A cricket crisis

When the Indian Premier League launched in 2008 and the la creme de la creme of global cricket descended on this country with curiosity and hope, no country except the hosts seemed more enamored of the new gig than England. Blighty was also bubbly and said everything correctly. Hackers from London who toured the country, watching the games and noting the changes in them, sought out their fellow Indians and seemed scandalized when told that the financial warp and woof of the merry-go-round was the main thing in the show.

There was a lot of money, that was clear, but where did it come from, was everything fair and square, and if we knew the supposed benefactors of the franchises with seemingly bottomless purses, perhaps the incomprehensible secrets of the narrative, were woven. much in the same way that crime writers give a few hints to stay up their sleeve.

Then English writers could be felt to spoil the time wasted in their speeches. A nanosecond later, the question was: Don’t you see how cricket is revolutionary? It rarely left you confused. Saying it wasn’t game related only deepened the disappointment and cast a dark cloud over the exchanges.

The expected revolution, of course, brought changes big and small over the course of the season, culminating so far, as The Times in London recently revealed, with IPL franchises scrambling to prize half a dozen top English cricketers from their table to play only in Twenty20. tournaments throughout the year up to 50 million rubles per year. Offers have been made, preliminary discussions have been held and the purpose of the disclosure is perhaps just to assess the heads rising above the railing to gauge the general reaction: are there more bouquets than brick benches? The silence seems to have fallen.

Scientific theorizing about the evolution of the game and sermons about allowing free market economic principles into sport in the new millennium are now in suspended animation as Lord’s top men try to get off the floor after the game. mean mental throw. Those who put in more cash and above all the cricketing juggernaut might never have thought it would work once the momentum was built, but there it was: it became something like a Frankenstein’s monster. If Twenty20 is to transform from a peripheral presence, however glamorous, to a global property with financial clout that cuts across cricket’s traditional arrangements, there is a crisis of tail-wagging dogs ahead.

And if it’s England today, how long would it be before Australia, South Africa ~ the whole caboodle, possibly ~ also find the country slipping from under them? India, of course, will be inextricably linked in history with the death that T20s could inflict on Test cricket, unleashing forces it may not ultimately be able to control.