Challenging the status quo
On the morning of the 19th January, while the West Indies were still licking their wounds from the First Test defeat by Australia at the Adelaide Oval, Cricket West Indies (CWI) CEO, Johnny Grave was on a Zoom call with former England captains Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain, joint hosts of the weekly Sky Sports cricket podcast. On the show, the two former Test players, who are obviously still very enthusiastic about the game, analyse and debate the major stories emerging from the cricketing world.
No doubt Grave’s presence on the popular programme had been facilitated by the interview he had with ESPNCricinfo three days prior, where he had responded to criticism of Cricket South Africa (CSA) and CWI sending inexperienced Test squads to New Zealand and Australia, respectively. The CSA’s team was classified as a third string team, while the West Indies squad included seven uncapped Pulling no punches on that occasion, Grave waded into the ICC about the current business model operating in the world of international cricket, and the potential of its sustainability.
“The revenue share model is completely broken. If we operate as a cricketing community we are only as strong as the weakest team and we’ ve got to change the mindset of bilateral cricket,” Grave stated in the ESPNCricinfo. Under the present arrangements, the host country gets to keep all the revenue generated in a series – television rights, advertising and gate receipts – whilst the boards of the visiting teams are saddled with the business class airline tickets and their players’ match fees. Grave noted that the West Indies is further away from the rest of the cricketing world than any other team, and thus, incur more expense in travel costs than any other. Grave observed that at the start of their current financial year, the CWI had spent more than US$2 million in sending three teams to Australia in the last four months without receiving any revenue in return.
Grave’s two wide ranging interviews provide useful insight into the many challenges faced by CWI, particularly of the economic genre, in a world where T20 Leagues seem to be spawning everywhere, without any regulation. Grave went to great lengths to point out the ripple effects of this development, with their very tempting offers of six figure US dollar player contracts which necessitate relatively little physical effort over short time spans.
Apart from the lure of T20 leagues, Grave cited other economic difficulties faced by CWI. Satellite television, which was the key factor in changing the economic landscape of international cricket and responsible for the huge influx of cash into the game, does not generate the kind of revenue for CWI as it does for the boards of the
‘Big Three’, namely the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the England and Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia. Grave estimates that England and Australia annually generate approximately US$400 million and US$200 million, respectively, from television revenue. Firstly, the West Indies is a small market, in terms of viewership, secondly, there isn’t one network which covers the entire region, and finally, there is the exorbitant air travel cost incurred in moving equipment to provide television coverage of a Test series in the Caribbean.
The CWI CEO clarified that despite the regional economic constraints under which the board operates, including limited sponsorship deals, West Indies players are well compensated by CWI, and the relationship between the CWI and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) has improved significantly in the past few years when it comes to the club-versus-country argument. Under Grave, the CWI recognises that the marketplace has changed and they have to adapt to it.
“We don’t have the ability to compete with the leagues on purely salaries and even if we did we wouldn’t have any money left for grassroots cricket
and other crucial programmes in our system that need our funding,” Grave was quoted as saying in the ESPNCricinfo interview. He further noted, “Every player has a choice to make. As a board, we are going to be consistent. We are not going to force any player to do anything they don’t want to do. We respect their ability to make choices.”
Grave, the optimist, thinks that Test cricket will survive, but ICC and the boards of the ‘Big Three’ cricketing nations have to act decisively to change the economics of Test cricket, or risk the possibility of more weakened Test squads going on tour. When the next cycle of Future Tours is arranged in 2027, some form of revenue sharing, and, or, cost sharing, such as the ICC bearing the costs of air travel expenses for teams, must be put in place, or Test cricket, as we know it today, might wither even further.