It’s all happening in the cricket world these days with the Indian Premier League doing what Kerry Packer did 31 years ago and dropping a bomb into the formal structure of the game. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out how to attract all the top players in the world to a game of bang, wallop and smash, it just took buckets full of cash! Packer did it in much the same way, because when all’s said and done, cricketers want to make the most of their talents and that means their services are available to the highest bidder.
The rebel Indian Cricket League led the way in India with their Twenty20 tournament quickly followed by the mega bucks openly touted by the Indian Premier League. Almost immediately the top players were falling over each other to enlist, and a host of premature retirements from top performers in Australia and New Zealand left nobody in any doubt where priorities lay. After all, there’s no comparison between Twenty20 cricket and test cricket in sporting terms, but when you can earn ten times as much for doing ten times less it’s not too difficult to do the Math and come up with the best option.
Twenty20 cricket has created its own unique cricket hype and with all the razzamatazz going on off the field, the sporting public has understandably been wooed by its entertainment if not its sporting attributes. Let’s face it, you could turn the batting order upside down in 20 overs cricket and the scoreline would hardly be affected, and virtually any donkey could bowl as the batsmen are going to attack irrespective of where the ball is pitched. At least 90% of the wickets that fall in these 20 overs thrashes are the result of batsman errors, but who cares, as this is circus and let’s get on with the show.
Not all the top cricket players in the world are singing the praises of the Indian Premier League right now, especially the players that are not in it! Leading the dissenters are the English players who are committed to central contracts that pale into insignificance beside the buckets of cash on offer in India. But their solution is simple…. let’s have a tournament of our own!
Sir Allen Stanford has already shown what can be done in the West Indies and it’s no surprise that he’s strongly pushing the ECB towards this concept and at the same time throwing down a gauntlet of US$20 million to the England team to play his West Indies Select XI on his ground in Antigua with a winner take all prize. Texan billionaire Stanford has marketed his own Caribbean Twenty20 tournament to perfection with huge prize money and lucrative fees to the once-suspicious media icons, all of who are now on the Twenty20 bandwagon because they are on the payroll. Nobody needs to make a stand on the cricket ethics of this crude form of the sport, because there’s so much money at stake and everyone feels entitled to a slice of the cake.
Just what’s in it for Irish cricket is another story, but surely we must be able to step on the bandwagon ourselves and get a slice of the action? After all, we’ve been playing Twenty20 cricket for at least 40 years but it was never going to be a revolutionary marketing bonanza under the banner of the Midweek League. Not much has changed in the rules in eitherIndiaor Antigua, but add a few million dollars, some loud music, colourful pyjamas, beautiful cheerleaders and dancing girls, and suddenly you have the ‘Wow” factor. Little wonder all the big names on and off the field are now involved because big bucks have guaranteed their presence.
The NCU has its own Twenty20 competition, which has been savaged by poor weather in the last two years, and at least one club has its own competition. But surely there’s an opportunity for something bigger and better that could catapult Irish cricket in the popularity stakes if professionally promoted and marketed. Yes, you need a rich donor to make it happen, but before that you need vision and enterprise to formulate a game plan and set it before prospective sponsors. It could be an Irish inter-city competition, a club competition, a franchise arrangement, a county competition, an inter-union competition or a pro-am celebrity competition. Indeed it could be anything as anything goes in spontaneous instant cricket because it is all about entertainment and big hitting is entertainment in 20 overs thrashes.
Will we be able to lure a rich backer to the Emerald Isle to cash in on this new phenomenon, or will we watch in the wings as other entrepreneurs across the cricketing world make the most of this unique golden opportunity?
Clarence Hiles
Editor
