This week's "Spin" (Lawrence Booth) just arrived in my inbox and it's worth a read
27 May 2009
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WHY THE P20 MAY BE ABOUT AS WELCOME AS A P45
"Whither cricket?" is the kind of question that makes non-cricket fans
laugh at the sport. It's pompous, hand-wringing and never has a neat
answer. And yet the fact that it keeps being asked tells you
something about the perennial air of concern that hangs over our game
[he wrote pompously, while wringing his hands and providing no answer
at all, let alone a neat one]. The last few days have done nothing to
change the record.
Ideally, this column would be praising England's steady improvement as
a 50-over side, although a rain-affected mauling of a miserable West
Indies side poses as many questions as solutions. But something else
has been happening that may be of greater relevance to cricket in the
years ahead: not only did the Twenty20 Cup get under way this week to
a less than rapturous reception from a usually enthusiastic public,
but it emerged that the P20, the two-divisional Twenty20 league
pencilled in for 2010 (just in case we were worried our domestic
cricketers were in danger of twiddling their thumbs of a summer)
remains as ill thought-out as a reverse-sweep off Joel Garner.
After several conversations with county chief executives and chairman,
the Spin concluded the only thing the administrators can agree on is
that a tournament belatedly introduced as a response to the highly
successful Indian Premier League must be different from the Twenty20
Cup, which pre-dated the IPL but has since been left for dead. As to
where the difference should lie, forget it. As one chief exec put it:
"The devil is in the detail, and we don't know the detail yet."
This is an alarming admission at a time when cricket needs to keep the
naysayers and football-obsessives in check. Yet a quick survey of the
men who run our domestic game revealed a number of half-hearted
suggestions and an underlying sense that English cricket has
hurriedly said yes to what it imagines will be another money-spinning
tournament without actually working out how to spin the money. When
Mike Atherton suggested on Sky yesterday that world cricket lacks a
discernible plan, he was generously skirting over our own problems.
One county boss suggested the P20 could operate as a Premier League to
the Twenty20 Cup's FA Cup, which is asking a lot even of optimistic
brand executives, or whatever they're called. Another wondered
whether the P20 could be sold as "a few beers with the lads", leaving
Twenty20 as the "family tournament". A third warned against making
P20 a "made-for-Indian-TV event", saying it had to "mean something to
the local community". A fourth countered that "if Indian TV gets
involved, we have to weigh up the benefits of gate money versus TV
money". Meanwhile, a fifth gingerly voiced the unspoken fear, which
was that the P20 won't in fact make more money than the unlamented
NatWest Pro40 it is replacing. Chaos reigns.
There are lots of reasons to be suspicious of Lalit Modi, the IPL's
chairman and commissioner, but what would English cricket give for a
man of his dynamism and organisational nous? Last summer the counties
rejected a proposal, drawn up by Keith Bradshaw of MCC and David
Stewart of Surrey, to introduce a nine-team, city-based Twenty20
league along the lines of the IPL's franchise model. Predictably, the
smaller counties threw up their hands in horror, arguing that this
was merely a pretext for the larger counties to flex their muscles
and ignoring the promise of trickle-down. As usual, they got their
way.
The upshot is a tournament that smacks of overkill and has little hope
of competing with the IPL as the world's leading Twenty20
competition. And, if the below-par crowds at the start of this year's
Twenty20 Cup are anything to go by, the P20 risks diluting the impact
of both tournaments.
Deeper down, there is a refusal to acknowledge that England has got it
wrong and India has got it right. The IPL gets mocked in this country
as an irrelevance, which is easily done when it's on a minor
satellite channel few have access to. But look at the cast list! Look
at the crowds! Look at the passion! The English game has taken a
punt, based on a certain amount of greed and a huge helping of
optimism, that it can do the same. And yet its strategy so far
currently resembles a game of pin the tail on the donkey.
A helter-skelter World Twenty20 and a gripping Ashes will help
persuade our bosses that English cricket is in rude health. But it
seems reasonable to point out that its tendency to allow the tail to
wag the dog could make the sport look rather foolish next summer.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
[Overheard last night in the women's toilets at The Oval, where Surrey
were playing Sussex in the Twenty20 Cup. And, please, just don't ask
..]
"Do you understand what's going on?"
"No. Are you a novice too?"
"Yeah..."
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