Money Changes Everything (in Cricket)

Thanks to Cyndi Lauper for the title, and thanks to A Vinu, one of my followers, for some interesting links. I really don't know a whole lot about Cricket myself, but it's seeing some of the economic issues that affect baseball. Which is probably good - if there were zero money in cricket there's be a lot less of it.

The lucrative Twenty20 Cricket is sucking top players away from traditional test matches. (For those slightly more ignorant than me, Twenty20 is a shorter form of cricket, finishing in a couple of hours rather than days). This sounds much like the the World Baseball Classic, which many top players (e.g. Ryan Howard, Adrien Beltre) skip, or are forced to skip by their clubs, since it is a sidelight from their highly paid jobs in Major League Baseball. Some of the WBC issue is the timing, since it occurs during MLB's Spring Training. But the ened effect is to cast some doubt on the "validity" of the results, since teams with "apparently" less talent, like South Korea, have dominated because they can field their full team. It's clear that Korea really does have a ton of baseball talent, plus a ton of pride in their play, and great fans!, but until the WBC has the financial wherewithal to really attract all the top talent from all teams, it will be a stepchild to MLB.

The same may be true in cricket. If the national teams want all their their stars in the test matches, they will either have to pay better, drum up nationalistic pride and pressure for them to play, or adjust the schedule to avoid conflicts with Twenty20. Cricket has an advantage over baseball, since test matches are traditional and Twenty20 is new, whereas in baseball the WBC is "new" and has to overcome both tradition and money.

TV coverage of cricket is also an issue, especially for young people:

Berry again voices concern about the lack of free-to-air TV coverage in the UK. While he acknowledges that the ECB attracted top dollar for the sale of international TV rights to BSkyB, he draws attention to chilling research carried out among more than 26,000 schoolchildren in South London. ... Cricket was ranked 21st

This is much like MLB playoff baseball. TV sets the times for the big games, often in prime time in the evening (for big ad revenues) which is too late for younger children, especially a few time zones away. Many games are on pay channels. The end result is that fewer kids can watch the games and baseball loses future fans and players. Years ago these playoff and World Series games were often on during the daytime and we'd sneak radios into school to listen to our heroes. If the teacher was a fan, no sneaking was required! I guess today kids can follow the games on their cell phones. (I follow some games on the internet) Not sure what the solution is for cricket. An internet feed should be decent for following the game. But there are a lot of places in the sub-continent where this is not an option.


On the bright side for cricket, major manufacturers are sponsoring teams, providing high tech clothing, and sending hot babes. And Bollywood is there.