The stellar displays of Associate nations at the ongoing men's T20 World Cup against the backdrop of the tournament's off-field messes stresses the need for cricket to set its sights elsewhere, writes Rahul Iyer.
On Sunday, the Times of India reported that ICC board members Imran Khawaja and Mubahshir Usmani touched down in Lahore for negotiations between the ICC and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), regarding Pakistan’s decision to boycott their men’s T20 World Cup fixture against India on February 15.
A week ago, this might have been treated as a seismic development. But it barely registered today.
What captured the attention of the entire cricketing world was Nepal’s performance against England; the ‘Cardiac Kids’ ran them extremely close, and arguably should have chased down 185 for one of the more earth-shattering results in recent years.
This has not been a one-off. Netherlands had only themselves to blame for slipping up against Pakistan, Scotland were as good as a 50-50 chance with seven overs to go against West Indies, and USA had defending champions India well and truly on the ropes before a one-man special hauled them out of danger.
Associate (non Test-playing) teams performing admirably against more well-endowed nations is not entirely new either. But the consistency of this at the start of this tournament in particular juxtaposes superbly with the off-field fiasco, omnishambles, debacle, trainwreck, shipwreck, car crash, farce, clusterf*** – take your pick – that preceded it.
The quagmire of South Asian geopolitics threatened to completely hijack the men’s T20 World Cup before it even started, and perhaps make the fissure at the core of international cricket a permanent fixture.
But the Associates have wrenched focus back onto some terrific displays of the sport we so love. They get a chance on this stage too infrequently to have everyone pay attention to the suits instead; they will be damned before the boardroom steals the show.
As heartwarming as this may sound, it doesn’t change the fact that money drives cricket, and India-Pakistan drives money. The ICC needs the match to take place, in order to sell broadcast rights for the highest price, in turn, in order for those proceeds to be redistributed among its members.
Estimates about the value of this game vary wildly depending on the factors taken into account, but the bottom line is that it forms a significant part of the appeal for broadcasters. India and Pakistan’s cricket boards no longer play bilateral cricket, so the ICC lumps them in the same group for every single ICC event to guarantee at least one match during which the broadcast rights holders will see the cash roll in.
The system is quite plainly broken if one match can have such a disproportionate effect on the global game.
“There is very little that can be done about the fact that cricket is a sport where there are close to two billion fans in three countries; Pakistan, Bangladesh and India,” Cricexec founder Zee Zaidi said on the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast.
“For the most part, it’s the main sport of all three countries. You don’t have that sort of concentration anywhere. There’s nothing we can do about that. What we can do, what cricket should do – and I don’t know that it has been doing that enough – is to diversify. It’s to rely on that less so it becomes gravy.”
Again, this is not an entirely new argument. A Professional Cricketers’ Association report from last year outlined how the current revenue-sharing model saw over half of the revenue of the ICC go back to the Big Three of India, England and Australia, with nearly 40 per cent to India alone.
Those three are almost self-sustaining cricketing economies through bilateral and domestic cricket, including franchise leagues. As Zaidi noted, “If the ICC were to disappear tomorrow, if international cricket were to disappear tomorrow, they’d be okay.”
Most other members of the ICC, including several Test-playing teams, would not be.
The PCA report proposed a revenue-sharing model for the next cycle from 2028-2031, which could see a three per cent cut to India’s revenue share (a sum projected to be about 60 million US dollars), leading to increases across the board lower down the ladder – for some teams, as high as a 546 per cent rise. Further bilateral series between Associates and Full Members would perhaps be more viable then. The growth of world cricket is the growth of everyone's cricket; even for Full Members outside the Big Three.
Whether or not this is the exact model that needs to be followed is a different argument. What is clear is that cricket cannot be beholden to a single fixture for its survival. If the ICC does not want to be sending its directors around the world to sort out diplomatic issues, this cannot wait any longer.
The BCCI’s decision to remove a Bangladeshi player from the IPL, Bangladesh’s subsequent refusal to play the T20 World Cup and Pakistan’s decision to stand in solidarity by boycotting the India game are all issues that would not necessarily have been prevented by a more equitable model, but they certainly would not threaten the fabric of the sport the way it seems now.
All this would remain true even if the Associates had simply rolled over and lost to the stronger sides. Even now, most pertinently for the broadcaster, there is no guarantee that viewership of games involving the lower-ranked teams will outstrip that of India-Pakistan. But between the timing of these stellar showings and the India-Pakistan schism that continues to widen, if broadcasters and the ICC cannot see even now how more teams at a higher level make the sport itself so much richer – and crucially – potentially more financially sound, it will be an exceedingly sad day indeed.
There is no better time than now, to argue the case.
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