Pandemic likely to hasten cricket's shift away from the international game
by Tim WigmoreAlongside his 200 Test matches, Sachin Tendulkar only had time for 43 first-class games for Mumbai, his state. Tendulkar's career embodied a peculiarity of cricket. Compared to other major sports, it has been unusual in how much it has revolved around nation v nation contests.
Domestic cricket has faced a perpetual struggle for relevance and attention, its very existence reliant on being subsidised by international matches.
The creation of Twenty20, and especially the launch of the Indian Premier League in 2008, upended the role of domestic cricket. The glitziest leagues – above all the IPL – no longer have to cede stars to the international game. Virat Kohli, Tendulkar's successor as world cricket's superstar, has played 82 T20 internationals – but 192 games for his IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Every year, the Board of Control for Cricket in India earns twice as much in broadcasting rights for the IPL as for home internationals and International Cricket Council events combined. Far from needing to be propped up by cash from elsewhere, domestic cricket in India is now the main event. The determination to rearrange this year's IPL – now set to be played from late September, in the window originally marked for the men's T20 World Cup – has only confirmed as much.
What has been happening in India is an extreme version of the global shift in cricket. Where international cricket once had a monopoly on the world's best players and biggest matches, it must now share the stage with domestic fixtures.
This journey remains unfinished. One of the reasons for the creation of the Hundred competition in Britain was to reduce the England and Wales Cricket Board's dependence on international cricket. By building a lucrative tournament, the ECB would be better placed for a future in which bilateral international cricket plays a lesser role.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India earns twice as much in broadcasting rights for the IPL as for home internationals and International Cricket Council events combined.
The ascent of club cricket has been intertwined with T20. Club-based leagues generate a narrative, and supply of games, that bilateral T20s cannot. The city-based structure of most T20 leagues is ideally suited to an urbanising world. And leagues – rather than tours – sit more readily with the impatience of the modern world; the notion of waiting four years for AB de Villiers or David Warner to return for their next games in India, as they would have done before the IPL, seems quaint.
Leagues have also risen in response to the failings of international cricket. At times in recent years, international cricket has resembled Thomas Hobbes's war of everyone against everyone, such is the lack of trust and co-operation between national boards.
Lucrative domestic competitions allow boards to guarantee themselves reliable revenue, rather than being dependent on the whims of touring sides.
With much bilateral cricket struggling for relevance, TV rights for internationals in most countries beyond Australia, England and India have been stagnating or even declining. As James Sutherland admitted when he was Cricket Australia chief executive, demand for T20 leagues has cannibalised the international game.
So, even before COVID-19 struck, there were compelling reasons for boards reducing their dependence on international cricket. Now, the global pandemic is poised to accelerate this trend. Boards face a new normal of biosecure venues, chartered flights and quarantining teams on arrival. All this will take time and money – simultaneously increasing the cost of international cricket even as the revenue decreases.
These elaborate arrangements can be justified for the biggest markets, but much less easily elsewhere. As Johnny Grave, chief executive of Cricket West Indies, has said: tours like New Zealand flying to the Caribbean for, say, three T20s and three one-day internationals will no longer be viable. In economic terms, they already were not.
Club cricket is better protected from COVID-19's economic and logistical pressures. Domestic tournaments generally require fewer players to fly in – and, if necessary, can proceed without them, as the Caribbean Premier League plans to if overseas players cannot feature.
As ever in cricket, what happens in India will drive what happens throughout the rest of the world. From September, four months out of eight are likely to be given over to the 2020 and 2021 IPL seasons. If the IPL expands from 2023 – as widely expected – that will leave even less space for potential tours from India, which effectively fund years of cricket in many countries. "Market forces will ultimately determine what's going to happen," says a former ICC insider.
The end point, perhaps, is cricket's structure increasingly resembling that of football or basketball. While global international tournaments will retain a huge following, fans' day-to-day focus will increasingly be on club games. England will not be immune to these changes.
When announcing that the Hundred's launch would be postponed until 2021, Tom Harrison, the ECB chief executive, declared that the competition would now be "even more important". The same will be true for club cricket in all countries. The Kohlis of future generations may scarcely need international cricket to build their renown.