Every action has a reaction. For every glass half-empty there must be one half-full, clouds and silver linings, and so on. As the IPL (Indian Premier League) juggernaut staggers towards its protracted end, fewer and fewer players have the incentive of actually winning it and the games become a metaphorical slog as well as an actual one.
There is a perception that the Indian players are immune to the length of the tournament, the travel, training and exhausting logistics. It’s an absurd notion, like saying they don’t feel the heat in the same way as the overseas players when it’s 40°C. It was writ large on the face of Shubman Gill, captain of the struggling Gujarat Titans, after another defeat: “It is such a long tournament but we must keep going...”
Three more matches for half the teams with little prospect of reaching the play-offs and then ... the T20 World Cup for many of them. Followed by Major League Cricket in the US straight after that. For those involved in all three events, it is going to be an extremely lucrative few months netting them between R20m and R30m.
Kagiso Rabada, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram, Anrich Nortjé, Marco Jansen and Quinton de Kock won’t have been home for almost five months while Dewald Brevis and Nandré Burger should be able to pop into SA for two or three weeks during the World Cup before heading to the US. Unless they have creative accountants who’ve advised them to “keep moving” to qualify for the non-res tax status.
The upside is the cash. The downsides may not be obvious to those without experience of the way professional sport plays with your mind and emotions, or of extended periods of travel.
There has been a lot talk in recent years about the number of domestic T20 leagues there are for players to choose from, but less about the number of International Cricket Council (ICC) global events.
The upside is the cash. The downsides may not be obvious to those without experience of the way professional sport plays with your mind and emotions, or of extended periods of travel.
The ICC is a management and events company. It does a huge amount of good work in collecting and distributing money, especially to India, but unlike Fifa in the soccer world, it has no control of the global game’s calendar.
Whereas Fifa creates “windows” for international tournaments and their qualifying matches — continental championships and World Cups — and has the power to suspend any country which fails or refuses to comply, the ICC can only make recommendations and rely on the philanthropic good will of those who volunteer to be managed by them. Which evidently is a flimsy structure.
To remain relevant and provide its “members” with the cash they crave, the ICC had to become just like each one of its members and organise a tournament of its own every year. World Cups have become diluted. If a player missed out on 2023’s World Cup in India, then there’s June’s T20 version. If they miss that, then there’s always the Champions Trophy next February.
England’s Test captain, Ben Stokes, retired from ODI cricket and chose to be unavailable for T20 selection this time around. Not to rest but to play first-class cricket for his county, Durham. Could he prove to be a canary in the mine in the years to come? A schedule so packed with largely meaningless cricket may be lucrative but it’s also not healthy. Will Stokes be remembered for being among the first to smell the gas?
It will have been over 100 days since the last Test match was played anywhere in the world when England play against the West Indies at Lord’s on July 10. Rather than being bad for the game, such an absence will make the heart grow fonder and the format stronger. Abstinence needs to be managed, however. SA, for example, have four Tests next summer ending on January 7 and will not host another for almost a year. That will dilute the game, not make it stronger.
It’s all well and good for Stokes to follow his heart and instinct and play the cricket which nourishes his soul and provides him with value beyond dollars — he is already comfortably wealthy and there is no shortage of Test cricket for him to play. England have 16 Tests in 2024.
If there are any South Africans (and there are) who would prefer to play less franchise cricket and more first-class and Test cricket, they can’t — unless they pursue a county career in England. Ireland are now scheduled to host more Tests than SA in 2025.
David Wiese spent almost 12 months playing for eight different franchise and provincial teams in 2023. At the end of it he said: “Something has to ‘give’, it can’t carry on like this. There were guys in the change rooms already talking about where their next gig ... that was before the tournament we were playing was even finished.”
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