Congratulations to the Cricket Australia officials. In what has been a long time coming – since the Buchanan era, actually – Australia has a system at the top which is serviceable. Ironically, the grassroots stuff is in great order.
Not that I think cricket teams playing internationally will be run by their own central cricket board of control for much longer.
I see a day when Australia enters more than one team in the international cricket arena. I see a day when business people run franchises in a ‘World Cricket League’.
With Big Bash, IPL, Bangladesh Big Bash and more Twenty20 leagues sure to pop up, the ICC and cricket administration worldwide still have a huge job ahead.
But it is time for cricket, like all other sports, to take on professional business owners, professional administrators and run a professional team in accountable circumstances.
What has that got to do with India beating India 4-0 on it’s own bouncy tracks you ask? Well, I can’t see the point in Australia having over 50 world-class players looking to make a big dollar and not fitting into 12 places.
Take 25 of them for one team and form another. Then enter them in a World Cricket League.
Cricket is a game which doesn’t realise quite what it has got on its hands and it doesn’t know what to do with it.
And the Commonwealth countries such as Australia, England, New Zealand , South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Bangladesh are all affluent enough and advanced enough to run a true World Cricket League.
At the end of the day Australian and many Commonwealth countries have systems where junior cricket, district or club cricket, school cricket, State/County/Provincial Cricket and Australian/National representation follow a systemised approach.
Nothing would change under a World Cricket League, other than the opportunity for more people, businesses, sponsors, players, officials, administrators, coaches etc etc to get involved at the International Level. You create an elite system and open it up to more people at the top.
You could end up with two divisions, say the World Cricket League and the World Cricket Association, eight to 10 teams in each, a world champion in Twenty20, ODI and Test cricket every year.
And the game would be ever-expanding. Under the current system, even if I wanted to run a cricket team in the ICC and I was from Singapore, I could not.
Or Nairobi, or New York, or Amsterdam or Glasgow or Vancouver. But who’s to say if the terms and conditions and rules were right, I could not .
Cricket will continue not to expand around the world unless national bodies, professional teams and businesses take over the running of the game.
Kerry Packer was 40 years ahead of his time.
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