Test Future & First Class Cricket in Australia

Test cricket's value plummeting, says CA chief executive.

Daniel Brettig.

Cricinfo. 

Thursday, 16 November 2017.

PTG 2304-11641.

Some days of international cricket are more equal than others. James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia (CA), a business that describes itself as the “custodian" of the game in that country, has revealed how three hours of a single Twenty20 International (T20I) are worth as much to India television broadcasters as five days of a Test match, a market reality that underlines the parlous state of the game's longest form without context.

Speaking to 'The Grade Cricketer' podcast, Sutherland said that "alarm bells" were ringing for Test cricket all round the world, in spite of the sold out crowds and strong television ratings expected for this summer's Ashes series between Australia and England. The International Cricket Council (ICC) recently, and at long last, approved plans for a World Test Championship to begin in 2019 (PTG 2275-11514, 14 October 2017), but Sutherland said the slide of the five-day game's value was creating major headaches around cricket's future.

When asked how he saw Test cricket looking in 15 years’ time Sutherland said: "In many ways there's so much doubt about Test cricket and its future I think and in some parts of the world it really is in a desperate state. That's partly because it's just not commercially viable.  There are some really significant warning signals in some parts of the world".

"As a starting point if you go to India, the country where there is supposedly the most lucrative commercial market, the current valuations on a Test match, five days of Test cricket, is exactly the same as the valuation on a three-hour T20I. That's a perspective on what the market in the biggest country in the cricketing world sees as the value of Test cricket, and that has a significant flow-on impact to other countries".

"So the alarm bells are ringing for Test cricket and that's one of the reasons why I think this context around Test cricket is so important with this league championship. In 15 years' time I sincerely hope that this league will create extra relevance and drive and importance for Test cricket, ideally the championship has significant incentives for countries and players to stay involved in Test cricket, and the rewards and recognition from that will also be seen and reflected in fans coming and continuing to stay connected to the game”.

Apart from the creation of the Test Championship to foster "third party" relevance and context to matches for fans not supporting either of the competing teams, Sutherland has also been an advocate for day-night Test matches to have more of their span played at a time when greater audience sizes are available both at the ground and on television.

A third area in which he said the game could be enhanced is by the preparation of more bowler-friendly pitches in Tests, so that the balance between bat and ball is more even than that often seen in One Day International and T20I formats dominated largely by batsmen. "I think to even that up a little bit for the bowler would make for more compelling Test cricket”, he said, for "Money is basically a function of fan interest and support and there's a lot of romantic connection to Test cricket and rightly so”, said Sutherland. "But Test cricket has to remain relevant and contemporary for the modern-day fan and I think it's challenged by the fact there are two other forms of the game that are alternatives".

Having just witnessed the women's Ashes Test at North Sydney Oval, Sutherland said there was little prospect of more long-form women's matches being scheduled. "World cricket -- ICC and its member countries -- have decided that the best format by which to promote the women's game is the T20 format”, he said.  "That's the primary format and we continue to hold on the men's side Test cricket as the primary format and the game that we want to preserve and make the ultimate form. We won't see a lot more women's Test cricket in the future but hopefully it will continue to be part of the Ashes at least” (PTG 2304-11643 below).

Airline making cricket broadcasts available at 30,000 feet.

PTG Editor.

Friday, 17 November 2017.

PTG 2304-11642.

Australian airline Qantas has worked with Cricket Australia (CA) in a move that will allow passengers on domestic routes watch live every game of international cricket played in Australia from their plane seat for free (PTG 1908-9576, 26 August 2016).  Qantas will live stream 75 matches of professional cricket played on Australian turf this austral summer on domestic aircraft fitted with in-flight Wi-Fi, the games involved including Women’s Ashes Twenty 20 fixtures, men’s Ashes Tests, One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals, plus the mens’ and womens’ Big Bash Leagues.

From January, Qantas’ in-flight entertainment system will have a dedicated cricket channel produced by CA Digital “exclusively" for the airline.  "Qantas is proud to support the men’s and women’s teams through our [CA] partnership, and as part of that we’re able to offer more than 400 hours of live cricket over the season to around 60,000 customers in-flight every week”, Qantas chief customer officer Olivia Wirth said in a statement.  

CA executive general manager of broadcasting and digital media Ben Amarfio said: “Our mantra of serving cricket fans wherever they are, is going to the next level with this fantastic initiative.  This unique partnership allows us to deliver on that even when cricket fans are 30,000 feet in the air [so] cricket fans won’t miss a ball of action”.

Following a trial earlier this year, Qantas has installed next-generation hardware Wi-Fi hardware on 15 Boeing 737 aircraft so far, and will start installing the technology on its domestic Airbus 330s from early next year, with a total 80 Boeing 737s and Airbus 330s aircraft to be fitted with the new equipment by the end of 2018.

First-class ticket to a one dimensional game.

Gideon Haigh.

The Australian.

Saturday, 4 November 2017.

PTG 2297-11611.

The expression “first class cricket” is increasingly a misnomer. If anything it has become the lowest of the game’s priorities — something to be pushed into the margins of calendars, budgets, and the thoughts of administrators and broadcasters alike.

The second round of Cricket Australia's (CA) Sheffield Shield first class competition commenced on Saturday, before its yawning stands and spruiking its third-tier sponsors, the first round having proceeded without three of its most prolific and dedicated exponents of the past decade in NSW’s Ed Cowan, Victoria’s Cameron White and Western Australia’s Michael Klinger, to whom younger batters were preferred.  Ironically, it was also a week in which one of Victoria’s Big Bash League franchises, the Melbourne Renegades, signed Brad Hogg, who is in his 47th year.

While Klinger went to fill his time in the Bangladesh Premier League having represented his country only seven months ago, there was also the annual vaunting of his Dorian Gray-esque state teammate Shaun Marsh, only a year younger than Cowan, but still somehow the country’s most promising 34-year-old.

The backdrop to this might be thought to be the year’s feuding between CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association, in which the remuneration of male domestic cricketers and the cost of the first-class game was the area of profoundest contention.  In a section of its original submission, CA argued: “While state men’s cricket does not have the objective of generating financial returns, ongoing growth in player payments relative to the revenue generated by state men’s cricket is an issue of sustainability”.

It was a collector’s piece of cognitive dissonance: how could state men’s cricket be faulted for failing to meet an objective it did not have? But an inference was open — that CA would cheerfully entertain a method of developing cricketers that was cheaper than a full-fledged interstate four-day competition.  The argument for youth now is likewise not moral but industrial. It presents as a more rational allocation of resources to invest in a player in their early 20s rather than their mid-30s — given their lower cost, potentially greater future upside, and also, perhaps, in the context of the year’s disputation, fewer opinions.

If you think ‘industrial’ too harsh a word, consider the rationalisation of White’s omission from the Victorian team by his state’s cricket general manager Shaun Graf. Over the past three years, Graf told a radio interviewer, “all of our KPIs (key performance indicators) have been about having Australian representatives”, and that being able to “win some Shields along the way” had been a “by-product” — sort of like ferrous slag, or pulp sludge, or flue gas.

This is to denigrate a proud competition which players hurl themselves headlong at winning every season but also revealing of how bureaucracy develops a stake in the success of the systems it creates.  The preparation of Australian cricketers is a sizeable employer. It involves a large centre in Brisbane. It collects copious data, has lots of meetings and conference calls, has outgrown such quaint notions as picking the best XIs and playing to win.

It specialises in cunning plans such as last year’s moving a NSW home Shield game against WA over 2,000 km across the Tasman Sea to Lincoln outside Christchurch (which is like relocating a game at Lord’s almost to Moscow), for experience in New Zealand conditions “because a large proportion of the current Test squad comes from those two states”, whereupon it turned out only three such players were available.

CA has pathways populated with managers, coaches, high-performance staff, talent scouts and game development officers needing to justify themselves by the minting of new players.  Who can take credit for Cameron White? He is his own man. But a youth who having gone through state Under-15s and Uunder-17s is chosen for the National Performance Squad and the Cricket Australia XI then lands a Big Bash League rookie deal before progressing to a state berth gilds all those associated with him (or her, for that matter).

Yet it’s this very structure that obviates the need for further micromanagement, for turning the Sheffield Shield into a series of 'Australian Cricket’s Got Talent’ TV show. Young Australian cricketers enjoy more opportunities than any previous generation — the Shield has been the last bastion of actual merit, of proof by performance.

The counter-argument is that Cowan, White, Klinger and presumably a few other older heads stand little chance of gaining Australian selection again, and therefore represent good money after bad. Yet this makes only superficial and quantitative sense, for to advance an inferior cricketer because they are younger is to cost them as much as they gain.  They obtain, for instance, a mistaken sense of their progress. Last season Daniel Hughes only just held on to his Shield place; now, we’re told, he’s “ready” for the Australian call.

Dressing rooms lose experience; rivals are short changed for White, Cowan and Klinger as Australian caps are prestigious poles for young bowlers.  The Shield is not so much about “producing” cricketers as it is about nurturing a competitive culture that puts their skills to the toughest possible test.  That too-busy current internationals will seldom be available for selection actually magnifies the importance of those players with prior international experience. They provide the benchmarks.

One other thing. It is a reductive view of cricket that holds cricketers whose future international chances may be limited to be wasting time, consuming space. On this logic a majority of states should cease to select wicketkeepers, on grounds that Australia will only need two or three every decade.  Very obviously, international cricket is no longer the only game in town — there is a whole gaudy world of domestic T20 out there.

In the history of Australian cricket, furthermore, only a small proportion of first-class players have gone on to higher honours. Does this invalidate the achievements and the journeys of those who did not? Do they therefore become failures, on par with defective widgets? They do, bollocks.

Heaven forfend that in this day and age a cricketer should be playing for enjoyment. Yet it is perfectly possible to pursue cricket seriously and also for joy and fun — in fact, it seems almost an ideal state of affairs. The commencement of the Sheffield Shield this season, then, has been an ominous foreshadowing — a further step towards turning the first-class into the one-dimensional.