No 130, July 22 - The Grumbler's County Cricket Newsletter
🟣 Metro Bank 50-Over Cup begins 🟢 Essex CEO goes due to 'financial woes' 🔴 Lancs, Hants signings 🟤 You-know-what is a hard sell 🔵 Are central contracts worth the money? 🐱 Brian the Cat is fuming
Let’s talk about money.
I would rather not, of course. The success of a sport should be measured in joy, pride and meaning not pounds, shillings and pence.
But county cricket as we know it is under an existential threat and, clearly, money is the critical ingredient in its survival.
Since my last newsletter, Essex announced they would be parting with a highly competent, popular and forward-looking CEO, reportedly through lack of money.
This should raise the volume of those clanging alarm bells to deafening levels across the domestic game. In the past decade, Essex have won a host of trophies, brought through a lot of talent, are among the best supported of the non-Test hosting counties, have ceased all outground cricket because it lost money and have been almost debt-free. Yet all this has afforded no protection against increasing costs and flat revenue from the ECB.
In the circumstances, how can the county turn down a multi-million pound injection from the sale of franchises in the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named when the contract is plonked on the table in the coming months? Even though many fear this consigns all the ‘other 10’ counties to almost permanent irrelevance.
Like drug addicts, they know this is short-term fix may come with long-term, potentially permanent, pain but they need to just get through the day and pray for a better tomorrow.
The real problem is that, in the current strategy, the money fix will not be enough. But then it never is.
The game-changing, exclusive Sky money in 2005 was not enough
Teflon Tom Harrison’s ‘record-breaking’ television deal in 2017 was not enough
The £1.3m per year for agreeing to the entirely new format of the tournament that-shall-not-be-named was not enough.
So this will not be enough either. Especially as control will be lost amid a space race for talent that causes intelligent sports business leaders to make strange anti-business decisions.
This is why we desperately need change in the game and some money to enact it. But, unlike the current trend, change based upon long-term resilience for English cricket, not short-term profit.
A change based on widening the appeal of the game by putting different people in charge with different principles.
All I am seeing is the same people slotted into the same sort of positions siding with new sources of money and many giving us the plumby-accented version of “this time next year, Rodney, we’ll be millionaires”.
Of course, if there is always too much month left at the end of the money then you have to conclude that 18 first-class counties are unsustainable. They have rarely been fiscally sound. But so much of sport is. You could throw exactly the same accusation at most of the clubs in the Premier League (annual operating losses £1.2bn, player salaries 75% of total revenue). But football benefits from a healthy supply of rich men (it is nearly always men) with large egos who want to take the reigns.
These used to be local-guys-made-good but, in the Premier League era, an extra 0 has been added to the requisite revenue. They come in with grand plans to do it differently. And mostly get it wrong. It remains true that the best way to leave football with millions in the bank is to start with billions.
As so many of us predicted, the sale of franchises in the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named has hit problems. If you are investing that much you want as good as total control to make the changes you want. And, despite all the bluster to the contrary, everything is based on return on investment. We should expect nothing less. Those are the rule of this game. But English cricket, let alone counties, will not be on the priority list of those writing the cheques.
Any investor, let alone those emotionally uninvested from overseas, would always be agitating to squeeze the pips after the impoverished counties had mentally spent the money but before contracts were signed. But with so many clearly distressed assets, they know they hold all the power.
The ECB or the MCC could act as a bullwork for the counties and the red-ball game. So could a rich county like Surrey, as they did under The Richards when you-know-what was under development.
Alas, times have changed. The leaderships are different and the money has spoken. All three are buckling under.
'Car crash' H*ndred sale plans may fall millions short of ECB target | Telegraph
ECB wants to keep the H*ndred name even if it switches to Twenty20 format | The Guardian
The H*ndred: NFL owners contacted by ECB over team sales - BBC Sport
ECB tries to woo NFL teams for H*ndred investment by explaining laws of cricket over video
We see the need for potential expansion of the competition | The Cricketer ($)
More Rashid Khan? More Harmanpreet Kaur? Private investment will bring The H*ndred broad challenges | The Cricketer ($)
The H*ndred snapping up county talent is not limited to players | The Cricketer ($)
'Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast': the ECB's response to the ICEC | Duncan Stone - Academia.edu
As the Telegraph article says, the potential owners of you-know-what franchises believe they need to pay players more to stop them from leaving to rival leagues. Moving the top wage from £125,000 to something nearer £300,000.
In such circumstances do you think they will not barge through the counties’ ‘red lines’. Hence the need to publically agitate right now.
Of course, that £300,000 will not be enough pretty soon when the likes of Ben Stokes may be getting £800,000 from the Mumbai Indians group for a stint in the SA T20.
(It has been pointed out before that football players are somehow exempt from criticism over salaries because, hey, that is just the market and they should get what they can yet football CEOs are hammered for commanding their worth. The same is happening in cricket. Penny for your thoughts, Mr Stephenson.)
The always excellent Talksport Following On podcast discussed the pulling power of top players and asked do they matter.
For me, not much. I have watched far too many bang-average performers with the three seaxes of Essex on their chests. I am looking forward to the Metro Bank 50-Over Cup because I can see more of our excellent crop of youngsters. It means something to see future stars in their early games. I am hoping to take my daughter on Wednesday because it is the summer holidays, accessible and quite cheap. This is what attracts me and, I hope, Emily for years to come.
However, television commands stars and there is an increasing body of research to suggest that young sports fans are following players over teams. But I would argue that only a handful, like Stokes, can properly move the dial and, while the top talent may be worth the money, there is a large rump in the middle who are vastly overpaid.
The tournament-that-shall-not-be-named was designed to re-connect English cricket’s lost audience and give the game a product they owned to support flagging television rights. This was much needed, though I have long argued whether the ECB are the right body to enact this since this situation arose on their watch and their long-term track record is pitiful.
John Stephenson: Essex chief executive to leave at end of season | BBC Sport
98 Not Out - Huw Turbervill on county cricket finances | Phoenix FM
Ex-The H*ndred supremo Sanjay Patel set for high-profile return to cricket | The Cricketer
However, it has also served as a flashy Trojan horse to break the shackles of the county structure. A reframed relationship was urgently required but, once again, this has been incompetently handled. While the ECB supposedly run the game on behalf of the counties et al, they have failed to properly push it forward so they threw in a hand grenade. They did not have the minerals to take the hard route of building a consensus with these hard-to-handle clubs, switching the foundation stones of the game and, upon them, constructing a firm, resilient, if slower new future.
Nah. Let’s roll over and have our tummies tickled by television, toss some money at players and marketing in the earnest pursuit of becoming the second-best franchise tournament. Because, yes, that was always the aim. If we have to row back on all that bullshit about the unique selling point of the new format then it does not matter. We’ll keep the same name. It makes no sense but no one will really notice. If we cannot sell the tournament abroad we will get the overseas investors to come to us. We’ll chase them and make some promo videos if we have to because that clearly smacks of a sporting product in demand. Just get the grumbling members to sign over control of their counties for free and flog them off. No one will realise that there is a buck to be made here, except for the selected insiders and the money men.
God knows the Olympics is a tainted sporting movement. Drugs, cheating, politics and even terrorism have blighted its long history. But it remains relevant because the achievement on the track or in the pool is not motivated by money. It had an amateur-ish ethos for the first half of its history.
At the Paris games, a governing body is providing prize money for the first time,. World Athletics are offering $50,000 to every track and field gold medallist, relay winners have to split the same money four ways. It is not much but remember some recent Team GB medallists have had to fund their own trip to the Games.
This prize money, about a 20th of what Stokes is getting just for his spell in South Africa, is the reward for four years of relentless training, planning and competing. And, remember, only the winners get the cash. Yes, the victors will get other $poils for but the glory comes first.
The first financial inducement has been heavily criticised by the head of Team GB, mainly because of what it will do to other sports. As ever, it is about the knock-on effects for those who are weaker and potentially left behind.
The tournament-that-shall-not-be-named starts in midweek. You can tell by the raft of underscrutinised, jam-tomorrow stories that precedes it. The Olympics start on Friday.
The counterpoint could not be sharper.
The latter is the pinnacle of world sport because it is full of history, tradition, pride and meaning. Glory, not money is the point. That is why it has always crossed all geographic and demographic boundaries.
Along with the Metro Bank 50-over Cup, I know what I’ll be watching.
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PPPS If you want to get involved in any groups to change this situation. Then there is the County Cricket Members Group and, of course, the Cricket Supporters Association.
Players - moves, contracts, news
Mason Crane: Hampshire spinner joins Glamorgan on permanent deal | BBC Sport
Lancashire sign George Dockrell as T20 Blast cover | ESPNcricinfo
Luc Benkenstein: Essex youngster signs new three-year contract | BBC Sport
I am eagerly looking forward to another county stint with Sussex: Jaydev Unadkat - Times of India
Aamer Jamal leaves Warwickshire after back injury | ESPNcricinfo
Charge: Josh Cobb and Worcestershire County Cricket Club | Worcestershire CCC
Anthony McGrath: Essex head coach appointed director of cricket | BBC Sport
News, Views and Interviews
County cricket: Bears, Surrey and Sussex reach T20 Blast quarter-finals | Cricket | The Guardian
End of St Helen's cricket would be 'heartbreaking' - Robert Croft | BBC Sport
Council promise to fight for New Road cricket grounds future | BBC
Here is a site the aggregates all the info on players available in the Metro Bank 50-over Cup
ECB name Tier 2 teams in new women's domestic competition | ESPNcricinfo
Essex: Women's World Cup can make club a 'major hub' - Dan Feist - BBC Sport
New Zealand Cricket Refused ECB’s Offer Of A Women’s Test | CRICKETher
As Jimmy Anderson bows out, Test cricket is in danger of doing likewise | The Guardian
“A week earlier, some of the most influential administrators and players in the game gathered together in this very same corner of Lord’s for the MCC’s World Cricket Connects conference. The Cricket West Indies chief executive, Johnny Grave, made the point, again, that the game needs to rearrange its finances if this format is going to survive in his region. Fewer of the men in the room seemed as worried by this as you might hope. Judging by the few conversations I had there, more of them seemed concerned about how to go about wringing more money out of the young fans who love white-ball cricket.”
Cricket legend James Anderson to be given his own street in Lancashire - LancsLive
Stuart Broad deserves his end – but why only a waiting area for Sobers? | Times
"This has to end" Hampshire cricketer has house violently vandalised twice | Portsmouth News
James Vince interview: Repeated attacks on my home forced me and my family out | Telegraph
Up Down Turn Around – Rain Stopped Play, inspection at 3
Dr. Adam Rutherford Interview – Rain Stopped Play, inspection at 3
Andy Clark - Fanzine tour de force remembered during Trent Bridge Test | ESPNcricinfo
Extremely loud and incredibly vile: how social media abuse wrecks cricketers | Cricket Monthly
Surrey’s talent factory churns out more than just public schoolboys | Times
Given that seven per cent of the country attends them, “just” is doing some heavy lifting in that headline.
Australia news - Hobart's new stadium designed to host indoor Test cricket | ESPNcricinfo
Finally, Andy Brassington’s wonderful Walkers and Talkers project was featured on the One Show. Click here, it starts at 10:15
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