For cricketers, as for most people, money keeps talking
Cricket and its players, professional and amateur, have always had a fascinating relationship with money. As a rule, the players attempting to make a living from the game have gone where the money is. As another rule, most of the money has not been at the top of the profile pyramid.
Only in the past decade or so have national teams been able to compete with private money, and that’s mainly India, England and Australia. For most of the last century there has been precious little money in international cricket — at least, not for the players.
Did you know the greatest all-rounder, Gary Sobers, had to be persuaded by Richie Benaud soon after he became captain of Australia to play for West Indies and not honour his contract with Lancashire League side Rishton, who were paying him infinitely more money?
It wasn’t even a county side but a club team — albeit the most successful one in England’s historically strongest league outside the County Championship. And there’s more, below that.
Julian Cahn, an eccentric, cricket-loving entrepreneur at the turn of the 19th century, was an embarrassingly poor player who indulged his passion to play with the world’s best using his wallet. New Zealander Stewie Dempster (who averaged more than 50 in Tests) and South African Aubrey Faulkner, one of the greatest allrounders from any generation and the player with a sub-30 bowling average and plus-40 batting average, were among those willing to be bought by Cahn to play travelling circus, exhibition games.
In some ways nothing has changed regarding national loyalties, at least outside the top half dozen countries. The Netherlands will travel to Harare next month without seven of their best players as they try to qualify for one of the two remaining places up for grabs at the World Cup.
The International Cricket Council tournament, which SA narrowly escaped, is of huge importance to the future of Dutch cricket but fast bowlers Fred Klaasen, Paul van Meekeren, Brandon Glover, Shane Snater and Tim van der Gugten along with all-rounders Roelof van der Merwe and Colin Ackermann are all good enough to have contracts in England — and their counties will not release them.
New Zealand’s greatest opening batsmen, and one of the best of all time, Glenn Turner, played just 41 Tests in 14 years because he valued the security of the contract he had with Worcestershire over the “pride” of representing his country — which barely covered the expenses for doing so.
Not only was the global “establishment” unwilling to pay players properly, it punished them ruthlessly for accepting decent cash elsewhere. Kerry Packer and the Indian Cricket League paid enough to persuade Australian and Indian cricketers to risk being banned — which they were.
The rebel tours to SA were classic examples of players having nothing whatsoever to gain apart from money. English “rebels” were banned for three years, Aussies and Sri Lankans received various sanctions from their home unions and most West Indians were ostracised for life and found no way back into the game’s mainstream. Or even minor stream.
I know what it’s like to be asked to ply my trade for something other than payment. It happens all the time. For more than 30 years, and to this day, people will suggest that a writing or speaking engagement will be “good for my profile” when they cannot (or don’t want to) pay. In the early years I accepted but, in later life, when my children’s headmaster explained that he could not accept payment for school fees in “profile”, I had to decline.
Cricketers, too, cannot pay their rent or bonds in Test caps, delightful as they are to have and as proud as they are to have earned them. Their worth and achievements are still measured by the Test metric, and they still will be in England and Australia because of the Ashes, but future generations from other countries might be measured by their bank balances.
How would you rate Jacques Kallis, AB de Villiers, Dale Steyn and Faf du Plessis as international cricketers? Test runs, wickets, strike rates, averages ... or that all four have career earnings of about R100m from the IPL alone? There is no doubt which all four are most proud of, and equally little doubt which is more useful in retirement — not that Du Plessis is yet considering that stage of his sporting career.
So, cricketers have always gone where the money is. But here’s the thing that has changed. They used to do that because there was no money at the top of the game. Now there is. The difference between much of the last 150 years and now is that cricketers are tempted to go not where the money is, but where there is more. Semantics, maybe.