Whatever the intelligentsia of the Australian media may say, someone is interested in T20 cricket. 46,000 don’t turn up because the bails flash.
I came across a young guy over Christmas who spoke about the Melbourne Renegades in fanatical terms and I was shocked. My interest in it is passing at but this was as fanatical as any footy fan you hear.
Now that’s one person, but there’s definitely two or three like him and there may be two or three hundred, and one day soon there could two or three thousand like that. Once that happens you’re off and running.
This was the idea, to create more passionate fans, and here was proof that it’s worked on some.
So while the Aaron Finch situation didn’t really worry me as a cricket fan, because the Big Bash League doesn’t hold me like a Test match, for those out there who are emotionally invested in the BBL there would be disillusionment.
Finch was picked to the play in the Australian ODI squad and the undisputed player of the tournament was set to be ruled out of its most important part.
A lack of form for Australia saw Finch return for the Renegades in their semi-final loss to Brisbane, but still, what if Billy Slater was pulled out of the Storm team on the eve of the finals because he’d been picked in the Australian team?
Can a fan have a long term loyalty to a team or league when winning or losing of the league is not really representative of the season a fan has invested in? It would be difficult, and I feel for the young Renegades fan – how can he turn his friends on to the BBL finals when the best player is not playing?
The step from promotional curiosity to bona fide league is what needs to be made and these contradictions make for large hurdles. If you play well in the early rounds of the BBL, you’ll ultimately be more likely to be picked for the Australian ODI team and miss the business end.
So what to do? Well of course it’s the now red-headed-stepchild of the sport – one day cricket – that is at fault. A format that has slipped dramatically in importance in the minds of everyone from the general public to the marketers, but, crucially, still has a level of attractiveness in the TV world.
Seven hours of television running through prime time in summer that will engage people counters the public ambivalence to the matches. In some ways the ho-hum approach of the public reflects a TV audience, “I don’t really care about it, but hey I’ll have it going on the TV because there’s never anything else on.”
The problem is that T20 cricket and ODI cricket now competing head-to-head in the same space, both for fans and players. It’s so easy to compare the two, and if you’re good at T20 you’ll be probably be decent in the ODI arena too, leading to the Finch situation.
We don’t have that problem with Test cricket, its skills are different so naturally the teams will be different and even then with freaks like Dave Warner, Test cricket has the blue-ribbon pedigree that holds it above T20 in the public’s eyes.
The answer is that in the crowded schedule BBL needs to run side by side with Test cricket to avoid these clashes, and that provides the lifeline for ODI cricket in Australia.
Let’s say the AFL decided to play the grand final in round 15 and then we meandered through another seven home and away rounds afterwards that may well provide some visual highlights but nothing in the way of consequence. Some people would still turn up, we’d probably still watch it on TV, but on a whole the care factor would completely diminish. That’s ODI cricket today.
We build the Melbourne and Sydney Tests as the ultimate cricket events of the season and then within two weeks we’re on the decline – a month of supplementary ODI matches that have nowhere near the consequence.
Through the 80s and the 90s that was the winning formula, the public couldn’t get enough of ODI cricket, it was the crescendo of the season. That has shifted in a huge way over the last decade, obviously T20 has been part of it but the enduring nature of Test cricket has resurged.
A lot of the solutions you might hear from the outer are not possible, they are thrown forward without any understanding of the ICC’s Future Tours Program and therefore are irrelevant. However there may be a solution that’s simpler and doesn’t ask for anything more – switch the season around.
After football and racing finish, cricket is wanted by the public. Almost without any warning we’re into the main event of Test cricket come mid-November. So what if we teased the public a little bit – yes we’ll get to the Tests but let’s have an entree of ODI cricket to get us started.
Certainly we’d be less apathetic if we knew there was bigger and better to come. It also puts cricket on the television in primetime and is the perfect promotion to sell tickets to the main event of Test matches.
It becomes a much more natural and longer lasting season of interest by design. Running through mid-November to mid-December, ODIs become the warm-up act for the Test series. Sure we’re here for the Tests but while we’re waiting this fills an entertainment void and whets the appetite.
It will give us a peek at the Test opposition without blowing the anticipation of contest out of the water – whatever ODI cricket is, its not Test cricket and it can only provide a hint of what expect. Let’s keep the suspense of the contest open as long as we can.
The Tests would also gain from this, you could open in Perth or Brisbane in late December before heading to the big events of Melbourne and Sydney. Now that the public has hit its cricket stride, you go through January with Tests culminating in the once traditional Adelaide Australia Day Test.
While this happens you have the BBL going and perhaps you build to have the BBL finals standing alone in early February, giving them an uncluttered stage. This can work regardless of whether we have the blue ribbon longer Test series (England, India) or the smaller three Test series – you just run both of them through January.
That looks like a much more logical build to a season, starting from mid-November with the least attended but TV-friendly matches into the main events that sustain through to mid-February. And at the same time we won’t have the player issues which will riddle the climax of this year’s BBL – teams will be stable right through the tournament unless we get an unusual situation where a player is elevated on T20 form to Test cricket.
And maybe we can then start doing different things for the actual ODI series now that we have it in a more appropriate timeslot.
The marketing of this year’s ODI series has to be commended for having a go, at least there is an effort in calling it a party and so forth. However when the problem is the lack of meaning for matches it only reinforces the view that meaning of the match is negligible. The party theme would work at Test cricket because we already have meaning in that context.
So how do we do we give it meaning? Well think back to the World Series Cup – today it sounds dated but the concept might be right and the ICC won’t pull the trigger on a year-long championship involving all nations. Maybe we follow a tennis/golf/racing model here – each year there are tournaments/races held that have stand-alone value and add up in competitors’ career accolades.
Each year Australia hold one ODI tournament involving the touring Test team and a third team, likely be made up of one of the lower ranked (and perhaps easier to get touring) nations.
Call it the Australian Open/Cup or something like that (with sponsor designation of course), it becomes a tournament that’s worth winning – there’s only one Australian Cup given each year, it’s something that sits on your end of year achievements.
Who knows, if we take the lead it might add to other countries doing the same – we may have a situation where countries talk about their great year when they won the Australian and Indian Opens.
The format would also change up – a six match series where each team plays each other twice and then one stand-alone final. The two matches involving the overseas teams to be played at satellite or regional venues that would ordinarily not see international cricket. Using the less is more theory, not every state would see Australia in an ODI each season – limit the supply and create the demand.
Under the new centralised board system this is more achievable in a financial model sense. If it’s popular it might move out to nine games with each team playing each other three times in future years.
If nothing else it’s worth a try to revive ODI cricket in this country. At the moment the format is in a catch 22 of it doing brand damage to have small crowds and an apathetic public but remaining a central plank of any television rights deal.
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