promotion, ensuring they’re well placed to hail the next cab off the rank. In a summer which has seen (yet another) World Cup, there have been gigs up for grabs in the Blast and the Hundred in the UK and a few quid on offer in the Lanka Premier League. The Caribbean Super league will soon be under way and, of course, Major League Cricket in the USA lured an array of A-list talent. If you haven’t cottoned on to the fact that the world has changed when Pat Cummins opens the bowling against Steve Smith and Travis Head at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas, then you really do need to be playing closer attention.
If this all sounds a bit grumpy, it’s really not meant to be. Like most ‘legacy’ lovers of the game, I adhere firmly to the mantra of Test cricket being the game’s absolute zenith. This is still properly invoked in the cricket world as an incontestable truth. Grounds in England were healthily full for the short-lived Tests against West Indies as they will be for Sri Lanka. Jimmy was given the send-off he deserves – and when people say we’ll never see his like again it won’t be a silly cliché. We won’t.
But around the world, not many people will go to Test matches. Us jolly followers of England will pour a few quid into a few grateful locations; grounds here will be full whenever India and Pakistan play. And what of the Ashes? A kind of Ryder Cup type of event, perhaps? A rare team trophy in a world where it’s every individual for her/himself playing for franchises with no genuine geographical roots the rest of the time? And that’s before the desert siren that has lured golf, boxing, tennis and football to its rocks, decides to beckon cricketers, eager to make the most of their short shelf-lives as marketable products.
Crowds at the Hundred were generally large, young and mixed gender. They were also mainly white and apparently middle class, but that’s the subject for a future blog. What they were seeing were young, dashing athletes playing a dynamic and occasionally, thrilling game. A game that, in most cases, they won’t have seen anywhere else and one where participation has been limited to either the private sphere or to those with parental connections to clubs beyond school. So when Mumbai Indians London Spirit take to the stage next season, try to resist rolling your eyes and blocking your ears. If you want youngsters to love the game and so keep it alive, this is exactly where many of them will start to do so.
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