Cricket prepares to return, but with some shuffling
Cricket’s international fixture list is being shredded and repaired on a daily basis as national boards battle to come to terms with what will and won’t be possible when the game restarts.
International travel remains the greatest obstacle, with most international borders still closed.
Those governments which recognise the economic importance of sport have expressed a willingness to issue special permits for teams to travel on chartered aircraft and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are set do exactly that for the West Indies and Pakistan teams — at a cost of £400,000 each — for their scheduled tours to England in July and August respectively.
At least, they were set to “tour” England — now it seems they will be quarantined at Edgbaston in Birmingham before being bubble-wrapped and transported between the biosecure match venues at Old Trafford in Manchester and the remote but luxurious Ageas Bowl outside Southampton.
This is a time for new allegiances to be established and for favours to be paid out before they can be reciprocated.
The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) have been generous and co-operative, with nothing financial to be gained given cricket’s “host takes all” structure.
But their willingness to help the ECB honour its contract with Sky TV, worth £220m, is not purely philanthropic.
PCB CEO Wasim Khan was born in Birmingham and lived all his life in England before accepting the position in Lahore, and he has made no secret of his desire to bring international cricket back to Pakistan.
England have not toured the country since 2005, but you can be sure there has been an agreement to reconsider that stance.
WICB CEO Johnny Grave is also an Englishman doing excellent work overseas and has fought against the increasing marginalisation of the West Indies — and the other “smaller” nations — by the big three of India, England and Australia. At the very least he has asked that the subject of the way revenue from ICC events is divided among member nations is put back on the global agenda. A desperate ECB is in no position to refuse.
Even the BCCI in India is feeling the pinch and, with the T20 World Cup almost certain to be postponed in Australia in late October and November, that window is likely to be taken for the staging of the Indian Premier League, which was postponed in April.
The Indian government has already announced that sport can be played in crowdless stadiums despite the country’s lockdown being extended until the end of May.
So, what does this new world order mean for SA? For a start, Cricket SA has spotted England’s logjam of overseas fixtures in 2021 building up — they have to fit in two postponed Tests against Sri Lanka as well as a full, five-Test tour of India — and has suggested that the ECB bring forward the scheduled ODI tour of SA to our peak season in December 2020.
The ECB has agreed, in principle. Cricket SA director of cricket Graeme Smith and acting CEO Jacques Faul, are proving to be as adept as any other administration team in the world at thinking laterally and have offered the WICB a host of options to reschedule the Proteas’ postponed tour to the Caribbean in July — including the admittedly remote possibility of playing the two Test matches at biosecure venues in England immediately after their three-Test series. Or even in Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
Adding to the tangle of medical and safety boxes which need to be ticked is the likelihood that teams will need to spend 14 days in quarantine before and after a tour, which means, for example, that the West Indies could spend as many as 50 days in the UK to play just 18 days of cricket.
Information and scenario planning, including internal board documents, are being widely and openly shared by the game’s leaders and a global atmosphere of constructive positivity unseen for decades is spreading. It has taken the pandemic to achieve it, but finally, the world’s top cricket nations are beginning to realise that they all need each other.
Former Proteas all-rounder Steve Elworthy is the ECB’s director of special projects. Having been tournament director at no fewer than six ICC world events, this is comfortably his biggest challenge. Turning Old Trafford and the Ageas Bowl into “biosecure” venues requires of him to trim about 1,500 matchday staff to 250.
Cricket SA is in the fortunate position of having time to watch and learn, but it too has already started the planning, with Senwes Park in Potchefstroom and Supersport Park in Centurion earmarked as the most likely venues to host internationals.
Like thousands of businesses across the country, large and small, Cricket SA is fighting not just for the ability to trade once again, but for its survival.