LEE PAYNE

Tag: internationals

  • 7 Tests, ODI tri-series and get rid of The Hundred – my ideas to improve cricket

    The T20 Blast has the excitement and the crowds, so there’s no need for The Hundred

    In a concerning development this week, The Guardian reported that the England and Wales Cricket Board could be asked to move or even cancel the scheduled fifth Test match against India this summer. Due to take place between the 10th and 14th September at Old Trafford, it is believed that the Indian board may want the game shifted to make space in the calendar to complete this year’s Indian Premier League. The T20 tournament was suspended earlier this month due to an outbreak of Covid-19 amongst players and staff.

    Given that The Guardian claims the remaining 31 IPL matches are worth £200m in broadcast revenue for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), it’s not hard to see why they would be keen to squeeze in the remainder of the tournament in a packed calendar. To me, however, it feels like a pivotal moment in the sport’s history – if an international fixture was moved or cancelled to accommodate a domestic franchise tournament, it would send out a message of cricket’s priorities and there may be no going back. It cannot be allowed to happen.

    This comes as cricket in England is also at a crucial stage. The Hundred, a whole new format cooked up by marketing men and despised by almost everyone with a passing interest in the game, is set to start in July. I’ve been thinking about ways to improve cricket and here are some of my suggestions.

    England should play 7 Tests every summer

    Test matches. The purest form of the game. The best form of the game, in my opinion. A prolonged examination of a player’s skills, a test of their concentration. There is nothing like the ebb and flow of a Test, the way the story unfolds over the course of five days. You can dip in and out of it, coming back to a match that has changed dramatically in the few hours you’ve been at work.

    England is one of the few countries that can still fill a ground for Test match cricket, a sad indictment of the world’s shortening attention spans. But, with this privileged position, we should make the most of it by playing seven Tests every summer. One series of three, one series of four. The only exception to this would be an Ashes year, in which the battle against the old enemy Australia would have to be over five and the other opponent would have to come over for two matches.

    Bring back the ODI tri-series

    The last ODI tri-series in England in 2005 featured a memorable Bangladesh victory over world champions Australia in Cardiff

    Up until 2005 the English summer would include an ODI tri-series, where three teams – usually England and that year’s two touring sides – would compete for a place in a final at Lord’s. The demise of the tri-series was down to money, of course. The matches that didn’t involve England would understandably generate less interest, making it harder to sell tickets for them and broadcasters to question why they were paying so much for the rights. But as such a multi-cultural place, I think there is still the opportunity for a highly successful tri-series to return. Imagine England playing a two Test series with Pakistan and a four Test series with India, with the meat in the middle of that sandwich being a tri-series including three India v Pakistan clashes at grounds such as Edgbaston, Headingley and Trent Bridge – cities with large British Asian populations.

    The T20 Blast is everything the ECB want The Hundred to be

    As a cricket tragic I find The Hundred a bit of an insult. This sport that I love so much is apparently too complex and too boring to attract new fans without it being pulled into a shape I don’t recognise first. And that’s according to the governing body! I refuse to believe that the concept of 20 overs of six balls would be too much for the general population to understand. And the idea of changing the term ‘wickets’ to ‘outs’? Do me a favour.

    What about the county cricketers of this country, professionals who ply their trade for clubs that have existed for over a century? For them to be told that they are no longer relevant and that the focal point of the summer will now be crass, made-up teams with names as risible as ‘Oval Invincibles’ is just offensive. The fact is, the ECB already have the answer to attracting new fans to cricket right in front of them – it’s called the T20 Blast.

    According to a brilliant Elizabeth Ammon column in Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine, in 2019 all eighteen county teams reported that ‘between 20% and 50% of their ticket sales [for the T20 Blast] were families, and a quarter were people who had not previously bought tickets’. I went to a Blast match that year which had a crowd bigger than most international fixtures around the world. Give it a window so the best players in the world have the chance to come and play in it, get some of it on primetime terrestrial television, and the game of cricket will get the popularity boost the ECB craves. And they won’t have alienated most of the existing fans in the process.

  • England in South Africa – preview

    England’s tour of New Zealand was a bit of a let down. It was a much anticipated first meeting of the two teams since the World Cup final, the sides evenly matched and now rivals full of mutual respect. The series of five T20s, however, was four too many. I understand that preparations for next autumn’s T20 World Cup are now the focus but five felt like too much.

    The tourists rested most of their biggest names for those white ball matches and went with fresh faces. There was no Jos Buttler, Jason Roy or Jofra Archer to name just three, but there was Tom Banton, Pat Brown and Saqib Mahmood. While it was intriguing to see how these youngsters got on, it left the T20s without that star quality – especially as New Zealand were without their captain Kane Williamson, who was injured.

    Somerset youngster Tom Banton got his first chance to impress in England colours in New Zealand

    The cricket was good, to be fair. England won the first game, then their inexperienced bowlers suffered and they found themselves 2-1 down. Dawid Malan then scored the fastest T20I century by an Englishman, smashing an unbeaten 103 from 51 balls, and leg spinner Matt Parkinson took four wickets on his debut to level the series.

    After the drama at Lord’s in July, incredibly, the last match ended in a tie. Reduced to 11 overs a side in Auckland due to rain, both teams scored 146. This time the Super Over was decisive, with England comfortable winners.

    New Zealand’s Jimmy Neesham couldn’t believe it when another match against England went to a Super Over in Auckland

    There were only two Tests, which is never enough but especially not when it’s England versus New Zealand. The Black Caps have become a very fine Test team in recent years and deserve at least three matches against the ‘marquee’ sides. Reportedly the New Zealand board lose money when they host Test matches, which rather forces their hand unfortunately. Neither of the Tests were part of the World Test Championship either, which gave the whole series the feel of a warm up for bigger things to come.

    As beautiful as the cricket grounds of New Zealand are, the pitches prepared did not provide a great advertisement for Test cricket. The Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui hosted its first Test match but saw the hosts bat for 200 overs and then dismiss England for 197 to win by an innings. A week later in Hamilton the England captain Joe Root made a very welcome return to form with 226 but rain and a placid surface meant New Zealand easily played out a draw and took the series 1-0.

    New Zealand wicketkeeper BJ Watling batted for 11 hours in scoring 205 in the first Test against England

    Williamson’s men were using the series to prepare for crossing the Tasman, as they had been given the rare opportunity to have a proper go at Australia. For the first time in more than thirty years New Zealand will be part of the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The Aussies are resurgent at the moment and thrashed them by 296 runs in Perth – it remains to be seen if they can bounce back from that.

    England will be playing on Boxing Day as well, in Centurion in the first Test against South Africa. It feels like a properly big series, this one. Four Tests, two well matched sides, playing at grounds that have produced exciting cricket over the last few years. For the TV spectator back home, the time difference between the UK and South Africa means the first ball of each day’s play will be bowled at either 8am or 8.30am. Wonderful. Especially when the New Zealand games were real through-the-night affairs.

    Jimmy Anderson, England’s all time leading Test wicket taker, looks set to return to the team after a year blighted by injury. He has not bowled a ball for his country since limping off after sending down four overs on the first day of the Ashes at Edgbaston in August. It would be great to see him back. The tourists will also hope that Root’s double hundred in his last outing means the skipper has turned a corner, as well as that Jofra Archer can bowl at his quickest once again.

    Jimmy Anderson is fit and ready to return for England in South Africa

    South Africa have been in chaos off the field. Among other things their board’s chief executive was suspended following allegations of misconduct, their players were apparently considering going on strike over a breach of commercial rights and a number of sponsors announced they would be ending their association with Cricket South Africa, raising concerns about the board’s financial security.

    The team itself were recently hammered in a Test series in India, and earlier this year were surprisingly beaten at home by Sri Lanka. Former captain Graeme Smith is now interim director of cricket and has appointed his former wicketkeeper Mark Boucher as coach so the Proteas will be hoping some form of stability at the top will enable the team to be somewhere near their best against England.

    It should be a fascinating series. I can’t wait.

  • Cricket 4 The Masses

    I found this video on YouTube recently. Uploaded by madmusician91, who must take all the credit for it, the video shows the last few minutes of Channel 4’s excellent live coverage of cricket:

    England had just won the Ashes for the first time in 18 years, in what is regarded as the greatest Test series ever played. Cricket was in the public consciousness like it had not been since Botham’s Ashes of 1981, enjoying popularity akin to football, being talked about across the country. Ironic, then, that that series was to be the end not only of Channel 4’s coverage, but of live international cricket coverage as a whole on terrestrial television in the UK.

    Television was still in its infancy when the BBC decided to show the Lord’s and Oval Tests against Australia in 1938. Very few people owned a television then – and if they did they were rich. Even so, whatever viewers there were got the chance to see Len Hutton score 364; at the time it was a world record and it is to this day the highest Test score by an Englishman. The BBC continued to show live England cricket right up until 1999.

    Test cricket at Old Trafford in 2014 - but you needed to pay to see it on television.
    Test cricket at Old Trafford in 2014 – but you needed to pay to see it on television.

    Pay television first made an impact on live England home matches at this point – Sky Sports shared coverage with Channel 4. Rupert Murdoch’s network had already been showing England tours since 1990, but this was their first foray into home internationals. The rights deal, however, remained in favour of the terrestrial broadcaster. Sky showed just the one Test match each summer, with the other five or six on Channel 4. Sky showed all of the one day matches live.

    In 2004, to some surprise, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced that it had awarded exclusive rights to England home matches to Sky Sports. This meant that from 2006, fans would have to pay to watch England play live for the first time. The deal went ahead despite a campaign to ‘Keep Cricket 4 Us’ and with an extension until 2017 cricket will only be shown as highlights on Channel 5.

    While Sky’s money has been invested in grassroots cricket, with the sport not easily accessible to the general public interest has inevitably waned. The conclusion of Sky’s first live Ashes series in 2009 was watched by just under 2 million viewers, with the average throughout the day at 856,000. Compare this to Channel 4’s live coverage of the 2005 Ashes finale – 7.4 million watched the end of play, with an average of 4.7 million between the lunch break and the close.

    With such a gulf in viewing figures between the pay TV channel and the terrestrial, there remain calls for live England cricket to return to free-to-air television. With no prospect of this until at least 2018, however, it looks like an hour of highlights per day is all we will have to satisfy us for now.