A Revolution within a Traditional Game

By Michael de Kretser,

CEO of GO Communications
Cricket, that game of gentlemen, of old school ties, “play up, play up and play the game”, is undergoing a not-so-quiet revolution that threatens to take a game once the preserve of Great Britain and its former colonies, screaming and kicking into the mass market.

T20 or 20-over cricket, an abbreviated form of the traditional game in which each team bats for 20 overs and the highest score wins, has been heralded as the new international sport rivalling soccer in its appeal. Whilst all have recognised the impact of the souped-up, much hyped Indian Premier League, with Bollywood stars and business moguls paying previously undreamt of amounts for franchises, the sceptics have opined that whilst the glitz and glamour might be fine for the already cricket-obsessed nation of India, the same appeal would not exist in non-cricketing nations. Well, at a four-nation tournament involving Canada, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in Toronto last week, 40,000 people turned out to watch a boisterous final between Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Whilst not an Eden Gardens crowd, it was sufficiently good for the organiser to plan a yearly event for the next 5 years. Couple this with the efforts of the American billionaire, Allen Stanford and his stumping up of USD 20 million prize money for a T20 competition involving teams from the West Indies and the rest of the world and you have some idea of the scale of enthusiasm with which this concept is being embraced. In contrast, the recent world financial issues have threatened the viability of numerous EPL clubs, baseball and NFL, who are having difficulty attracting sponsors, and Max Mosley has warned that escalating costs may make Formula 1 motor sports non-viable within 5 years. Sport has always been the people’s entertainment.

And in the 21st century, I believe cricket will be the most watched and participated sport on the globe. The economic and mass appeal has caught the imagination of the Arab world (Dubai, Abu Dhabi to Oman), Canada, the West Indies, Africa and is increasing excitement in Australia, New Zealand, England, Scandinavia and South Asia where the economic crisis is putting EPL clubs in England for example, in crisis, golf and tennis in jeopardy – cricket sponsorship is booming and continuing
to grow. Bollywood stars like the newly crowned Datuk Shahrukh Khan pays US$50 million to buy a cricket team franchise in India, the actress Preity Zinta buys for US$40 million another Indian franchise, corporate tycoons buy franchises of Indian teams like they once bought companies.

Cricket today has stars and corporate powers from Bollywood to Hollywood. Where in the world can you see over 100,000 people, like at Eden Gardens in Kolkata watching a cricket game, over 800,000 people glued to the television and millions more watching around the world? An EPL game like Manchester United vs. Liverpool only gets an audience of 50,000. Where do you get an entrepreneur today putting up US$10 million for a winner-takes-all for a cricket match in the West Indies? Where do you get Middle Eastern countries like Dubai building cricket stadiums to host cricket matches for billions of dollars? Where do you get countries like Afghanistan (ravaged by war) to produce a cricket team that’s almost qualifying for the next World Cup? Where do you have a game that can have so many formats – like test cricket, 50 overs and the new twenty/20 format, that can give opportunities to many different types of players and different excitement to spectators and television viewers? And where do you find movie studios making films on cricket? Cricket is a simple game that can be played by anybody – no matter his size, height, build or strength.

Like the Chairman of the Malaysian Cricket Council, Tunku Pete Imran, said, “I would like to see Malaysia as a Test playing nation in 2120.” The advertising spent for cricket sponsorship and individual players today is in the billions. Some cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar of the Indian team earn more than the highest paid soccer star. Tendulkar is the only sporting personality on the planet to autograph motorcars. As the share market plummeted around the world, so did the sports sponsorships. When Tiger Wood and Wayne Rooney got injured and Michael Jordan retired – what happened? Television viewing audiences in the golfing world dropped by 30% as sponsors had a ‘heart attack’, 20,000 people turned up at Wembley to see England play an international. The cricketing world saw no such negative impact. So ‘the beautiful game’ like the once-invincible Wall Street giants is facing its fiercest competition yet. And cricket in its new way of playing the game, and with the colossus of the Asian dynamos, becomes the world’s best-watched sport.