Black Caps show money not the be all for success
It was an intoxicating end to one of test cricket’s strangest years. A few minutes after 6.30pm on December 30 at the bucolic Mount Maunganui ground, Mitchell Santner drew a mistimed shot from Naseem Shah and leapt up to snaffle the ball – New Zealand had defeated Pakistan.
That victory took New Zealand to within sight of the summit of test cricket. If they win the final test against Pakistan, which started on Sunday, they will become the world’s No 1 for the first time and also be on the cusp of beating either Australia or India to a place in the inaugural World Test Championship final at Lord’s this summer.
In club football, 90 per cent of how well teams perform can be explained by their wage bill. In international cricket, this link has become inescapable, too, as the big three – Australia, England and India – advance.
Money has never been so important in dictating who wins in international cricket. The process by which talent is identified and then nurtured has become almost industrialised. This favours the wealthiest boards, who can fund the best scouting networks, academies and coaches, and the overseas tours that accelerate the development of those players.
Twenty20 leagues have created an alternative marketplace for cricketers. Many can now earn more not playing for their countries, but the big three’s affluence has insulated them from these forces. All the while, wealth has enabled the big three to assemble a pool of players across the three formats and, when it is prudent, to pay them enough not to take part in T20 leagues and protect them for international commitments.
As England’s success at datamining suggests, the rise of analytics may prove yet another way that the sport’s richest can gain an advantage.
Rather than ameliorate the financial chasm between countries, the big three have amplified them. All men’s global events from 2016-23 are shared exclusively between the big three. The Test Cricket Fund was quietly scrapped. Visiting countries still earn no revenue from tours.
New Zealand are the interlopers in the age of the big three. Should they avoid defeat against Pakistan at Christchurch, it will be their eighth consecutive test series victory at home, during which they have won 11 without losing one. Those successes have come alongside reaching consecutive one-day World Cup finals.
There is no grand New Zealand master plan; their success is based on good administration. The prudent running of Cricket New Zealand is rooted in the introduction of independent governance in 1995, with directors representing the best interests of the game at large, rather than their regions.
Unlike others, New Zealand have resisted the fool’s gold of launching a glitzy – but lossmaking – franchise T20 league they cannot afford. Relations between the players and board have been consistently excellent; pragmatically allowing players to play in overseas T20 leagues to boost their earnings has avoided poisonous relations.
New Zealand have ruthlessly prioritised, cutting back their domestic first-class schedule, while investing in their A-team programme to prepare players better. And they have recognised that test cricket is best served by being played on boutique grounds, in front of picnicking fans, rather than in soulless stadiums – creating a template for how to run the game in countries with less financial clout.
Yet there is a certain sadness to New Zealand’s successes too. In 2015, while they were sharing a thrilling two-match series in England, Mike Hesson, then New Zealand’s head coach, declared they had ‘‘earned the right’’ to play longer test series. New Zealand’s last three-match series at home was four years ago. Since then, they have been restricted to two-test affairs. Unless it is against the big three, each home test loses Cricket New Zealand about $830,000.
If test cricket is to avoid retrenching further, its vibrancy cannot come from the big three alone. It needs New Zealand fans to be able to dream of that date at Lord’s and for their team’s consistency to be rewarded with the No 1 spot in world cricket against all the financial odds.
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