Any cricket-loving Englishman would be forgiven for thinking they’re living in something of a golden age just now. After all, England has some of the world’s best players, a flourishing Test side, a four-day championship still favoured by traditionalists and a T20 contest that plays to healthy crowds.
Indeed, if you screw your eyes up tight and drift off into a reverie – which, in any case, is the preferred method of watching the game for many spectators at Lord’s on a hot summer’s afternoon – it would be easy to imagine that everything in the garden is rosy.
But while on holiday in Sydney a few months ago, I saw the future – and it was something I barely recognised. Each evening over there I got into the habit of watching the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash – Australia’s garish but entertaining version of the IPL or T20 – live on television. Cricket was nothing like this – at least, not back here in the UK.
One game between two city-based franchises – the Brisbane Blasters and the Sydney Stupendoes or some such – particularly caught my attention. It was less a cricket match, more a gladiatorial contest, with Freddie Flintoff bowling to Jacques Kallis under floodlights in an immense concrete cauldron normally used to host Aussie Rules football. Indeed, everything about the event was immense, not least the crowd of 60,000 or so spectators cramming the stands, many of them children. No wonder there were advertisement breaks between every over.
The Big Bash may be a synthetic creation designed by marketing executives, but in the six years since its inception it has become the eighth-most-watched sporting event in the world in terms of average crowd per match. That’s a whole lot of revenue streams.
Now the penny has finally dropped in England too, and suddenly Kent versus Leicestershire on some bucolic English ground with ice-cream vans and stale sandwiches doesn’t seem quite so alluring. Indeed, the English Cricket Board is locked in a fierce debate as to whether the T20 competition should abandon its traditional, county-based roots and rebrand itself along the same lucrative lines as its Australian counterpart.
In one corner are the modernisers, including ECB chairman Colin Graves and chief executive Tom Harrison, who will attempt to force through a proposal to introduce a city-based franchise that will see only eight teams, with sides such as London Lions playing Manchester Dynamos at Old Trafford or Wembley Stadium, rather than Lord’s or The Oval. You can already hear the apoplectic establishment reaching for the smelling salts.
At a meeting on September 14, the ECB bosses will have to win over the 18 traditional county sides that form the bedrock of the game. Many counties fear they will be marginalised and eventually driven out of existence by allowing themselves to be sidestepped. Even larger counties such as Middlesex and Yorkshire have expressed concern that their identities could be quickly wiped out if they are rebranded as London and Leeds.
The other thorny issue is sponsorship. One of the reasons the Big Bash has taken root in the Australian public’s affections so quickly is because it’s transmitted on free-to-air terrestrial channels, which means anyone in the country with an TV aerial can watch it. But live cricket in England is only available to subscribers to Sky satellite, and that company is unlikely to yield gracefully to the idea of its precious monopoly being broken.
Whatever transpires come September 14, the game is likely to look very different as a result. While nobody, least of all an old traditionalist like me, wants cricket to become warped into a tawdry excuse for merchandising, the game surely has to change if it’s to remain relevant to modern lifestyles.
And if 50,000 people will pay to see Ben Stokes facing Dale Steyn under floodlights at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium on a Friday night, who am I – or any of the 18 county sides – to deny them?
Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London
On Twitter: @michael_simkins