The Grim Reaper Cometh for County Cricket

With Tom Harrison humming the  Blue Oyster Cult classic, the 18 Counties' executives and associated gravy train passengers line up at Lord's tomorrow...


ECB ready to dance to the tune of Twenty20.

Simon Wilde.

The Sunday Times.

Sunday, 26 March 2017.

PTG 2085-10563.

Cricket in England is about to be transformed. The battle for the sport’s centre-ground is over. Twenty20 cricket has won.  Over the coming days, more English players than ever will head to the Indian Premier League (IPL), including the two biggest stars at the tournament’s recent saleroom spectacular which made millionaires out of Ben Stokes and Tymal Mills. The arrival of the IPL in 2008 changed the global game forever, but English cricket is only now feeling the full consequences. 

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) opened itself up to the IPL a couple of years ago because it had to. Once Jos Buttler signed for Mumbai Indians for almost £UK400,000 ($A654,250) in 2016, others were bound to follow. Now, six of the 18 players who hold central contracts with England have IPL deals; had Alex Hales and David Willey been fit at the time of auction, the number might have risen to eight. 

This year Ben Stokes signed up to the IPL for £1.7 m ($A2.8 m), Tymal Mills £1.4 m ($A2.3 m), Chris Woakes £500,000 ($A81,780), Jason Roy £120,000 ($A196,275), and Chris Jordan £60,000 ($A98,140).  In September last year, England contracts were awarded to 18 players. Test contracts are worth up to £700,000  ($A1.1 m) and one-day contracts up to £190,000 ($A310,770). Joe Root, Stokes, Moeen Ali and Woakes were awarded both.  When central contracts were first awarded in March 2000, the top band was worth £60,000 ($A98,140). 

English cricket has never been so immersed in the IPL, or Australia’s Big Bash League, and given the life-changing amounts of money that the top players are securing, there can be no turning back now.

The players want to play in a format that earns them great money and enhances their skills. In a survey published last year by FICA, the international players’ association, 49.1 per cent of respondents said they would reject a national contract if they were paid significantly more to be a Twenty20 freelance (PTG 1917-9622, 6 September 2016). Among English and Australian players, whose boards are among the best payers, the figure was 39.3 per cent, still strikingly high. Players from India and Pakistan were not part of the survey as they do not have players’ unions (PTG 1918-9632, 7 September 2016), or the overall proportion would have been greater.

It is not only the minds of players that have been won over. Tom Harrison and his ECB board have sought over recent weeks to persuade the 18 first-class counties to back their plans for a radical new tournament with the help of data provided by ‘FutureBrand', the agency that handled the London Olympics and the 2015 Cricket World Cup, and 'Two Circle', a market research company previously used by the ECB and the counties.

‘FutureBrand’, whose web site refers to it as a ‘Creative Future Company’, is advising where best to locate the eight teams for the new tournament and what names the teams should be given in a five-week event due to launch in 2020. The expectation is that the teams, owned by the board, will represent regions — hence the need for the counties agreeing to a change in the ECB constitution — rather than specific centres, even if they are based at major stadiums leased to the ECB for the tournament (PTG 2072-10492, 12 March 2017). Players will be recruited from the existing 18 counties through a player draft.

‘FutureBrand' and 'Two Circle’, “a data driven sports agency”, have interviewed thousands of people in an effort to arrive at the right product. A central theme is creating a tournament distinct from existing teams and competitions that will attract a new audience.

Once the stakeholders agree, Harrison can talk to interested parties about a broadcasting deal, which will bundle together the domestic Twenty20 and England’s home internationals for 2020-24. Where there have been seven Tests each summer, that figure will drop to six, possibly fewer. This means England’s early season Tests will no longer clash with the IPL and allow the easier release of players to it.

Test cricket may be the ultimate in terms of the technical and temperamental challenges it presents, but it is the Twenty20 leagues that drive the market, bringing in the deals and paying the bumper wages.  Because of the success of the IPL and International Cricket Council global white-ball events, Indian broadcasters are no longer willing to pay as much as they were for rights to bilateral international cricket. The ECB has done well selling rights for home internationals to Indian markets, as well as international cricket in general, but those days are over.

The new rights deal is set to bring live English cricket back to UK terrestrial TV for the first time since 2005. The ECB is also looking at new revenue streams. A lot of recent ECB decisions anticipated the new landscape, notably the introduction of white-ball contracts and the appointment of a white-ball specialist in Trevor Bayliss to coach the national teams. Nobody in authority seems concerned about Bayliss having presided over more Test defeats than victories because the one-day teams have improved.

The Ashes will always be box office, and England’s Tests with India are big business, but not much else can be safe.

no doubt, Colin Graves is playing cow bells...