IPL

We are the crowds.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Life can be traumatic; we know this. Real Life and when we play.

Often, in the latter, we get sucked in to ‘traumas’ and ‘dramas’ that are so patently manufactured or disproportionate that we should be bloody embarrassed, yes? But hang on. Describing or critiquing levels of authenticity and place and value, as though there’s some hierarchy or league table of meaning? Na. We’re neck-deep in the febrile and the tribal, even us brainy-bums. We’re not gonna escape into clear philosophical waters – not whilst we’re bawling at the telly, coz those footballers are cheating.

It may be true that somehow the universe is conspiring more than ever towards some swamptastic mania, or that we’re falling into it more readily, but perhaps that suspicion is more revealing of my own relative superannuation, than any quantifiable truth? (You Statspeeps, am I right? Can we measure this out? Do ‘socials’ and the surge towards intense, short, highly-colo(u)rific events sling us with developing and increasingly irresistible force into the whirl? Are they doing it more than before? Is everything about lust and intoxication – was it always? Or am becoming a Daft Old Sod?)

Flitting between screens and sports over recent days, it strikes me that the roaring at Elland Road and Goodison, the insane closeness of mountain-stage fans at the Giro and the parallel, if changeful calm at many cricket grounds is an absolute wonder, in its breadth and its signalling of the human condition. We are mad. We are both unhinged from the actual sport and inseparable, just tossed into a capricious mind-stew. We are watchful and equitable and off our heads. We can judge with either crystalline brilliance or the feeblest and most outrageous dishonesty, the shift of a hand or foot. Depends whose team. Depends which player. Depends how many sherberts.

Everton, Leeds, Forest fans. Mad as a box of frogs – and also wonderful. But seething and on the edge, with that rather disturbing sense that they want something to hate. (That’s a bit dark, yes? Sits quite close to the fear that violence may erupt). On the footie scene, was it just me, or, at this season’s end, were there more players and managers conspicuously whipping up the crowd? Sure that’s part of the theatre but… is it a thin bit, a look-at-me bit, or something more unhelpful? Get that it’s inevitably of the now but is This Frenzy a concern – or when is it a concern?

Many of you will know that I have worked in cricket, for years, as a coach. And that I follow the game – in particular England and Wales Women. I’m fascinated by the contraflows around that whole ‘traditional’ cricket narrative and the epoch-changing turbulence currently turning the game upside-down. Again the richness is extraordinary. Go to a well-supported county game at Taunton or The Oval or Headingley and soak up that restful vibe. Check out Glos v Glam, in the Blast, on the live feed. All will be well, in the moment. But wow, behind the scenes…

The times are impacting. Politics, economics, changing fashions, greed and maladministration internationally are impacting – or have. The madness and short-sightedness of (Indocentric), 21st century capitalism is of course the particular and extraordinary context. Some would say that big-money corporatism has replaced glacial imperialism as the controlling force, and that national and county or regional boards have been sucked-in or squished, in the race to provide sexier fayre.

Plainly, in the UK, the fabulous mix of Old Money, ‘traditional support’, exclusion, inclusion and the mass of what I’m going to call *actual cricket-watchers* has been (as they euphemistically say) challenged by the bolt into newness. Things are complex but also heartfelt – so simple. Most County Cricket fans are deeply insulted by the fact of and manner in which the Hundred was parachuted-in. They find the gaudiness offensive, the PR insulting and believe it was part of a plan to slim-down the Counties, by making the Blast non-viable. They think the ECB were suckered or bundled into changes which ticked boxes but utterly disrespected those who most obviously, in their view love and support the game.

The counter-arguments are that a) change had to happen because (for example) the County Championship (and therefore the Counties) is/are not sustainable and b) cricket must grow and find a new audience. In simple terms, not enough people go to watch Four Day Cricket and the game needs re-invigorating, to draw in a further wedge of TV money.

Few of us would argue that the status quo was entirely fit for purpose, pre- the Hundred, but this not the same as backing it. (Of course we live in our own bubbles but a strong majority of the Cricket People I know think it was not just divisive but flat unnecessary… because the Blast was improving and improvable at massively lower cost, both in terms of cash and goodwill). I would also place myself in the admittedly lower percentage of people dismissing the idea of growth itself. Growth in terms of inclusion – yes, absolutely. But think it’s unrealistic and unnecessary to think in terms of a HUGE GAME. Enough can be enough – not to exclude folks – but because cricket might just always have a lower profile than football. And that might be ok: make the game better, not necessarily bigger.

It’s possible that some of those who voted in the Hundred genuinely want more diverse and younger audiences for cricket, because they feel that is right, as well as smart. It’s possible that some just fell for an attractive power-point. Either way, it was a big moment; one that has not, because of the explosion in international franchise or short-format cricket, secured the future of the game. Far from it. The wider game – the world-wide game – has lurched into another crisis. Everybody wants to own, run, or play in an IPL.

The Indian Premier League is The Beast. Now featuring a women’s tournament, its seemingly undeniable clout and import have sent cricket somewhere else entirely. The money – because of the massive Indian cricket audience, largely – is colossal and life-changing, for players. Revenue from TV and advertising is stupendous. Owners and broadcasters relentlessly ladle on the noise and the colour. It’s febrile; appropriate to the age; possibly defining it.

This affects all of us in cricket. The young players on our pathways are aware of it, administrators the world over are trying to replicate it or ‘factor it in’ – whether that be to corporate planning or junior training. Elite players are right now deciding whether to go all in on ‘franchise opportunities’, ‘stay loyal’ to their national sides, or maybe burn out, trying to do the lot. Heads are being turned, by the numbers, the dancing girls and the dosh. It’s baseballification-plus, with different-level money.

We’re all different and all the same: rubbing shoulders, raising a holler. Being part of the tribe. It’s magic; it’s scary; it’s dumb; it’s wonderful. We all do it, and we sportsfolks do it compulsively. We ‘go ballistic’. It may even be a necessary part of the congenital daft-punkism that drives all games and supporters: essential to the energy and the craic. (And by the way surely something in that fervour drives performance – maybe as much as the eight zillion hours of practice?) I love the crazy difference between Evertonians and Glamorgan Travellers. I love that we both lose ourselves and yet we also have the power. Because we are the crowds.

Pic from Danehouse/Getty Images.

Which cricket?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

The brilliant tumult that was the recent Cricket World Cup underlined the distance traveled by this most extraordinary and arguably most traditional of games. The cricket Down Under and in New Zealand epitomised the almost alarming dynamism of a particular strand in the sport, clattering expectations, redefining (as they say) The Possible.

Fifty overs used to mean an ‘opening’ period where watchfulness and caution, even, were bywords for batters. It used to centre more on cunning than clout or blast. But as the brutal swordsmanship of the Warners/Maxwells/McCullums demonstrated, a new era of glorious carving has superceded that which has gone before.

And I do mean gone. My sense is that given the revolutionary essence of this new genre – the fact that in particular the bowling was characteristically met with a new breed of irresistible violence – we can barely identify pre- (let’s say) 2014 short-format cricket as the same animal. Cricket World Cup 2015 stamped upon our consciousness the separation – the lurch away, the blast-off – from the familiar/the proper/the old. (Delete according to prejudice.)

Though we knew it was coming, this was the moment the dirt was wistfully then swiftly dribbled in over the coffin of yaknow… Richard Hadlee; Ian Botham; the Chappells – cricketing icons that played a patently different game. The gaudy, incremental hikes through T20 Blasts and IPL Extravagorgies seem done; now the World Cup is carnage of a uniquely modern or post-modern sort. It’s official; things have changed.

Relax. This isn’t I think the preamble to some reactionary exposition on the authentic or the true. Truth is I can barely unscramble the various repercussions or likelihoods following Aus/NZ but I am sure enough I don’t simply and categorically oppose this dramatic new beast. It was too… riveting. It was, despite the shocking newness, recognisably sporting drama – elite sporting drama. For all the doubts, that makes it undeniable.

Plus… the argument that cricket cannot afford to suppress in any way that which might be its saviour (economically if not spiritually) does hold some weight. Even those of us love or work in the game have to concede that the demographic/driver wotsits that the office folks concern themselves with point to a shrill and urgent need to engage with those maybe forty years younger than yer average Lords Member. (Apologies if I slander here but you get my drift?) In the no-brainer age it’s a no-brainer that the ‘see ball hit ball’ core of all this gets a heavy shot of chilli.

Rightly or wrongly the bulk of the Youff of Today are turned off by stillness and quiet seduction (Alistair Cook v Any Spinner) but MFI when it comes to orgasmic adrenalin-showers. They love – they are bred, they are pressured, they are educated to love – the whiff of death, the full-length dive, the cliff-edge climax. So who wouldn’t be drawn to the expectation of a denouement featuring twenty runs an over or an explosion of stumps?

Whilst nobody is suggesting that 13-30 year-olds are sole heirs to anything, they are, of course key to TV and stadium audiences and (more crucially?) to the player base itself. And they want… this. Something that is fascinatingly post-Pietersen. Something really pumped.

My own club has set up an Under 19 team who will wear bright blue clobber and play other young dudes of an evening whilst ‘sounds’ form a backdrop to the ‘scenes’. It will probably be epic… and… or but… we need it. I think it’s great.

But despite the multifarious wonders of the game, zillions of teenagers – boys and girls – do drop out of playing and lose interest or fail to develop their interest in cricket. The very existence of short-format is a response, in no small part, to this issue. (Fair comment that the over-riding and marginally less wholesome urge to make pots of moolah also contributes to the emergence of the IPL and various T20 tournaments around the globe but that need to grow or prop up the game somehow means the greater authorities as well as men of independent means support, in their various ways, the boomathons.)

I’m both stirred and disturbed by the prospect of sorting out or gathering in this game – cricket – that seems to be expanding apart like a floppy-hatted cosmos.

The idea that this vital, ungovernable sprawl could somehow be controlled makes me smile. Not sure I’m optimistic, mind. Even if it were clearly desirable to collect in the various competing elements to some co-operative or sustainable whole I’m not sure the models of authority for the game are there. Blissfully, currently, that’s someone else’s problem.

On a local/national level the environment I work in has shifted to one where targets for growth within the amateur game (in Wales) have had to be scaled back… because growth is not realistic. This may not matter; for one thing it may simply be impossible for a team sport to expand its share of the ‘market’ against the increasingly diverse and often individually-centred competition – be that computer-based or kosher game-based. (Incidentally, I heard recently, in a gathering of sports professionals, that the only sports to be succeeding in terms of numbers gained are cycling and running; both essentially individual pursuits.)

Even an amateur shuftie at the philosophy of all this gets interesting. Start by considering the following; that growth may be inessential to the health of a sport. Why can’t a game that is loved and which retains its support and balances numbers of retiring players with new players be sustainable – be wonderful, even? And if growth is abandoned as a luxury beyond contemplation does that perhaps increase the possibility for retaining cherished essences (sorry, that word again) which may otherwise be subsumed beneath the charge for popularity/exposure/gold?!?

Again I’m being more agent provocateur here than campaigning against the new. However the confluence of challenges around how cricket is demands our attention; the presence of apparent antitheses – tradition/revolution Test/Blast etc etc – are either a recipe for remarkable diversity, diabolical conflict, or something hopefully intelligently poised between. Could we accept that some of the energy which goes into the abstract – this concept, growth – might be better expended into the corporeal – physical support, actual support – for the cricket experience?

The very fact that short-format cricket is either packaged or lumbered with circus imagery or post-POP-ART kerpoww-dom speaks volumes. About what it is and of the increasing gulf between 50 or 20 over action and the Test Match. In our dizzying new world the issue of whether it can be possible to accommodate, never mind grow cricket feels a less appropriate question, suddenly than… which cricket?