Cricket’s global ambitions

Cricket, whose World Cup is now being held in Australia and New Zealand, is not a global game by any stretch of the imagination. Only 10 countries play the sport at the highest level and a handful of other countries have One Day International status. There are, however, many associate members representing non-cricketing nations who aspire to reach the higher levels some day.

Paradoxically, the Cricket World Cup (CWC) is the third biggest sporting event, after the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup, partly because of the TV audiences involved. With India alone having more than one billion cricket fans, the global audience for the CWC exceeds two billion. So how could cricket reach more countries, more people? The simple answer that anyone could think of is to let more countries play the game at the top level, not Tests, but ODI and the even more popular T20 formats.

Future

But this is apparently not how the game’s present administrators look at the future of cricket. This year, there are 14 teams at the event, including emerging nations such as UAE, Scotland, Ireland and Afghanistan. The latter’s is a remarkable achievement given the violence in that country. But in 2019, the CWC will have just 10 teams - the eight top teams will automatically qualify and even Zimbabwe and Bangladesh will most probably have to go through a qualifying process to get in. But if they do, only the Test playing nations will be in the event, excluding all of the above-mentioned emerging cricketing nations and other hopefuls.

This does not seem to be a rational decision at all. If cricket is to be made more popular around the world, there should be more exposure to its biggest event worldwide. In the USA, which has a fairly good cricket team, the CWC is not telecast at all on a terrestrial channel and only the final will be telecast on ESPN3, an online-only channel. In fact, there is a vast majority of people who do not know anything at all about cricket, leave alone the CWC. But to rectify this, cricket should get more exposure, period.

Before the 2015 Cricket World Cup started, the chief executive of the International Cricket Council envisioned how the sport could grow beyond its traditional strongholds: by getting the world’s biggest economy involved.

Consistent

“We would like the U.S. to qualify for a major world event within the next eight years or so,” said David Richardson, who leads cricket’s governing body. His words seem wholly consistent with the I.C.C.’s official mission: to create “a bigger, better, global game.”

But this does not seem to be happening as cricket is increasingly becoming dependent on a few markets led by India for its commercial survival. Broadcasters will pay big money for TV rights if India, England and Australia are involved, at the expense of the other countries. Even worse, the top ICC events will only be held in these territories in the foreseeable future.

This is perhaps a result of certain events that occurred at the 2007 CWC in West Indies: Ireland beat Pakistan and Bangladesh beat India. While any other sport would have celebrated such a remarkable twin upset, cricket officials actually mourned it. The result meant that India and Pakistan were eliminated in the group stages and the much looked-forward to India-Pakistan match never materialised.

The International Cricket Council’s commercial partners, who had hoped that India would play at least nine matches, suffered huge losses. Television advertising during the other matches dropped drastically without the presence of India and Pakistan. Thus, the ICC revised the formats to ensure that these countries would remain in the reckoning at least until the quarter finals, which albeit has taken the sheen out of the unpredictable nature of cricket. The television rights for the I.C.C. events for the next eight years were recently sold for US$ 2 billion. The successful bidders were banking on the fact that India will play a guaranteed nine games in the 2019 and 2023 World Cups. But it is fundamentally wrong to rely on a few countries to support and enrich the game.

Cricket should look at soccer and rugby for inspiration, instead of relying on a few countries to generate growth and revenue. Last year’s soccer World Cup featured 32 teams (the 2010 winner Spain was knocked out in the early stages of the tournament and no one really complained). This year’s Rugby World Cup in England and Wales will feature 20 nations.

Growing

“The number of teams fits with World Rugby’s vision of growing the game globally,” says James Fitzgerald, a World Rugby spokesman, who noted there is “a gradual closing of the performance gap between the qualifiers and the top sides.”

This is indeed true of cricket as well, given the recent performances by the likes of Ireland and Afghanistan. Moreover, Rugby’s next world cup in 2019 will be held in Japan, still an emerging force in world rugby. But that is a great approach to popularising the game beyond the traditional big-time countries.

True, the 50 overs game is a logistical nightmare in terms of organising a World Cup. A match practically takes a day, unlike in soccer and rugby where matches last a maximum of three hours with intervals and short breaks. In this year’s CWC tournament, a convoluted group stage is being used, with two groups of seven playing a combined 42 games to determine the eight quarter-finalists. This essentially ensures that all nations play at least six cricket matches. In 2019, all 10 teams will play each other once in a 45-game group stage, with the top four teams progressing to the semifinals.

Reason

If it is difficult to accommodate more than 10 teams in the CWC for whatever reason, the emerging nations should be given more opportunities in the other two ICC showpiece events - the World Twenty20 tournament and the Champions Trophy.

T20 is becoming increasingly attractive to audiences in non-cricketing nations, who are used to the much shorter time slot. Cricket must become a global game to survive, but this approach requires long-term thinking and a commitment to a level playing field, literally.