The promotion of the game: Can cricket keep selling?

When advertising tycoon David Ogilvy wrote ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man’, we the audience, his selected priests, had good reason to listen. ‘We sell’, he said. Or else? ‘Or else’.

When we watch cricket, we are being sold something we feel we own, or used to feel we own.

Think of your favourite commentator, and you are likely to conclude that what you feel they do better than any other commentator is selling you something you think you already own.

Of course, the commercial station you are watching owns the rights to screen the game. The commentator must promote and cover the game, two different though interlinked disciplines.

Promotion involves the talking up of the possible; covering the game means not just discussion of the possible, but analysis of what has just been.

One-day cricket was cricket before the media decided it was cricket. Kerry Packer was the first to see how it could make the most money, and when it could make the most money. Traditionalists moaned, but the game had validity as a concept. That shaped the contest of genres, in the sense that it didn’t include television commentators telling people what the future was as they were watching their first one-day game.

With Twenty20, it was different. After India fell in love with T20 following their surprise win at the inaugural World T20 in 2007, it led to the success of the IPL, a tournament India could always win. The IPL was never just cricket, but the cricket had to be sold to the consumer.

Domestic T20 tournaments have mushroomed. That mushrooming has had many consequences, but perhaps the undercurrent below all of them is Ogilvy’s ‘Or else’.

The World T20 remains the premier T20 tournament in the world. It contains the best players, the best teams. It is sold, and sold to the max, because it can and must be sold to the max. Not just because of the cricket, but because of the money.

But outside the World T20, T20 internationals can be more easily classified under the ‘Or else’. The domestic tournaments mean the schedule has been squeezed ever tighter, and one consequence is that the idea an Australia could represent their country in every scheduled match in 2017 was no more possible than the BFG representing Australia.

Outside the World T20, Australia’s T20 team is often the other Australian team, with several of the best players in the Test team overseas. Last night was no exception.

Indeed, the last match of this series shapes as the best example of all, as it is being held the day before the first Test in India.

The brevity of Channel Nine’s pre-game show felt symptomatic of cricket’s avoidance of the other side of the coin. Starting ten minutes before the cricket started, there was barely enough time to make a point once, let alone twice.

After an overly positive introduction to the context, the teams and a gambling advertisement, the cricket started. Which was not to be entirely lamented. Overpromotion is rife in cricket.

The toss is only an event for the spectators before the players when the media decides that it is: otherwise, at the amateur level, the two captains walk away from the toss, wait as they walk with theatrical calm, and then make a hand gesture as to what their team will be doing.

But if overpromotion is not in evidence because the cricket is not overly necessary to sell, then cricket has two problems to solve.

One, how international cricket needs to market itself. Two, what it should always have to market.

The best players from a nation or a region against players from another nation or region. Otherwise, not only will the pre-game promotion be as interchangeable with ‘A Current Affair’, but the cricket will too be interchangeable with other forms of entertainment. From before the first ball.

Which is not to say the cricket last night was devoid of interest from an Australian perspective. Aaron Finch and Michael Klinger, the guy who deserved to be the Australian captain and a guy who deserved to open the batting for Australia, put on 76 for the first wicket.

Tim Paine sacrificed himself in the last over of the Australian innings to keep James Faulkner on strike, as he was not suited to play the role for which Faulkner is renowned.

Justin Langer, whose positivity is one of his most admirable characteristics, told Channel Nine that the side contained ‘players who would cut off their leg to play for Australia’. While those words might seem ludicrous when taken in the literal sense, Langer’s authentic belief in what he was selling to the public was laudable. And it is this that should interest us in what the game needs for decent promotion.

Klinger was not compared with David Warner last night. Understandable, for there are more obvious contrasts than comparisons in their stories. Yet for cricket’s youngest format, T20 often seems to suffer from forgetfulness.

For it was to the same part of the MCG that Klinger just cleared the man on the ring on the fifth ball of the fourth over that Warner just cleared the man for his first international boundary in January 2009. Had Warner been caught, his arrival would have felt like something of an anti-climax; ditto Klinger. But even though Klinger didn’t score anywhere near the same amount of runs as Warner, he stayed out there longer enough for it not to feel like an anti-climax. An intimate understanding of the past, therefore, is key for the most convincing selling of the game.

Finch was unlucky to lose the captaincy of the T20 team. Giving it to Steve Smith led to no discernible benefit in terms of results, and Smith hasn’t played a T20 international since the 2016 World T20. Warner captained the team well in Sri Lanka, but while the cricket world is the way it is, Finch is the most likely of the three candidates to be able to play the most matches. He alone is not a Test option. The other two are Test necessities. It is a strange disqualification to make, but one that prove necessary so long as they must be filled by 22 different people.

Whoever those people are in the T20 team, they must find a way against spin that leads to ultimate success at the World T20. Aided by the biggest cricket ground in the world, Sri Lanka’s spinners Seekkuge Prasanna and Lakshan Sandakan went for a combined 53 off eight overs, and Sandakan made the initial breakthrough of Klinger.

What, if anything, does last night tell us about Australia’s playing of spin, when placed in context of the three matches played since the last World T20?

In fact, by avoiding the topic altogether, no one has considered playing devil’s advocate for the schedule being as crammed as possible. From a playing perspective, one could argue the schedule helped make Australia’s hat-trick of World Cups possible.

Rotation has always had a negative connotation, but there was a squad mentality with those sides. There was always someone else who could do the job. Even Shane Warne could be replaced. That success gives more credence to the idea you shouldn’t always pick the best possible team than that selection being forced on you by conflicting demands, but the challenge can help make the best teams.

Few in the media have ever made that argument. Selection for the national team is precious. A fan has parted with their money to see the best players. It is easy to place yourself in their shoes, because you are in their shoes. Generally, I would agree with them. But one should always listen to an informed opinion that differs from your own, because those can sell for good reason.

Also, international cricket should have to prove its primacy. I believe it is and should be, for no domestic competition has been able to replicate international cricket’s ability to involve all the best players. The IPL does not involve players from Pakistan, while the BCCI protects the primacy of its competition and control of its labour force by refusing to give permission for its players to play in the IPL’s competitors.

Yet there is no doubt that the franchise competitions can create greater parity between teams, through salary caps. Teams are not constrained by the talent within their borders. The idea that Stuart Broad can play for Hobart is not controversial, while Broad playing for Australia would be anathema.

For all the effort those involved with the match put into last night, last night fell into the category of ‘Or else’.

Here is my fear: if too many matches continue to fall into the category, then the value of cricket will fall, even as there is a blizzard of content. Awareness of problems does not equal the solving of problems, as the continued absence of a Test World Cup testifies.

David Ogilvy always knew what he was selling, and how to sell it. Before selling, he would know the product. What would he have written before last night?