8 TAKING THE GAME
TO THE WORLD

What is clear is that we are at a critical stage of cricket’s development, a transitional period for how society views and consumes sport. To that end, the 20-over game presents itself as a perfect vehicle in which to go global.

T20 cricket has been promoted as a game which could be introduced at the Olympics, even as early as 2020, but for this to happen it needs to be at least being played in the USA, India and China. Given that it has a strong foothold in India already, the USA and Canada should be the first ports of call.

Australian baseball coach Jon Deeble was unsure whether cricket would ever be embraced in the USA, but he said to me that the fielding, throwing, athleticism and agility in cricket were common threads with baseball. He agreed T20 cricket was cricket’s best chance to lure a US audience.

‘The one IPL game I saw I enjoyed. It is a beefed-up baseball game. In cricket you hit the ball,’ Jon said. ‘In baseball, every time you hit the ball your intent is to hit it hard. That is not the case in (Test) cricket. But in T20 cricket you are out slogging the ball and running hard and fielding and throwing, just like in baseball. I think it (T20) has a lot of merit. There is not a whole lot of difference (to baseball).’

If we are to establish the sport in places like the USA and Canada, the franchise system is the way it must occur. Decision time for the inclusion of sports in the 2020 Olympics is 2013, and to have a T20 proposal complete, cricket would need to immediately target zones around the world. We could have an American zone. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh could be split into East Asia and West Asia, with Dubai included in the West Asia zone. Australia would fit into a southern Asian zone playing out of Darwin, Cairns and Townsville, and confront teams from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and possibly Hong Kong.

The entrée to the USA and Canada will come via the expat Indian populations in those countries. Already when India tours, the second-largest television audience is in the United States. Cricket has long been popular in Philadelphia and Boston. There are east coast and west coast organisations. Cricket does have the capacity to move into these places if it is done on a franchise basis, with the franchises perhaps being bolstered by recently retired internationals.

As for China, we have a possible base in Hong Kong, where the game has some roots thanks to the city’s status as a former English colony. Cricket Australia and the ICC have already infiltrated schools in these countries, again using expats to develop the game. Other potential Asian strongholds include Malaysia and Singapore, due to Indian expats and the fact they are both former English colonies.

There is some cricket in Canada – in Vancouver in the west, through the prairie provinces of Alberta, and across to Toronto in the east. The standard is pretty poor but surviving, thanks to West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis and the odd Australian. I think a lot of West Indian players would head to Toronto if they had no professional duties.

For cricket to grow, everyone involved needs to be able to throw up ideas and debate them. The beauty of T20 is you can play three games a day, and hold a tournament in a week. This suits new markets, which do not have the patience or understanding to follow a foreign game for five days at a time.

We need administrations – the ICC and national bodies – to make good decisions regarding two key questions:

Where are we going? And how do we plan to get there?

Are the administrators capable of far-reaching and visionary change? I don’t think so, which is why I am holding out hope for the owners. If we can continue to develop franchise models in India and show that in partnership with national bodies profits can be made over time, it will be a significant boost for entrepreneurs around the world and in potential host countries like the USA when tendering for franchises.

I believe in cricket. It is an exceptional physical activity for kids, involving running, throwing, catching and balance. Individual skills are performed in the context of a communal effort – not many sports do that. Combined with the appeal of the short format, the scope for cricket to grow is enormous. The IPL concept needs to be exported to areas all over the world, so we can create a World Series. The BCCI and the IPL have to work with administrations all over the world to ensure similar competitions in eight major regions. At the end of each year the top two teams would play off for the World Series in an indoor stadium, which would guarantee the games were played and finished.

That’s where we should be going but administrators need to be switched on to the possibilities. They need to make good decisions and create space for all this to happen. Cricket administration needs to look beyond its traditional recruiting ground of dressing rooms. Cricket Australia currently has Mark Taylor and Allan Border on its board. We need to keep this representation reasonably current, with players out of the game no more than three to five years – so as to maintain a fresh perspective. We do need cricket people to be involved in the game, but we need to mix this with people who have real business sense about them too. Cricket makes the mistake of placing too much emphasis on its administrators having played the game. It makes for incestuous decisions. Cricket needs to get out of cricket dressing rooms and into business boardrooms.

If we’re smart about it we will ensure that these worldwide leagues play around the same time, perhaps divided along northern/southern hemisphere lines into key windows such as March–May and August–October. This will ensure that players can only represent one team and thus avoid potential clashes such as David Hussey being eligible for both the Knight Riders and Victoria.

It is possible that Australian cricketers will commit to Indian franchises, so it is up to administrators to make good decisions and ensure the longer and international forms of the game survive, perhaps through incentives. As long as administrators ensure the international forms of the game remain pre-eminent, the game will maintain its integrity.

Otherwise we potentially find ourselves faced with a similar dilemma to Australian baseball, which lost eight or nine players prior to the 2009 World Baseball Classic because the Major League clubs they play for would not release them. We have to ensure the club/franchise scheme can’t dictate where players go, preventing them from playing for their state or country. That is up to the administrators.

If we can set up the zones I am proposing, the capacity for T20 cricket to find a way into the Olympics becomes more of a reality. This is just one idea from me, and entrepreneurs and the like need to contribute. I think we are at a stage where we need to throw ideas on the table and have the administrators grapple with ways to move this game forward.

There are people with more ideas than me. What we have to do is provoke thought and discussion involving the cricket administration and the new kids on the block – the entrepreneurs. They have the capacity to ignite it. If it is left to the traditional cricket administrators and players, we will be locked into the same way of thinking, and that is slow thinking. It is up to the new kids to challenge that.

The IPL has the potential to set an agenda and show how the game can be delivered – hopefully, eventually outside traditional countries. Whether the organisers of the IPL can grasp the concept of change and continued innovation, we will see over the next two tournaments. As for whether there is a willingness to move forward in terms of adopting alterations to rules and regulations, time will tell over the next 18 months.

With the 2009 tournament, the IPL has shown great flexibility and an incredible capacity to gear up the competition in a completely new country – South Africa – all in a matter of weeks! By 2010 we will know whether everyone is willing to debate cricket’s future and come forward with definitive plans to discuss how T20 cricket could be blended with the two other forms of the game – Test and one-day cricket. We should be able to retain all three forms, but it will come back to the administrators making good decisions.