More T20s fine, but don’t forget Test cricket
South Africa’s eight new T20 franchises were launched in London this week, signalling this country’s brave leap into the new world order when it comes to cricket.
The T20 Global League will be held at the height of summer in November/December, adding another six weeks of the shortest format of the game to the international schedule. The announcement of the team owners, the cities they will be based in and who their marquee Proteas will be, was held at a swanky Knightsbridge hotel and the England and Wales Cricket Board were sufficiently put out by Cricket South Africa showing them up that they banned them from using Lord’s – who had originally agreed to host the function – and would not allow their players, Eoin Morgan and Jason Roy, to attend.
England’s city-based T20 league is only scheduled to begin in 2020. Their tournament is expected to run for five weeks and presumably they will not want to clash with the Indian Premier League (seven weeks) and Caribbean Premier League (six weeks).
So when one adds in the six weeks of Australia’s Big Bash League, one gets a total of 30 weeks given over to T20 leagues… obviously leaving just 22 weeks for the rest of world cricket to get a look-in. And that’s not even considering the leagues in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Hong Kong.
The decision of two Pakistan T20 franchises and two Indian Premier League sides to invest in the T20 Global League also suggests cricket, at professional level, is going to move towards being a game that is played between corporate entities rather than the old geographically-based teams.
Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, the owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders, the Trinbago Knight Riders in the CPL and now the Cape Town Knight Riders, is undoubtedly looking to make the Knight Riders a global, multinational brand, while Hemant Dua, the CEO of the GMR Group which owns the Delhi Daredevils and now the Johannesburg T20 Global League franchise, was candid about their hopes of expansion.
“We want to grow as a sports business and the idea is to keep as much continuity as possible in our teams as we try to build our brand, it’s a natural extension. We are a professional franchise and we want to work with the best available players and create value around that,” Dua said in London.
“These leagues are mushrooming and becoming very successful and cricket is moving in one direction – more free flow of talent around the world. So we want to build on a core of players playing for us around the world.”
At the moment, the Board of Control for Cricket in India forbid any of their players from participating in any T20 league apart from their own IPL and domestic league, but that is surely going to change as expanding brands like the Knight Riders and Daredevils put pressure on them to release superstar Indian players.
The Daredevils spend millions on fast bowler Mohammed Shami, so aren’t they going to want him to play for their other teams around the world? Imagine how much it would mean for a brand to have Virat Kohli playing for them in Melbourne and Durban?
CSA chief Haroon Lorgat can certainly see the attraction.
“I can see franchises with multiple teams trying to keep the same players, but we built our business model around not having Indian players and we respect their policies and rules. But we will try and engage them about allowing their players to feature in South Africa and they seem open to that. They need to feel comfortable with it, and the franchises from the IPL can assist. If it comes, it would be the cherry on top for our league,” Lorgat said.
But for all the economic reasons driving T20 cricket, it is vital that the International Cricket Council saves the heart and soul of the game – Test cricket.