Will Big Bash Save Australian Cricket?

At the start of this Australian Summer Cricket Australia admitted that the television ratings had fallen by approximately a quarter over the past decade, and that television audiences for the one day game were at an all time low.

They admitted that the national game was under pressure from Australian Rules, NRL and other codes and that they were struggling to retain players once they hit their teenage years, as well as struggling to attract females to the game.

Chief Executive Officer Cameron Sutherland conceded that cricket is regarded as “time consuming and burdensome by parents.” He also admitted that the game is struggling to attract new immigrants to Australia and remains very much part of the countries Anglo Saxon heritage; although other immigrants from commonwealth countries too are still drawn to the game.

He stated that ‘the sport’s own complacency is partly to blame for some of its problems.’

This summer’s test match series confirmed that complacency as the Australian team where beaten fairly and squarely by a better team. What is worrying is the fact that too many people are ignoring the fact that England in this instant prepared properly for the series and were more professional than their Australian counterparts, and it has been a long time since you have been able to say that when talking about cricket.

Sport is cyclical of that there is no doubt, and when teams are winning no one wants to make changes for fear that the winning may stop. We have witnessed Australian cricketers dictating when they retire which is fine if they want to go out at the top, but otherwise you must always face the fact that you will be dropped and every test match could be your last. If Michael Clarke had not been earmarked as the next captain would he have survived this summer?

England’s rugby team when they won the World Cup was not slowly dismantled as it needed to be and it has taken almost eight years for them to get back to close to that level. That is what makes Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson a great manager, many thought he was mad to get rid of the likes of Beckham, and Van Nistleroy, but he finds replacements without destroying the team, because he rightly believes no one is bigger than the team, or the club.

That is sadly a lesson that Australian cricket needs to learn very quickly, now that the golden era has come to a grinding halt it has highlighted that you cannot allow players to become bigger than the game itself, as tempting as it may be as the turnstiles click, they will only keep clicking for so long.
The other sad fact is the dominance of Australian cricket was so strong that it failed to be a spectacle and that too had a damaging effect on the game as a whole. That however is not the fault of the players; you can never blame a player for being so superior to his opponent.

Next summer the Board of Cricket Australia will launch the Big Bash League which they believe will generate $300million. This is in spite of the player’s representative body warning that too much Twenty20 will “kill the golden goose.”

Sutherland believes that the Big Bash League will be bigger than Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, which seems hard to believe, as World Series Cricket attracted the majority of the best players in the world and was not simply a slog-fest.

No wonder this summer with the exception of Michael Hussey we witnessed flawed techniques, Australian state cricket is now too focussed on the shorter forms of the game.

Twenty20 should always be a bit of fun played in a carnival atmosphere and that is it. International one day cricket was killed in this country with too many games in the triangular series as each year they tried to milk the punters in each state. The game has evolved and the statistics on how many times the team that bats first wins now makes it in the main, a non-event. The rules of the game have failed to evolve, to keep the paying public interested.

As for attracting people to the game at grass roots level, it is a concern. Sheffield shield cricket used to be the highest level of domestic cricket in the World and the various state competitions were revered worldwide. But times change and we live in a different world to the one we did fifteen years ago and maybe the structure of these competitions needs to be revised to attract more people to the game.

Cricket is a wonderful game, of that there can be no doubt, but one thing hard to understand when moving to Australia was that batsmen were being paid per run that they made. Frequently we would witness a dull selfish meandering innings that put the team under pressure, as one of the top order accumulated dollars for his bank balance. That cannot be good for anyone, as stated before no one should be bigger than the team. You win as a team and you lose as a team, and the rewards should be based on the success you have as a group not on how each individual does.

Yes Australian cricket has been complacent, but is the Big Bash League the answer? Cameron Sutherland will ultimately be judged on where Australian Cricket is when he steps down in 2015, and he believes he is right, time will tell.