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Brett McKay was right on the money with his piece earlier this week about the Big Bash turning heads elsewhere in the cricket-playing world.
I’ve no idea whether the men in suits in South Africa or Bangladesh are consulting their calculators and assessing the merits of a Big Bash-style competition, but the triumph of the competition has certainly created a lively debate.
Some of the points being raised are valid and worthy of discussion and some, in complete contrast, aren’t worthy of the 140 or less characters they’ve been published in, but in England some green eyes are glaring enviously.
A recent study stated that participation numbers in English recreational cricket are down from 2013, which was cause for dissatisfaction. The Big Bash has merely compounded the calls for change and, in the most extreme and ridiculous case, the very English trait of self-loathing.
It has always been the way that Australian success, when served as a counterpoint to an English downturn, leads to the demand for imitation.
While England were losing however many successive Ashes series throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Sheffield Shield was doing everything right while the County Championship was the opposite.
When the tables turned, the Championship was held to be a superior domestic competition and the Shield failing to live up to past glories. All a touch exaggerated with neither being as bad or good as made out.
Now, with the Big Bash setting a new benchmark for a domestic Twenty20 tournament, its English cousin is in the stocks being flogged for all it’s worth, which if you listen to some, is not very much.
Yet the calls for wholesale change smack of a bandwagon riding by and the majority choosing to jump on board. Politicians couldn’t attach themselves to a cause any quicker and that really is saying something.
The biggest issue is one of assumption.
The assumption that a franchise tournament will attract the marquee names, that the attendances will automatically rise, that the standard will increase significantly. All may well be true, but they are certainly not a given.
For starters, the Big Bash didn’t downsize, it increased. Six states already in place, add a couple to the cities that could support two teams, and give them new monikers.
Cutting 18 counties down to 10, for example, will alienate nearly 50 per cent of the current market. And while the Big Bash teams have captive audiences in their respective cities, the population in England is distributed differently.
Nottinghamshire merging with Derbyshire and Leicestershire might make geographical sense but that’s about it. Members’ clubs, as counties are, won’t vote for the chance to watch less cricket, however much money is promised.
And you need money if you want top-class talent. AB de Villiers doesn’t show up in the IPL because he wants to improve his switch-hit; he goes because of the rewards. As does Kevin Pietersen, Chris Gayle, David Warner and so on.
The northern hemisphere may benefit from a summer that opens up doors to cricketers from around the world, but not from a financial climate where cricket commands the top dollar as is the case in India.
No free-to-air TV coverage doesn’t help either (domestic cricket has been on satellite for the past decade) but the relevant TV companies have to be willing for that to come about – which is easier said than done.
The other factor, that of the standard of play, is also misleading. Is the Big Bash, in playing terms, superior to the IPL or England’s T20 Blast? I’ve seen enough of each to suggest they’re all a much of a muchness with a good game in any being a good game and a poor one being the same. A correlation is made too quickly and conveniently between games in front of massive attendances being of a higher standard, which is not necessarily the case.
And it is this last factor that provides the crux of the matter.
The green-eyes monster has come out for a look because of the vast numbers of people who are turning up to watch at the SGG, the Gabba and the Adelaide Oval, not because of how well or far the ball is being struck. This is where the T20 Blast should start taking some serious notes.
Attractively priced tickets, scheduling in the holidays, aggressive and well-targeted marketing, and games played in a dedicated block are all contributory factors to a curve that is going upwards.
Contrast this to overpriced entry, one game a week mostly in term time, comparatively weak promotion, and a lengthy, stretched-out fixture list and you don’t need to be Colombo to work out where the problem lies.
If you look past all of the teeth gnashing, the foundations and the audience are in place for the English version to find its way back to its earlier success and not be put to shame by its brash antipodean cousin. Wholesale change isn’t the way to go about it.