Friday, September 14, 2012

"Land it on a sixpence" Cricket and money


Cricket, test cricket, that is, is a game that engenders speculation and philosophy. It takes five days, has lunch and tea breaks and most of the action takes place a long way from you sitting on the boundary. Even if you’re playing, standing in the field gives you time to think. It’s a game of nuance: a bowler manages a maiden over, and the advantage has passed to the bowling team. By the same token, a batsman surviving such an over may have given the advantage to his team. And as such, it also engenders, for mine, the finest sport writing. Not that boxing, football and other faster paced sports haven’t resulted in good writing, but a good cricket book is something special. My favourite contemporary cricket writer is Melbourne-based journalist Gideon Haigh. His books are witty, informed, and driven by a love of the game.

Sphere of influence: writings on cricket and its discontents is a 2010 collection of essays, speeches, and articles Haigh has written for such sources as Cricinfo, The Monthly, The Spectator, Sports Illustrated India and The Age. The major theme of these articles is the rise of the India to the economic centre of international cricket, the ineffectualness of the ICC, and Twenty20 and its effect on the sport. These are all entwined issues.

Twenty20 is a great money-maker for the game, particularly India, where an entrepreneur took an English concept and made it into an Indian powerhouse. Other nations have followed suit, with less success. Twenty20 may yet be a dazzling flash in the pan, but India has bet its future on it, eschewing test cricket which is the ultimate test of a player’s talents and strengths. India has been the No 1 test nation in the world (although the method of determining that, as Haigh says, is obscure and complicated at best) but in its last tour of Australia was an example of diminishing returns.

The other problem with the tidal wave of money now engulfing cricketers is its almost inevitable handmaiden, corruption. Match-fixing was a blight on the game in the 1990s. Now we have spot fixing, no-balls at particular time and so on. Pakistan players were guilty in this instance. Poorly paid, other countries unwilling to tour their troubled country, banned from the riches of the IPL by India, is it any wonder that some of them were happy to take money wherever they could get it? Dodgy administrators and administrations, a powerless and petty ICC, ruthless and powerful gambling interests; is it any wonder the Haigh senses an approaching crisis? He poses a very pertinent question: does cricket make money in order to exist, or does it exist in order to make money? He thinks it should be the former, he fears too interested parties are starting to think the latter. And the consequences of that for those who love the game are worrying indeed.

And I see in my own profession signs that there are those who are moving the bottom line from an important consideration to the main consideration. One theatre director, convinced that ‘bums on seats’ should be the major driver, programmed ‘popular’ shows and almost took his theatre company to the wall. A university changed the Department of Arts to the Department of Creative Industries. It said it was a hard-nosed recognition of the nature of arts and the importance of knowing how to make money with it. Somehow, departments of Medicine, Science, Engineering, Law and Architecture, have never considered how to make money using their knowledge, nor recognised that at some point they would need to. To me it was a buzzword approach that signified the ultimate surrender of Art to Money.

If cricket and theatre are simply tools to make money, then we play and watch cricket for the same reason we play and watch theatre. And having done both, to lesser and greater effect, I can tell you we don’t. The play, and the day’s play, still need to remain the thing.

No comments:

Post a Comment