This is the first in a series exploring the future of cricket by Eddie Fitzgibbon, a Wisden board member and strategic advisor specialising in cricket with a focus on the USA market and sports technology. You can read more from Eddie on his Substack and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Why the game we love is fraying at the edges – and what comes next.

The Old Tree in a Digital Storm

Cricket is a grand old tree. Its roots run deep with centuries of tradition, empire, identity. The trunk, Test match cricket is historic, sturdy, stoic yet still relevant.

Branches like ODIs and T20s have flourished over time, reaching new fans, reshaping the canopy.

Leaves - livestreams, AI, emerging tech - flutter wildly in the winds of global change.

But now, a storm is building. And it’s not a simple storm of format vs format. It’s something deeper: a system trying to modernise without hollowing itself out.

This is the ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’.

You’ve seen it play out before. Kodak invented digital photography then and buried it. Blockbuster scoffed at Netflix. Nokia dominated mobile, until the iPhone rewrote the rules. These companies didn’t lack innovation. They just couldn’t let go of the thing that once made them strong.

Evolve too slowly, and you fade. Change too fast, and you lose the soul. Cricket is caught in that exact tension.

T20 cricket has been a gift. It’s brought in new fans, new energy, new money. This is not a story of T20 vs Test cricket. It’s a story about balance, and how cricket has lost it.

We’re not in a world of scarcity anymore. We’re in a world of excess. Too many leagues. Too little continuity. Not enough space to feel the weight of a moment or the meaning of a match.

People like Alicia, a fan losing touch, or Raj, a player caught in the churn.

Cricket doesn’t need to pick sides. It needs to find its centre again.

Because when the roots stop being tended to, even the grandest tree will start to rot.

Meet Alicia: The New Fan with a Fading Flame

Alicia is nineteen. She scrolls more than she sits. She sees everything all the time and remembers almost none of it. She didn’t follow cricket because her parents did. She followed cricket because an algorithm threw her a highlight reel that made her heart skip. She followed cricket because she idolises a player, more than a team or nation.

It was a six. A big one. A noise. A moment.

She fell for it. Hard. The speed, the colour, the sound. The aesthetics of belonging to a game that seemed too big to explain and too vibrant to ignore.

She watched. She posted. She argued with strangers. She bought a hat. She told herself: this is my team, this is my sport.

Then came another league. And another. And another. Each promising more. Each pulling players she liked into different shirts, different time zones, different hashtags.

It all started to blur. The magic began to dilute. It wasn’t heartbreak. It was drift. Quiet and slow.

Cricket was still there. It just no longer felt like hers.

And she didn’t even notice when she stopped watching.

Enter Raj: From Dream to Grind

Raj is 24. Strong wrists, steady hands. He grew up imagining himself in whites, hearing his name through a stadium speaker, making his family proud.

When the call came, it wasn’t for a Test cap. It was for a franchise. A short contract. A big cheque.

He took it. Who wouldn’t?

New shoes. New kit. A fresh city. Some of the heroes he once stayed up late to watch are now shaking his hand in the dressing room.

And yet...

Flights. Hotels. Nets. Matches. Flights. Hotels. New league. New city. Repeat.

It’s not that he’s unhappy. He’s just… tired. His technique is slipping. His body hurts more than it used to. He misses his sister’s wedding. He misses the off-season. He misses feeling like this game was his.

Late at night, he wonders: Is this what making it is supposed to feel like, or is the system itself broken?

When Platforms Cannibalise Themselves

Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe the slow, self-inflicted death of digital platforms. First, they’re good for users. Then they start prioritizing advertisers and shareholders. Eventually, they degrade the user experience to squeeze out every cent of value. And when it collapses? No one’s surprised. Because they stopped being good a long time ago.

This is the arc cricket is stumbling into.

First, it offered value. Now it offers volume. More leagues, more highlights, more noise. Platforms optimize for engagement, not experience. Cricket boards optimize for media rights, not sustainability. Broadcasters chase ad slots, not storytelling.

Cricket, like these platforms, risks becoming a victim of its own volume—trading depth for breadth, and genuine engagement for hollow metrics.

Economic Myopia Is the Real Opponent

Let’s talk numbers.

Today, there are over 30 active T20 leagues globally. Yes 30, let that sink in. Add another ten T10s into the mix with more of this and even shorter format being mooted.

Meanwhile many of the Cricket Boards are overly reliant on media rights alone, for example, the ECB has stated that around 80% of its revenues come from this one line item. That’s not a diversified portfolio; that’s a pressure cooker.

Combine constant player churn, fan fatigue, and overlapping time-zones, and what do you get? A game that’s less global spectacle and more localized chaos. It’s not just oversaturation, it’s brand dilution. When every player is everywhere, no team feels like home.

Cricket is no longer building value, it’s burning it. And the fuel’s running low.

Lessons from Boxing (Spoiler: It’s a Warning)

In the 80s and 90s, boxing was untouchable. Tyson, Holyfield, Lennox Lewis - the sport had characters as big as the punches. Every title fight felt like a global event.

Then came the fragmentation. Too many belts. Too many promoters. Too many pay-per-view walls splintering the audience. Fans couldn’t keep track of who was champion, and casual viewers stopped caring. What was once the centre of the sporting world drifted into the margins.

For the last two decades, boxing has lived in the doldrums and only kept alive by diehards and occasionally jolted back into the mainstream through gimmicks. Logan Paul fighting Mike Tyson? That’s not a strategy. That’s a Hail Mary.

Now, fresh money is trying to stitch it back together. Saudi Arabia’s Sela and Turki Alalshikh are pouring capital into mega-events, using boxing as a pillar of their global sports push. At the same time, UFC/WWE parent company TKO is launching “Zuffa Boxing,” backed by Saudi partners, with a UFC-style model meant to unify titles and restore clarity. Their debut? A Netflix-streamed superfight between Canelo Álvarez and Terence Crawford.

It’s a sign that boxing still has value, but notice how high the cost of revival has been. It took billions in sovereign wealth, crossover gimmicks, and an entertainment giant to drag the sport back toward relevance.

Cricket doesn’t want that path. It doesn’t want to wake up one day and realise the only way to generate buzz is with sideshows or foreign bailouts. The warning from boxing is simple: when a sport becomes so fragmented it loses its central story, even legends (and billions) can’t guarantee a return to glory.

The Fan Has Changed. The Game Hasn’t Caught Up.

Fans like Alicia aren’t watching cricket out of loyalty, they’re deciding moment by moment whether it deserves their attention.

Alicia’s generation doesn’t owe cricket their time. They’re not tuning in out of loyalty. They’re deciding, moment to moment, if it’s worth their attention.

They don’t have time for bloated tournaments or player loyalty narratives that break at every trade window. They want context. Story. Meaning.

The old fan watched cricket like a season-long novel. The modern fan treats it like a playlist: skip if it’s not hitting.

Cricket doesn’t need to be shorter. It needs to be sharper and needs to evolve.

Players Are Making Smart Choices in a Dumb System

Players like Raj aren’t misguided; they’re logical actors in a system stacked against cricket’s deeper values. Raj isn’t making bad choices. He’s reacting to the incentives in front of him.

If six weeks of T20 league play pays more than a national contract – and with fewer press conferences, expectations, and emotional baggage – why not take it?

But when all the players start training exclusively for T20s, when defensive techniques no longer earn contracts, and when patience and resilience become obsolete, what happens to the skills that shaped the game?

You don’t just lose players. You lose the foundations – the techniques, temperaments, and traditions – that cricket was built upon.

What Comes Next?

The path forward demands more than a simple retreat into tradition or an unchecked dive into novelty. Cricket requires thoughtful design.

Build a calendar that breathes. Shape league windows around logic, not just availability. Craft contracts rewarding diverse skillsets. Create formats intentionally, not as copy-and-paste cash-grabs. Use technology not merely as a content firehose, but as a tool for deeper fan connections.

Cricket’s future lies in integration: blending tradition with innovation to recover its meaning and keep it resonant for generations to come.

Time to Reset the Field

We’ve seen the best and worst of what the modern game can be.

The formats work. The talent is there. The audience is watching.

But the story? It’s slipping.

Cricket doesn’t need more leagues. It needs more meaning. Not more content but more consequence.

This isn’t about choosing the past or the future. It’s about designing a system where both can breathe. Where Test centuries still matter, where T20 nights still dazzle, and where the game doesn’t forget why people fell in love with it in the first place.

It’s time to stop chasing noise and start building resonance.

Because the question isn’t whether cricket can survive.

It’s whether it can still matter.

This is the first in a series exploring the future of cricket by Eddie Fitzgibbon, a Wisden board member and strategic advisor specialising in cricket with a focus on the USA market and sports technology. You can read more from Eddie on his Substack and connect with him on LinkedIn.