No 89, May 25 - The Grumbler's County Cricket Newsletter
🔵 Blast off, Championship on hold 🟢 All the Blast signings 🟣 Counties fight back against franchise departures 🟤 Kent start charging for streams 🟠 Patel to leave ECB 🎈Hot-air balloon stops play
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Normally, I start these newsletters with some pithy intro about the state of the county game.
But the sun is out and the Blast is underway. So let’s change the script. Here are some pictures from the early games. Enjoy.
Yeah, no idea on that last one.
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Added: Simon Hemsley, Ralph, Alastair Wilson
County Championship Week 7 Review
County cricket talking points: Surrey go 25 points clear in Division One (Guardian)
Six County Championship Talking Points: Durham And Surrey Dominate, While Worcestershire Pull-Off Their Great Escape (Wisden)
Boland turned down county opportunity to stay fresh for WTC final and Ashes (Reuters)
Hampshire searching for Mohammad Abbas replacement ahead of possible Pakistan callup (Cricketer) ($)
Blast news and stories
Signings: Shah (Leicestershire - overseas - Blast, first 3 games), Mir (Worcestershire - overseas - Blast, first 3 games), Turner (Durham - overseas - Blast), Donald (Hampshire to Derbyshire - loan), McKerr (Surrey to Notts - loan, 2 weeks), Burgess (Warwickshire to Sussex - loan, whole of Blast)
Contract: Keogh (Northamptonshire - 2yrs)
T20 Blast preview - South Group (HarryL14)
T20 Blast preview - North Group (HarryL14)
Lewis Gregory re-appointed as Somerset's Blast captain (Somerset County Gazette)
T20 Blast: Glamorgan captain David Lloyd out injured with Kiran Carlson taking over (BBC Sport)
From Red to White - The Blast starts (Grockles)
Vitality Blast handed boost by global stars and rising ticket sales (Times)
Nathan Ellis is back to help Hampshire try and defend their T20 Blast title (Mail)
Somerset CCC aiming to limit anti-social behaviour at County Ground (Somerset County Gazette)
Despite sentimental objections, Blast-Off has a place in the county calendar (The Cricketer)
The double-headed Blast opener at Edgbaston last weekend was a worthy experiment. As this piece points out, Derbyshire were the likely losers, given they had to forego a home game. But their crowds, around 3,000, require improvement even though they are tracking 15 per cent higher than last year. The age-old comparison with football attendances is made in this piece. It is natural, I do it myself. But the media and marketing behind the sports is ‘apples vs oranges’. I have been in 25,000 sell-out Blast games at Lord's that received no coverage outside the usual niche outlets. Compare that to a Championship game or lower Premier League game with the same crowd in attendance. In the last couple of years, our obsession with football has now spilt into the women's game, which is great to see. But I would love to see domestic cricket seeing the coverage afforded a similar level of coverage. It needs help too.
News, View and Interviews
Counties call for white-ball jet-setters to become part-time freelancers (Times)
County directors call for urgent review into standard contracts amid franchise exodus (Cricinfo)
‘A risk to the game’: PCA warns counties not to end year-round contracts (Guardian)
Jason Roy to walk away from England contract to sign for Major League Cricket franchise (Mail)
Apart from the Packer Affair, where should we look for historical indications of how this all plays out? The early years after the Bosman Ruling? Perhaps the move of players like Jonathan Davies from rugby union to rugby league? Should we even go back to George Eastham and the abolition of the maximum wage in football?
Certainly, we are starting to shake out some of the unintended consequences of franchise cricket. Always a sensible voice, Alec Stewart has spoken about the safety net that players will forego if they follow the sun and money year-round, never settling on one employer. Not least, what happens to those who turn down a county contract but are bench-bound and unhappy at their franchise then try to return.
This week, he took the debate a little further by discussing how counties, 365/24/7 ventures backed by history and community, will move on and protect themselves from those players looking to leave them behind.
Essex CCC Members’ Forum (Essex CCC)
A couple of lines from the latest Essex members forum.
The long-awaiting (and much worried about) Newton Report has cost around £550,000 so far. And the latest ETA is July. But then, it has been imminent since late last year. My understanding was the club wanted it out asap. Obviously, this is sensitive and legal but these delays are simply not good enough.
Also, the estimated cost of moving from Chelmsford is £100m. And as Chief Executive John Stephenson says “where is that going to come from?”. So, for me, it will be the long, painful process of working with local stakeholders to improve the ground piece by piece. My county are already behind the eight-ball in terms of modern fan experience, by the time this is sorted out, we’ll need snookers.
Dr Tom Brown joins the above show to talk about his program to promote British Asian cricketers. There are a couple of PhD opportunities on the programme here.
A new horizon for Bangladeshi cricketers (The Daily Star)
Miraz keen to play English county cricket (Financial Express)
Miraz has played for Warwickshire already. If, as I talked about last week, Essex want to become the home of Bangladesh in the UK, they could take a look.
Why it can be hard to get all fired up about Zak Crawley (KingCricket)
Power and privilege ebb away from Britain as cricket experiences global shifts (Arab News)
Glamorgan aiming to make cricket more diverse in Wales (Cricket 365)
Kent Cricket launches KentCricketPlay ahead of T20 start (Kent Cricket)
The wonder of county cricket live streams – and how they changed my life (Telegraph)
ECB Launches New 'Friday Night Blast' Live Youtube Show (ECB)
For me, this is an unwise move from Kent, charging £6 per Blast game for non-members. Especially as they are moving to monetisation of their stream before any other county. And a day after the ECB launched a YouTube show that may well be enough for the casual fan. Something many people, including me, have been talking about for some while. A Championship one is needed too.
To repeat myself, the streams are the single most important marketing tool for county cricket right now. Only free-to-air television or an unlikely stack of marketing cash could really trump them.
In the long term, they put bums on seats and grow interest. We have seen this in the three years since they were widely established. Therefore, until the audience is big and robust I would suggest putting nothing in the way, of the user experience.
My strategy:
Grow the pie first, improve the product, develop better UX (user experience).
Monetise gently via a few pre-rolls and on-screen sponsorships
Build in data capture with incentives (eg sign-up with your email via competitions, giveaways)
Plug that data into developed CRM system
Then:
Move all counties en masse to own bespoke video platform. This involves working together but there are major economies of scale and other benefits
This must have a great UX and seamless log-in. Hosted centrally through ECB site and app.
Still push data capture, develop CRM and monetise gently
Then:
With all that data, experience and knowledge of the fanbase, you can have a conversation about charging. But it’s years off, and the media landscape may be very different by then.
But I’d like have a county membership buying you access to the whole of county cricket. Yes, it’s bought via your county but it gives you access to all county games everywhere (except for the T20) and access to the streams.
Remember, in terms of online entertainment for the young, casual fan, Kent are not competing with Surrey or Gillingham FC or even the BBC or Sky. They are up against Mr Beast’s YouTube channel, Netflix (cost £6.99 per month) and Call of Duty.
The H*ndred: Managing director Sanjay Patel to leave the ECB (BBC Sport)
Sanjay Patel's departure the latest in a series of blows to The H*ndred (Cricketer)
The H*ndred tipped for ‘very long, successful future’ despite Sanjay Patel exit (Independent)
H*ndred faces talent exodus due to planned expansion of Twenty20 in the United States (Mail)
So another of the driving forces behind the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named leaves the scene. Sanjay Patel will be seeing out his notice during the third version of the event. They can spin this all they want but viewing figures were down last year and stories of huge hidden costs have emerged in recent months. Along with tales of its demise.
The Independent report includes this wonderful paragraph.
“A report from Worcestershire chair Fanos Hira, a chartered accountant, attaches a £9m loss to the first two seasons but the ECB argues that it turned a profit of £11.8m.”
Err.. so which is it? The ECB must know.
Remember that reported loss would be £58m if the payments to counties were counted as a common sense cost in the account.
As ever, let’s look at the actions, not the words. Especially those from Richard Gould about a “very, long and successful future”. Remember, there was no denial or even a statement amid a flood of stories about the impending demise of you-know-what and they must keep Sky happy. Reportedly Patel had a very close relationship with the broadcaster. That label of “successful future” may well belong to the women’s version which has certainly been positive and, I was told on Twitter this week, the new event has coincided with an upturn in interest among youth sections. Good news. But Gould’s previous proposal of a well-marketed, county-based T20 Premier League on free-to-air television could have achieved much of this without the debt, division, deceit and potential destruction of counties with history, tradition, player pathways and a year-round existence.
LS Lowry's cricket scenes go on show at Lord's (Ham & High)
Can cricket clubs find an undiscovered audience? (Cricket Yorkshire)
Here’s the action…
Where have Yorkshire CCC’s non-executive directors gone? (Yorkshire Post Letters)
…and the reaction
Criticism that Yorkshire CCC’s board doesn’t attend games is plain wrong (Yorkshire Post Letters)
And finally…
The story of this newsletter
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