This podcast episode explores the current state of English cricket, with particular emphasis on the implications of the Hundred competition. Host Mayank and special guest Joshua Evans explore the myriad challenges facing English cricket, including recent upheavals in coaching and captaincy, which they argue underscore a broader identity crisis in the sport. The conversation critically evaluates the Hundred's role as a financial lifeline for the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), weighing its necessity against an overcrowded cricketing landscape. Furthermore, Evans raises concerns about cricket's sustainability amid growing franchise influence, suggesting the sport may evolve into a two-tier system dominated by a select few nations. This episode offers a deep exploration of the intersection of tradition and modernization in cricket, raising significant questions about the game's future trajectory.

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Inside-Edge | Substack

Hello and welcome to the Last Wicket.

Today on the Last Wicket, we have a new guest.

Welcome, Joshua.

It's a pleasure to have you.

Having read your newsletter for a while, I'm so glad we were able to connect.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Looking forward to having a chat.

Awesome.

I know our topic for the day is really the state that English cricket is in, the hundred in particular.

But before we get into all of.

That, would love to know how you know, just your background.

How did you get into the game?

The thought around starting Inside Edge, how did all that, how did all of that come together?

Okay, so I'm a big sports fan generally growing up in the UK and obviously we're quite lucky to have a lot of high profile sport going on in the UK all the time.

Cricket really sort of caught me in the late 90s, I guess my sort of earliest memories would be the 97 Ashes series, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, that sort of great era of Australian cricket.

And yeah, so sort of.

I've been a huge fan for a long time.

I've written some things professionally about cricket in the past, but not so much.

And then around sort of Christmas New Year time, someone introduced me to Substack.

I like the platform.

It seemed a lot less poisonous than social media, quite frankly.

And I thought it was a sort of good forum for me to sort of share some opinions and ideas and speak about the tactics and that sort of thing.

So I thought, yeah, I'd give it a go.

I don't really have any sort of grand ambitions with it, but it's been fun.

It's been hard work, but it's been fun.

And yeah, I've just sort of liked sort of interacting with people on the platform.

So, so far so good.

That's, that's great.

No, I mean, I think it's, that's exactly like us.

We've been running this podcast for five years.

I've been running the substack for maybe three.

And yeah, no real grand ambitions.

It's just like trying to stay in touch with a hobby that we both really enjoy.

So, so, no, it's, it's great to read your column.

And before we jump into English cricket, it would be remiss to not talk about Bangladesh and their spectacular victory, considering we are talking about, you know, we're recording this on the 16th of August.

Thoughts on that, did you get a chance to follow the Darwin Test?

Yeah.

So when I was following the.

The tour game against the.

I think it was the CA Select 11.

Yeah.

And they were rolled for 54 even in spite of some of the improvements that they've made in recent years, particularly with their fast bowling.

I had very sort of low expectations going into that test, quite frankly.

And then obviously because of the time of the time zone difference between the UK and Australia, the norm is to sort of wake up early in the morning, turn over, look at the scorecard.

And I was, oh, okay, this is.

Isn't going as I expected.

And then the thing that's GRA.

Grabbed me so much is how dominant they've been.

You know, it's not as though they've sort of snuck in at the last moment and sort of pinch the test match of Australia.

Like they have won almost every session of that test match.

And to say that they've done that in Australian conditions.

I know Darwin's not the GABA or Perth, but to do that in Australia is pretty remarkable.

Almost unheard of.

So, yeah, crazy.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, I think you're spot on in terms of, of course, their door match.

But also, Australia were coming off 11 victories in the last 13 games, so.

So yes, they were an aging side.

We all knew about, you know, their batting being vulnerable, but, but to, to your point, they were just dominating in every aspect.

You know, they didn't drop out.

I think they dropped one catch, the first things.

But in general, Australia were way shabbier in the field.

They were way more, you know, patient with the bat, with the ball.

They had very solid bowling lines, bowling plans.

So, yeah, just overall, a very, very impressive performance.

I think I was similar to you.

I was in the boat that man.

I don't know if this is going to be a great game, but it was starting at 7:30pm My time here in the US and so I was able to watch the first session of day one and I was like, oh, maybe there's something here.

They were picking a few wickets, they were bowling really well.

And then after I saw the score at the end of day one, I was like, okay, this is, this is something we got to follow.

This is.

This has a lot of potential for an upset.

And I think that the piece that you mentioned about them just being consistent throughout the test was quite amazing because often we see teams, you know, not as experienced teams, have a good day and then kind of slip away.

The.

The more experienced teams obviously find their depth and just Fight back.

But they just never let Australia.

And it was just a very, very solid performance.

Yeah.

I mean, before the series, I was really looking forward to seeing Nahid Rana in Australia.

Yeah.

Pretty much the fastest bowler in the Test game at the minute, I guess, or there and thereabouts.

And then when he went down injured, I was not especially hopeful of a particularly competitive series.

But obviously, you know, these things happen, I guess.

Absolutely.

And I think that's the fascinating part.

They're, you know, the.

The most exciting prospect was not even in the eleven, and they still had a battery of three fourth bowlers who were testing the Aussies.

So clearly that's.

That's a great sign for Bangladesh.

Forget, by no means do I think they're going to be, you know, a top side in a couple of years, but.

But they will not be easy to run over.

You know, they're not going to be a easy touring side in conditions that were usually foreign to them, in conditions where they were all always focused on base and.

Or they were always focused on spin, which is why they were, you know, at sea sometimes during Australia or England or other places.

Yeah, Those sorts of conditions are sort of so alien to like, particularly their batsman.

The bounce, it's so different to what they used to.

It's.

Yeah, right.

A pretty remarkable achievement.

Absolutely.

With that, let's jump into English cricket and the topic of the day.

So.

So English cricket is obviously at a very interesting juncture here.

The Test coach, I'm not sure if he's left or been fired, but one of the two, the captain, has decided to retire after being dropped for a Test and some, you know, misunderstandings with ecb.

That has to be the biggest blow considering the balance that he brought to the side.

And of course, now we have another Kiwi and Stephen Fleming selected as a successor.

Thoughts on the recent developments as well as.

What are you looking forward to with the Fleming route cycle coming up?

Yeah, so I think it's important to put it in a little bit of context to begin with.

Obviously, when McCollum came in, he was a sort of breath of fresh air in English cricket.

Much more sort of laid back, relaxed, like English cricket can tend to be a sort of very sort of Conservative Place.

And McCollum initially was like the perfect sort of antidote to that in the sort of post Covid era.

And a lot of the players they had in the initial sort of, I guess you could call it the first iteration of basball, they were sort of perfectly suited to what McCollum brought, like the Likes of Jimmy Anderson, Johnny Bastow, even Joe Root himself, like players who needed a bit of liberation.

And in the first couple of years I thought it worked relatively well.

I mean, they didn't achieve great results in the series that quote unquote, mattered to English cricket, which is India and Australia.

But it was fun, it was exciting, it brought, definitely brought eyeballs to cricket in England, which English cricket needs.

And then as there was a sort of turnover of players and you went from the Bestows to the Jamie Smiths, from maybe Jimmy Anderson to Gus Atkinson, those players who didn't know their games quite as well, the nebulous ideas of Basball sort of started to fray.

And as that happened, the team has sort of come apart at the seams because it, it was never a sort of particularly well defined tactic or like a blueprint.

It was all a bit sort of vibes based, it was all a bit sort of wishy washy.

And it was, to an extent, it was a sort of cult of personality really, rather than it being a sort of tactical idea.

And as the team has evolved, it's sort of fallen away in quite dramatic style to the point whereby I think even after the Ashes, McCollum's position was untenable because England went in.

England went into what they described beforehand as the biggest series.

They didn't have a fielding coach, Their bowling coach spent the first part of the series in the Middle East, I believe, playing a T20 tournament.

After the first Test in Perth, when every pundit was saying, you know, don't drive on the up in Perth, don't do this, don't do that, when the batting coach was asked about it, he said, oh, it's not something we discuss internally.

And at that point I thought it was pretty apparent that, you know, it wasn't working, that a change was necessary or a change was inevitable.

Having said that, they spent the first three Tests of the summer with McCollum in place.

And it's all unraveled in rather sort of spectacular, gruesome fashion.

And it's not only brought about the end of the coach, it's brought about the end of the captain.

And to be quite frank, I feel like Rob Key, who's the managing, managing director, rather, has been incredibly lucky to survive because fundamentally he's the man who oversees, he oversees the whole sort of infrastructure of the men's national team.

He's the one responsible for appointing the coach, the captain and somehow he's the last man standing and he's the man, bizarrely, who was just appointed the new captain and the new coach.

So that in itself's a bit of a concern.

What I would say is when you have a new coach, there's a tendency, if things aren't going well, to veer from one extreme to the other.

And in McCullum they had someone who was very sort of, as I say, vibesy.

It's pretty much the best way I could phrase that sort of leadership.

The Fleming who seems from his captaincy record and to probably a slightly lesser degree at csk, as someone who's more analytical, more thoughtful, more considered, just a bit more sort of street smarts than McCollum.

So in that sense he seems like he'll be a safer pair of hands.

The issue is he spent the last 18 years in the IPL coaching a white ball cricket team, not coaching Red Bull cricket.

So that's the sort of one question mark I would have about Fleming as a coach.

But that's the kind of landscape of modern cricket.

Most high profile coaches now coach and franchise cricket because that's where the money is.

So.

Right.

Yeah, it's a kind of reflection of the sign of the times, basically.

It definitely is.

But I think to start with your point about the Ashes being a missed opportunity, I could not agree more because I think that point, especially considering how the performances went down under, it also felt like there was, I don't know, I don't want to call it a rift necessarily, but there was a thought process from Ben Stokes that we need to start adapting to conditions and playing differently when while McCullum was seemed to be still, you know, full throttle on the basball approach.

So there was seemed like there were differences in terms of ideology that started to show even in that series.

So it definitely was a good point to, you know, start thinking about long term and somehow that just got.

That can just got kicked down the road unfortunately now to the middle of the summer here.

So timing wise, yeah, definitely.

England cricket could have done better.

I do agree with you that, yeah, it is a little bit weird in terms of, you know, a Red Bul coach taking over with no real Red Bull coaching experience.

Unfortunately, it seems to be like the trend these days.

I think when India hired Rahul Dravid, one of the things I really liked about that appointment, and this is even keeping my Rahul Ravid favoritism aside, was the fact that he had coached the under 19, he had worked with NCA or the national rugged academy.

And so he had spent time grooming a number of these players and by the time they got to the national side, he was in charge.

So he already had this relationship.

He knew what worked with each of them.

And of course 100 plus test matches, all of that obviously helps.

So I think that kind of went.

Away with Gautam Gambir because very similar to Stephen Fleming, he like coached KKR and has been involved in the one day or in the white ball setup and has never really coached a red ball testing.

And the results, I mean, not to say that all the results are his fault, but it certainly shows that his ideas of let's plug in a lot of all rounders and flexible teams and all of that, which usually work great in limited overs.

Yeah.

Just aren't the same in test cricket.

So it's a really interesting cycle from that perspective.

I do think what it fundamentally doesn't change though is I think England just needed a really good quality bowling attack to win everywhere and they lacked that under McCullum.

Yes, they were able to mask that somehow like the wins in Pakistan where they were just able to out bat the opposition.

But, but I think that still remains.

In fact that becomes worse with the absence of Ben Stokes.

So I, I do think like Fleming has a very tough job ahead of him.

Like it's a huge gap in that.

But in terms of the fast bowlers the likes of Joffre, like Ollie Robinson's got in English conditions, Ollie Robinson's very good.

Maybe not so much on like flat tracks in Pakistan or Bangladesh or somewhere like that.

Josh Tongue was probably England's best bowler in the Ashes and I think he's got a lot of potential.

Gus Atkinson also has a lot of potential.

So I think there is potential there for a very good seam bowling attack.

So in Stokes's absence, England have obviously gone down the route of choosing Dan Lawrence to essentially fill the gap that would be sort of filled by a sort of frontline spinner.

But England don't have a frontline spinner.

They have a lots of sort of project players, I guess you could call them players like Rhian Ahmed Show, Bashir Hartley, players who played at international level before and have had some success.

They don't have anyone who they could sort of trust with sort of 25 to 30 overs a day on a sort of second day of a test match.

So they've sort of fudged the issue I think like Lawrence is a, is Lawrence really is a part time spinner at first class level.

And until England find a spinner good enough, they're not going to be sort of competing for that top spot in the world game.

It just doesn't seem possible how you can sort of compete with the best teams with one arm sort of held behind your back as they've sort of had really since one sort of cool time on his career.

Right, let's talk about the 100.

Firstly, the concept itself, you know, the format as well as the fact that it's a franchise competition.

Considering the T20 black last was already there, you know the one the Royal One Day cup was, is already there.

What are your thoughts on the need for another format or the franchise competition?

Yeah, so what I would say is in terms of the need, cricket doesn't need the hundred.

Like cricket is a sport that does not need another format.

God knows are already sort of far too many formats.

But the ECB definitely needed the 100.

It's basically a vehicle for the ECB to funnel money into the game.

And in their opinion, obviously a lot of people disagree with this.

It's the easiest way for them to get a injection of cash in a very short space of time, which English cricket desperately needs.

A lot of the counties have sort of short term monetary issues, a lot of counties carry debt.

A lot of those issues were exacerbated through Covid when they obviously couldn't have people in the grounds.

And so for the ECB it was kind of a lifesaver.

Something that's like helped to keep the lights on a lot of counties because Obviously England has 18 first class counties.

That's a lot of counties for a country with 60 odd million people.

And it's very difficult to, to sustain that number of counties without this money.

But obviously the problem is it's a one time hit.

So once the money goes, the question is then what?

And that's the great unknown, I guess.

What are your thoughts on the format itself?

Because I have, I have some of my own.

But I want to hear for your thoughts and what you've heard from other English fans.

Even before we get into the money aspect of it.

So as someone who's a sort of.

I would describe myself as a hardcore fan of the game.

It takes a bit of getting used to.

Some of the quirks are a bit jarring.

Obviously the five ball over the, the idea that you bowl 10 from one end and 10 the other.

So in that sense I quite like that element because it does speed the game up.

And yeah, since the sort of advent of T20, the game has just got progressively longer and longer and longer.

All the sort of timeouts and all of that sort of nonsense.

Yeah.

So in that sense I appreciate the fact that it sped the game up, but it's difficult to get used to the sort of cadence of a 100 game if you're in the ground.

It just doesn't, it doesn't flow in the way, in the way, you know, cricket to flow, if that makes sense.

And I've heard a lot of the foreign players, for instance, Mitch Marsh in this season, just gone.

He pointed out that it took him a few games to get used to the sort of rhythms of the game.

And I can definitely see that.

And as a fan, as a long time fan, I feel that the issue is the hundred wasn't invented for people who are ardent fans of the game.

It's invented for new people, children, people who don't come to.

It's basically a tournament invented for non cricket fans, which is obviously sort of counterintuitive, but that's, that's the audience that the ECB is trying to reach and that's where this whole sort of endless friction stems from.

Because you've got people who love cricket already.

They know what cricket looks like, they know how they like their cricket in inverted commas.

And then you've got this whole new audience who's been introduced to the, what is supposedly a much more sort of simplified version of the game.

And those two just sort of constantly rub up against each other and it's been, you know, it's been a sort of awkward transition, I think for a lot of people.

Yeah, I, I mean, I completely agree with you.

I personally have started like getting a little annoyed with T20 lasting four hours.

I think in the IPL there was, I think it was an RCB game which lasted 4 hours, 20 minutes with timeouts and injuries and whatnot.

And I was like, this is, this is crazy.

Like what the whole point of T20 was, you know, a short format that we can play over an evening and now it's gone from three and a half to almost four and a half hours.

So from that aspect, I do like the 100.

I, I, yeah, I will say that there are definitely certain quirks that I forget.

You know, the fact that a bowler can bolt five overs or two overs of five balls back to back is something that I was like, oh wait, I forgot about that.

And so it's things like that which are interesting.

I'm sure, as you said, the players are also getting used to it, especially the ones who are playing for the first time.

Overall though, I, when I watch, and again, I've not watched a lot of it, but whenever I watch it on tv, the quality is pretty good.

I think that you have to give credit to the ECB that they've managed to sign, you know, the big players, they've managed to keep the standard pretty good.

Yes, they have sacrificed the Royal One Day cup for that purpose because it's happening at the same time.

So that essentially becomes a, you know, B tournament.

But, but overall the quality has been really good and I think they've done a good job of just marketing.

I found it really interesting that one of the teams is based out of, you know, a small stadium in Cardiff, even though there's other bigger stadiums available, other bigger counties available.

So I think from that perspective to the point that you are making that, hey, it's bringing in people who it's meant for, people who are, you know, not traditional cricket lovers, I feel like it's bringing in a lot more because again, it's been a few years since I saw the 220 blast, but I don't remember the crowds being as big as the 100.

So from that perspective it feels like it's heading in the right direction.

What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so what you find is with the Blast, there'll be a hardcore group of fans who will travel, like, obviously go to all the home games and then there'll be people who travel away, they'll go to finals day and it's very much sort of in their blood.

Whereas there aren't sort of hardcore fans of the Manchester Super Giants, there aren't hardcore fans of MI London because these are new teams, they're confected teams, aren't they?

What I would say is even with the ipl, obviously the IPL took off at a much quick, quicker rate.

There's a bigger sort of thirst for cricket in India, obviously, but among young people you find a lot of enthusiasm for the hundred you do.

Like, obviously there's a lot of sort of PR guff at the ECB puts out about, you know, young people and families and all that and it sounds great.

But if you actually attend the games, you'll see young people in the jerseys and obviously a lot of them are oblivious to the sort of politics around English cricket.

A lot of them don't really care which, like if you're 7 years old, if you're 10 years old, why would you care about the sort of financial elements of it?

And you can see in those fans how they can become sort of hardcore fans of these teams.

Whereas if you're, with all due respect, if you're my age or older, you, you probably struggle to sort of attach yourself to something that's basically a startup business.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a fair point.

I, I, it's the same thing in the ipl.

I feel like I've now started interacting with people who are 20 and who have seen IPL all their lives.

And so for them, you know, they'll see somebody do well for England and they'll be like, oh, this would be a great addition to whatever IPL team.

And I'm like, I did not even think of that.

Why would I think about IPL when I'm watching international cricket?

But that is their instinct.

You know, just like in the Premier League a lot of fans watch the World cup and they're like, oh, this guy would be a great additional at Arsenal or wherever, whoever they support.

And so yeah, I think that way it's definitely changing to your point.

In 10 years that could be a completely different scenario because then the people who are growing up, who are potential cricketers, not just cricketers but real fans have grown up on 100, just like the current era with the IPL fans.

And I think that would be, you know, that would make sure that the stadiums are full, all of that, you know, the, the, not just the stadium therefore, but also just the sales around or the marketing and, and advertising, you know, sales around the broadcasting.

All of that would be helping fund ECB and the counties a little better.

At least that's hope.

We never know, like there might be a dip and suddenly interest goes down.

But I think that's probably what the ECB is also hoping for.

Yeah, one of the things I often think when I watch hundred games and a lot of these sort of franchise leagues is who is the sort of core audience they're aiming for.

And particularly with the IPL teams obviously have this sort of multi club ownership.

I, I watch say Lead Sunrises and you've got a team in a very sort of distinct city in the north of England that has this sort of tied to a team in India and has a tie to a team in South Africa.

And I'm, I'm thinking are the owners here trying to get the people in leads on board?

Are they trying to, you know, get IPL fans to follow this sort of offshoot team?

What is the core Audience.

What.

Why do they feel the need to have this sort of everything, so sort of similar and so samey with the way a lot of these teams are sort of like the branding, the shirts, you know, even a lot of the players, a lot of the backroom stuff.

But I watch it and it's, it's a struggle for me to understand why don't they make them more distinct?

They're obviously doing it for a reason.

Is it because they think fans in India will become attached to a team in Leeds or a team in Manchester or a team in London?

And from this distance I can't really tell, but it's.

Some of those teams really sort of lack a sort of distinct identity, I feel.

Whereas the 100 teams have retained their original identity, the field is a bit more soul to them at the minute.

That sounds sort of silly because it's a six year old competition.

If you took a team like the Trent Rockets who had a really good 100 competition, just gone.

They're the same club they were six years ago.

They have the same colors, the same name, like they have different owners.

But beyond that, everything's feel like it's.

There's a lot of continuity there, whereas with a lot of the other teams they've just changed overnight and it's difficult to fathom some of the thinking behind that.

But I imagine they spent a lot of money doing a lot of research, a lot of marketing and they obviously have reasons for it.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with you.

I do think that some of the branding and I mean I somewhat get the point of the businesses because yeah, to your point, like if I'm a Mumbai Indians fan, maybe I'll also support Cape Town and London and that's how it goes.

So maybe that is the thought process.

And yeah, familiarity in terms of franchise obviously helps from that perspective in terms of rooting for teams.

But I will say some of the branding has been so just obnoxious.

The whole Manchester super giant stuff, I think you wrote about it actually now that I remember, it just feels really weird.

You know, England does not have any elephants and there's that gigantic mascot with elephants.

So yeah, some of it is definitely very, very obnoxious and you know, just doesn't feel right.

So yeah, I think they could have done a finer job of just fine tuning how they, you know, relate to the locals.

I don't necessarily an issue with them trying to, you know, create a bigger audience for their teams and all of that because hey, if this is all getting more money into Cricket and making it more sustainable.

That's.

That's great.

Like, you know, more people picking up a bat and a ball would be, would be great for everybody, all the cricket fans.

But.

But yeah, it's just, yeah, the, you know, I'll take over and put my name on it, even if it doesn't, you know, relate to the local politics, local culture.

That is the piece that just feels a little bit on the nose.

Yeah.

And it's just as a quick one.

It's just interesting to note that those teams that have gone through the name changes, not so much with MI London, but with Manchester Southern Brave, who are now the southern capitals, I think, and with the Sunrisers leads, they've seen falls in attendance numbers and it doesn't seem sort of coincidental that that's happened.

Not least because Manchester, Leeds particularly, they're obviously the home of Lancashire and Yorkshire, who are two of the most distinct, distinctive sort of identifiable counties in the country.

And they've become something very sort of.

It feels very synthetic, which is a bit, A bit sad because they've actually built really good teams.

Like, they've recruited really well, like Manchester's team, I thought was brilliant, but then the whole sort of branding and stuff has just been very jarring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We talked about the Indian investment, obviously, across these hundred, you know, franchises, and it has resulted in an influx of £600 million.

By no means a small amount to your point.

You know, obviously that many counties were in debt.

They've been able to clear that debt, they've been able to invest in better stadiums, infrastructure.

I was watching on interview of a Yorkshire CEO and he was mentioning how a lot of that, I think they have promised that whatever investment comes in about 12% or something like that goes to grassroots, that's creating new field or maintaining existing fields for kids to play in and in leagues like that.

So all of that is helpful, obviously, that, you know, helps build the game out.

Do you think though, that in the long term this money is going to turn this into a T20 competition?

Like I've been scratching my head about this and I was like, why would the Indian owners, once they have a solid amount of say, not say, hey, why don't we just do a T20 competition like everywhere else in the world?

Yeah, I agree with you.

The only complication is the.

The 100 is broadcast on two channels in the UK on Sky, which is a.

It's behind a paywall, essentially.

So you have to pay a subscription to what, Sky Sports, and then it's Also broadcast on the BBC, which is essentially free to air.

And with the BBC it goes back to something you mentioned earlier.

Because the hundred is shorter than the typical T20 game, it's more appealing to a free to air broadcaster in the uk.

So there's a bit of a trade off in terms of.

With the BBC you get more visibility because lots more people are able to access the games.

And so that's good from a sponsorship point of view and a sort of awareness point of view.

But then the BBC are less inclined to broadcast the T20 games.

It would take up another 45 minutes to an hour maybe of their schedule and that's something they may be hesitant to commit to.

So what they do is, I feel kind of dependent on the TV market, the broadcast market, and how much interest they can attract when they do eventually come to sell it as a sort of standalone product.

So for sky it works.

It would work perfectly for sky as a T20 product and there would be no issues there.

But if they want the visibility of a free to air broadcaster, then that might be problematic.

So it's really sort of almost entirely up to the broadcast market, what direction it takes.

And yeah, I agree with you like the format itself.

Nobody else plays the format.

This is something that Lalit Modi said, he was like, why would, why would anybody follow the 100?

Because no one plays it, nobody understands it, all this sort of stuff.

And I agree with that entirely.

But it's.

Then do the owners want it on free to air tv where they could get a significantly bigger audience, but it wouldn't be a T20, perhaps?

So it's, yeah.

Interesting what direction they go.

Yeah, it's a classic conundrum because I feel like English for good in general is in that state.

Of course, it was a tremendous series.

You know, two top quality sides competing and a lot of close games, a lot of great moments.

All of that was 100% true.

England winning after a long time, that was obviously a big deal.

But more than that, it was free to air.

Everybody could watch.

The US cricket correspondent for crickin, for former correspondent, I should say Peter De La Pena was actually sitting in Australia at that point and randomly ended up watching the Ashes and got into cricket and made a career as a cricket, as a cricket journalist.

So, you know, you have, I mean, obviously there's just one example, but you have all These people that tune into the game and, you know, fall in love with it.

So it's, it's, it's a very interesting conundrum.

I do think like at least with any competition, like at least the 10 first 10 years or so, they really need to think about long term.

I feel like ideally even more than that.

But I feel like after that the stakes get so high that these private companies, you know, start taking more selfish decisions, more short term decisions.

But yeah, that'll be an interesting one to watch, I think, just to jump in.

I feel like a lot of people outside of England sort of perhaps don't really quite understand the sort of space that cricket occupies in England because it is sort of superficially maybe like the second or third biggest sport in the country, but it's still a sport that really has to sort of scrap and scramble for attention.

So you take this summer, for instance, obviously the Football World Cup's been on, or the Soccer World cup to our American audience.

And that would completely overshadow everything that's happening with the England side, even when they're in a state of complete sort of chaos.

And it's been a bit of a fast, quite frankly with the Nashville team.

But it's like obviously in, in the subcontinent it's completely different because it's a huge population, a huge appetite for cricket.

Whereas in England it's more of a sort of fight for eyeballs.

I mean, if you ask a lot of people now who's the most famous cricketer in England or who could they name a cricketer?

Andrew Flintoff would still be probably first or second on that list, ahead of Joe Root, for instance.

Joe Root's probably going to become the, you know, he's going to score more test runs than anyone in the history of the game.

And that sort of shows where cricket sits in the sort of sporting hierarchy in England.

And I, I wonder whether even some of the owners really quite appreciate how much of a scrap it is for eyeballs because it's almost as though a lot of the IPL owners have come in, imposed a lot of the sort of IPL like ideas on the tournament, but they maybe don't really understand the market that well.

You know, I think that's a great point on that.

On that exact note, there was a comment by again, the Yorkshire CEO who was talking about the 100 and the investment.

And he said the 100 is bringing in 600 million pounds into English cricket and the revenue of Aston Villa football club is 680 million.

So one of the, I mean, I wouldn't call them small, but they're not the top three or four clubs in England and they're alone producing more money than, you know, all of cricket counties, 18 cricket counties combined.

So I think that really does say a lot about where it stands.

And yeah, you're right.

I think it's similar in South Africa where, you know, cricket is obviously the.

Probably the second sport, you know, there.

Yeah, exactly.

So.

So I think it is similar from that perspective.

Yeah, it's interesting how, how that plays out.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about was I think at this point Australia and New Zealand are the only countries without a franchise.

Well, I shouldn't say Australia is without a franchise T20 league.

They do have franchise T20 league, but without Indian investment.

And West Indies is probably the other one.

But they at one point had two teams, Barbados Royals and the Trinidad Knight Riders.

Trinbago Knight Riders.

Now it's only the Knight Riders that are left there.

Overall though, it feels like even Australia was super close to considering investments from Indian franchises.

What are your thoughts on that aspect of it?

You know, like, I mean, we've kind of touched on it in terms of finding the balance of, you know, creating that local culture.

But what are your thoughts in terms of how do we keep cricket sustainable without, you know, just an overall imposition of a foreign culture or a foreign franchise?

Yeah, I mean, it would be good to say that these sort of states could remain sort of entirely independent and they could live in a sort of utopia.

I don't think this is gonna happen.

This money sort of inevitable.

I mean, you can see over the last few months, obviously cricket, Australia's got itself in a bit of a bind with the states as to what to do about the whole investment issue.

And each state obviously has its own sort of ambitions as we see with cricket.

Victoria.

They've been very keen to get the investment on board.

Other states have been much more resistant to it.

Eventually cricket will go from being a sort of national game to a franchise game.

And that's the path we're on.

And I think it, like, even in the last few weeks, it's kind of manifesting itself in the sort of two tier nature of Test cricket these days.

It feels a lot of formerly great Test nations are being sort of hollowed out by T20 cricket.

They don't have access to their best players.

They can't pay them enough to get them to commit to the national teams.

So it seems inevitable that franchise money will eventually usurp the international game.

It's just what that looks like in the future and it looks different for each country.

So for instance, New Zealand's a much sort of obviously less populated country than Australia.

It's not a cricket first country like Australia is.

New Zealand's a rugby first country, whereas Australia has a.

Obviously cricket is very much part of their national identity in a way that it's not necessarily for the other center countries, as they're called.

So that the Australian question feels much more difficult because that slot for the Southern hemisphere teams is much more crowded than it is in England, for instance.

So you've got like the SA20.

What do you do with the Big Bash, for instance, how do you get a Big Bash competition to work with private investment.

When you have a Boxing Day test match and you have a New Year's test match, because obviously the national team wants their best players.

If you're an Indian billionaire or you're an American private equity guy and you're putting in hundreds of millions of Australian dollars, you're like, well, I want Mitchell Stark to play in this game.

Why is he in Melbourne?

Or why is Pat Cummings in Sydney over the New Year Test match?

And the reality is, I think in the long term money will win out.

When that happens, I'm not sure.

But eventually people follow cash and that's just the reality of life.

So it's just finding a way for the two to somehow work together.

It feels very awkward.

Obviously a lot of traditionalists don't like it, but we live in a world where sort of money dictates, you know, the path people take in life and that feels inevitable in cricket as well.

Yeah.

And I, you absolutely cannot blame the players for that because, you know, they are professionals whose life is, you know, for us, as, as non sporting people, we have a career of 35 to 40 years.

They have a career of 10 to 15 years.

Some even the grades stretch it to 20.

And so they need to earn their living and make sure they're good for the rest of their life based on those 10 to 15 years.

So absolutely don't, you know, hold it against the players.

But, but you're absolutely right.

I think the New Zealand team is a very interesting example because you've seen so many of their greats who've served Test cricket, who won world Test championships, reject a central contract and they've Started, you know, jumping around T20 leagues.

I think it also is an age thing.

A lot of them in their late 30s have realized that, you know, if you, if I play three competitions, I'm gone six months a year compared to if I play both.

Gone pretty much full year.

And they probably have kids and all of that.

So they're starting to think about that as well.

So it is, it is really a weird stage that cricket finds it in.

I do see it happening.

You know what you mentioned that cricket goes the football route, where franchise cricket takes over.

There's already so many franchise leagues.

I think it's about time that.

And to add to that, the fact that bilateral cricket is already something that gets questioned all the time.

You know, they're like, why are we randomly seeing series like that?

You know, just Bangladesh playing in Australia after 20 odd years.

There's no context to it.

So it feels like, yeah, we, we're heading to that direction and then maybe in the middle will be just like soccer, just like football, the centerpieces, the World Cups, the T20 World Cups, possibly the Champions Trophy if they want to continue that.

So it definitely feels like we're headed that way.

I do think that it still feels just again, because of the people who are leading the, you know, various organizations today.

They are older than you and I and they are of the mindset that national team matters.

So I do think that's going to take a while to go away.

So probably not in the next 10 years, but maybe 15, 20 years you might see franchise cricket being the primary.

Yeah, no, I agree.

But one thing I would just point out is at the moment, Cricket Australia and the ECB can just about offer players a salary that keeps them committed to international cricket in the way that South Africa have obviously struggled, for instance, with people like Heinrich Classen, who quite logically has taken like he's retired from international cricket, he takes big salaries in T20 tournaments and I don't think anyone can blame him for that because of the distance disparity between what he'd earned from cricket, South Africa compared to the IPL, the 100 and so on.

If the IPL paid their players in a way that was more in line with the overall revenue of the league, then Cricket Australia and the ECB would have a far bigger problem than they have at the minute.

So if you took for instance Joffre Archer as an example, he essentially has a full time contract with the ECB and he may be paid a million pounds a year and then he has a contract with Rajasthan and then he has a contract in the hundred and he kind of has the best of both worlds at the minute where he's earning big salaries from his international commitments and from his franchise tournaments.

But if the IPL doubled his salary, which could quite easily happen and a lot of people would say if there were a stronger players union probably would happen, then would he be inclined to pay a five match test series in Australia where he could potentially suffer, you know, a career threatening injury?

He's a guy who bowls very fast, he has a history of injuries.

Would it be worth his while if he was paid double what he's paid now in the ipl as opposed to putting his body on the line in Test cricket?

And if those salary brackets do change in the ipl, then that could really sort of hasten the, not the decline of international crickets.

It's always going to be there in some guys, but it could certainly flip it on its head where it goes from being a sort of international game first to a franchise game first.

And I think the IPL will obviously be the determining factor in that happening.

Yeah, and that's a, that's a great point.

I, I have definitely read a lot of pieces, not specifically around like Job Roger, but just, just pay in terms of what Indian players get paid and they compared to the revenues that the BCCI makes, they do actually make pennies like majority of the stars.

They make their money from endorsements and their own companies and everything else that they do on the side, all their other investments and they make a fraction of it actually playing with cricket.

But you know, obviously their popularity, all of that is tied to the national team.

So that's a great point.

I, I do think that that is a tough one because India is so unfortunately so anti player unions and so all of that, that is a tough one.

I think that'll take a while to happen.

But, but I think the other aspect of it is we're also assuming that the Indian market never dries up.

Like what if the Indian economy Has a bad 10 years?

Yes, cricket is national pastime.

Everybody loves it.

It's still going to be a priority.

It's not a second or a third sport gets deprioritized.

But nonetheless, if the money's not there, then suddenly you're going to start seeing cutbacks and it's just not going to be as, you know, as bit of an opportunity for many of these players.

So yeah, that, that one is obviously a harder one because that depends on a lot of other things.

But, but yeah, that's just something that I always think about.

Like, in the 90s, it felt like ECB and Cricket Australia, I think they were called ACB at the time.

Those boards ran the game.

Of course there were other boards that were doing well, but it was really those boards that had a lot of money and influence, all of that.

So I feel like there are cycles to this.

So, yeah, maybe 25 years down the line it could change, but it's a really.

I think it was a broader point.

It's a really sort of precarious situation for the game as a whole to be so reliant on one market.

And if there's 100 small changes within that market has the huge ripple effect.

I struggle to think of another sort of major sport that is so sort of beholden to one market.

And as you say, if the Indian economy has a downturn, if another sport rises in popularity in India, like, what happens to cricket?

And the people at the ICC just, they.

They don't really have the means to lead the game.

And I'm not sure they really have the will or either.

Like, they're just.

They're kind of asleep at the wheel and they have been for a long time.

Yeah, no, absolutely agree.

I think that is also part of the reason why a lot of cricket fans were excited about cricket in the US because they were like, this is a nation that can really pump in the cash.

It's a sport crazy country and there's a lot of sports here, but even then, there's so much following and all of.

So we'll see how that goes and intersects with India's progress.

But to sign off, Josh, maybe what I'll ask you is to put on a predictor's hat.

And I'm sure we both will get it wrong, but maybe we get some parts right.

What.

And of course, we can talk about franchise cricket, we can talk about 100, but in general, what do you see?

The state of cricket?

I'd say that the Test game is going to shrink, and in 20 to 25 years, I think you'll basically have three teams playing test cricket.

And it'll almost be.

It'll be India, Australia and England, obviously.

And it'll almost be a sort of niche, sort of exhibition kind of format.

I think the game, a lot of what we're seeing now with the multi club model, I think eventually that will be sort of refined a bit it and you will actually see Indian players playing for their Indian franchises overseas.

So if it's mi, if it's Mumbai Indians, it'll be, you know, the, whoever Rohit Sharma is in 20 years, he will be playing in Cape Town, he'll be playing in London, he'll be playing in New York and it'll become much more sort of connected.

And I think that will be the sort of economic engine of the, of the sport.

And as you suggested before, the sort of big ICC events will still happen.

So the T20 World cup will still be a huge revenue driver.

The 50 over World Cup I'm less sure about, but again there's still a huge market for that and it's still like a huge sort of money maker for the icc.

They will be the big international show pieces and bilateral cricket will just sort of fall to the wayside because essentially they're little more than sort of friendly games.

Like they really do sort of lack any kind of context beyond historic arrival.

Like a sort of England, Australia, like obviously Pakistan and India don't play each other but there's context to that game beyond it being sort of, this is a 50 over game with outside of a World cup, you know, it'll be franchise cricket will dominate and then every couple of years we're going to get an ICC event and that will be the sort of big international revenue driver.

And then we're just going to have little sort of pockets for Test matches, which sort of saddens me to be honest, but it seems inevitable.

Yeah, I will, I think I mostly agree with you.

I do hope that the ODI World cup stays.

I personally love that format in general.

It's kind of sad that it's, you know, dying and I almost, you know, joke that it's being killed.

But so I do hope that that format sustains and I do think that when people are in the stadium eight hours they spend a lot more and all of that.

So from local grounds perspective, it is a very, very positive thing.

You know, you spend about the same amount of money, maybe slightly more on hosting a one day game, but you earn almost double that of a T20 game.

So I think from the economic standpoint, hopefully that stays.

It's a lot of history to it.

It is still cricket's most prestigious tournament, so hopefully that helps, you know, sustain it.

But I think other than that, I Do think cricket will be two tiered?

Like Test cricket will be two tiered in the sense.

Exactly.

Like you said, there'll be a top three, four team.

I think the others probably won't die out.

And the reason I think about this is I kind of compare it to women's cricket.

They paid out of their salary to go and play in the world.

And so they were, you know, essentially recreational cricketers like all of us, because they were, you know, doing jobs, saving money, paying that and themselves going on tour for India.

And I feel like we're going to get to that, which obviously means the level will be way less because you're not able, you're not a professional by any means.

You're, you know.

So I think that second tier, whoever that or whatever countries make that second tier will be substantially lower, which is definitely going to be a sad thing.

I will be super interested though if they try to change test cricket.

And one of the things that I really like, even though I would love a five day traditional game, is four day night game.

I think that has to be considered at some point to save the game.

But I do think that is likely to happen with franchise teams.

So I would be curious if franchise teams want to do test cricket with four day format.

I think that would be a really interesting mix and I think that would be exciting because there's so many talents on the associate cricket scene who would be amazing in T20, like, I think over Rashid Khan who's, you know, played a few test matches and, but obviously doesn't have a team that can win new games.

So if he is somebody who's bowling on day four with cracks and, and a solid, you know, batting lineup to support him, that would be great to watch.

Yeah, it just, it's interesting because you, you think of the size of cricket in terms of the audience and then you think of like where the game's heading.

It feels like it's almost sort of getting bigger and shrinking, getting richer and getting poorer simultaneously.

And it's just a very sort of confusing time for the game.

And it feels like, you know, administrators are sort of chasing their own tail at the minute because they don't, they're not really determining where the game is going in the future.

It seems all to be sort of, of private equity billionaire types who are sort of dictating the direction of travel.

So, yeah, there's an awful lot of uncertainty, I think.

Yeah.

On that note, Josh, thank you so much for your time.

It's been an absolute pleasure to have you.

We do hope we get a chance to bring you on and talk a lot more about English cricket or cricket in general.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.