The conversation between Mayank and Edward Fitzgibbon centers around Edward's extensive journey within the realm of cricket, particularly emphasizing the growth and expansion of the game on a global scale. Edward, who has held significant positions such as the Development Events Manager for the ICC and the Director of Operations for Cricket All Stars, shares invaluable insights into the evolution of cricket, especially in emerging markets. He articulates the fervent passion for cricket that exists in various regions, including the potential of associate nations to contribute significantly to the sport's future. The dialogue highlights the necessity for innovative strategies to promote and develop cricket, making it accessible to a wider audience, thus ensuring its sustainability and growth in diverse environments. Edward's reflections not only illuminate his personal experiences but also underscore the critical steps needed to foster cricket's expansion worldwide.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. eddiefitzgibbon.substack.com

Hello and welcome to the Last Wicket.

I'm your host Benny and thank you for joining us folks.

On this episode, my co host Mike had a chat with cricket strategist and advisor Eddie Fitzgibbon.

Eddie has a fascinating resume that includes serving as development events manager for the ICC and Director of Operations for Cricket All Stars, as well as helping run the World Cricket League and serving on the board of Whiston as well as Willow tv.

Eddie had some great insights on the growth of the game and this conversation is a must listen for cricket lovers who want to see this game expand and reach all corners of the globe.

Do check out Eddie's substack next innings.

We will link it in our show notes.

Meanwhile, keep listening for Eddie's conversation with Mayank.

Edward, thank you for joining us.

Welcome to the Last podcast.

I am really excited to have you here because you've had a really incredible journey in cricket, a very, you know, variety of things on your resume.

Can you start just with your journey in cricket and walk us through some of the highlights?

Yeah, it's great to be here and thanks for having me.

I mean I've been a cricket fanatic since I was 3.

I've got a picture of me wearing a cricket helmet with my uncle's cricket bat that my mum shows me quite often and I've taken that love of the game throughout my whole career really.

So I studied university sports management at law in Australia.

My first big break was out of university.

I got working for Cricket act, which is the ACT Commons and I was official marketing media manager there.

My first job out of school was in at university was cricket.

So that was a bit of a sign of what was to come.

And then I should say like my first real big, big break was then getting the job at the ICC which still quite staggering that I got that.

So I was in Sydney at the time looking for jobs.

I just moved there and I put in an application at the ICC for the development events manager role.

Not knowing anyone in the icc, just thinking, I'll take a flyer.

And it went through the process and got offered the job and was off to Dubai in about four weeks.

And this is just after Dubai and the, and the gfc.

So to go, you know, from, from sunny Australia to, you know, even sunnier and hotter Dubai I think it was in May just as getting hot was a bit of a bit of a culture shock.

But I had an incredible time at the icc.

So development manager role.

So what was that?

So that was working with all the kind of associate members at the time from Ireland, Afghanistan down through to Samoa, running what was called the World Cricket League.

So effectively, all the pathway events and pathway programs that the associate members did for the icc, I was there.

So I ran cricket events in Italy, Hong Kong, Botswana, Maryland, Samoa from World Cricket League 1 to World Cricket League 8.

So as a cricket guy and a guy who loved to travel, it was absolute dream come true.

And that kind of.

And I'm sure we'll touch upon this throughout the pod.

That's where my kind of love and interest of associate cricket really started to hit home.

I mean, before that, I was, you know, obviously watch the Aussies and all the rest of it.

Knew a little bit about, you know, the Islands, the Afghanistan and Netherlands of this world, but never really understood it that well.

But once I got immersed in that experience, I couldn't turn back.

And to this day, I'm still very passionate about associate cricket, and I truly believe it's.

It's the real big unlock that cricket still needs to do to kind of make this sport as great as it can be.

And that's what I write a lot about in my.

In my.

In my substack pieces.

So that was great.

Then was fortunate enough then to move to the.

To the US Where I know you're from.

So my wife was working for Emirates at the time, and she got a promotion to move to New York.

And obviously I've done a couple of events with the U.S. national team throughout the World Cricket League journey, so I knew a bit about them, but I was.

This was very early in the cricket journey in the United States, right?

So I was like, what.

What am I going to do in the US Now?

Now I'm in New York, like, cricket's not a thing.

There's, you know, what am I going to do?

So I applied for a couple of jobs, you know, at, you know, some of the teams there and within sports.

And, you know, it was always like this cricket thing and this, this college you went to in Australia, it's.

It's a pass.

So I was like, okay, I'm gonna have to kind of rethink what I, What I do here, so.

But very fortunately, good friend of mine, Jamie Lloyd, put me in touch with a group out of an agency out of New York called Leverage Agency.

Said they're kind of looking to do this cricket All Stars concept in the US and you're pretty much the only guy in the US at this point who understands cricket.

Would you be interested?

So I was kind of the director of operations for that kind of putting all the cricket related stuff together.

But that was an incredible experience.

We 30, 30 odd thousand in New York City field, about 24,000 in Houston, about 30,000 again in Dodger Stadium.

It was just absolutely epic.

And even as a cricket guy who'd been around some of these players, because the other thing I did at the ICC was working on the World Cups as well as kind of a venue manager on the staffing side.

So I'd been around some of these players, but when I was in that room presenting on cricket to the likes of Morally Curtly Ambrose, Ricky Ponting, Dan Vittori, Michael Vaughan, Sachin Verenda, I was like, holy smokes, this has got to be one of the most incredible things that ever done in my, in my life.

And it was, and it was, it was incredible.

And I also worked in some sports technology for an Australian company and an American company as well.

So I was kind of doing cricket and sports tech and that's kind of where much of, kind of where my career is at now in kind of those two fields.

So moved to, moved to Denver for 10 months after that with an agency.

Then Covid hit and we'd had a young child at that stage and had to move back to Australia.

Unfortunately now kind of five year journey in the US was over then have kind of restarted the cricket and sports tech thing and currently doing a number of things.

One of our major things is working with the Kingsman Group who are one of the most successful franchises in the US recently acquired a Pakistan Super League team and looking to do a whole bunch of things to help grow the game globally and win to the US with them as well as other kind of bits and pieces as well.

So yeah, that's kind of my cricket journey.

It's been pretty wild, hasn't been linear, that's for sure.

That's quite fascinating.

And the Kingsman that you mentioned, that's the Chicago Kingsman team is that the same group?

Yep.

Yeah.

So I, it's amazing like you mentioned your, your role at the ICC and I was thinking that would be my dream job because I love travel and I love cricket.

So as you said, that definitely sounded like the perfect place to start Cricket All Stars.

Funny enough, I was actually in New York, I was in, at Citi Field watching that game and yeah, my, I like, probably like you hoped, I was hoping, hey, maybe this was gonna bring, you know, some more interest in cricket and some, you know, non, I guess non Commonwealth folks will start following the game.

Maybe it'll get introduced at, at a school or a college level and then we'll see the interest pick up.

But it's taken a little bit longer but hopefully MLC and we'll, we'll get us there.

If not, if not in the next two, three years, in the next five to ten years, hopefully.

So.

But overall, like.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it was a little early, but it got some great, like got some great media exposure on all the big channels, but it's probably a little bit early and you know, MLC are doing a good job over there.

So again this, it's never going to be overnight success with cricket in the us.

But I still think for me, cricket in the US is for me the biggest delta between reality and opportunity and global sport.

So I'm still involved in it.

Some would call me crazy, but 16 years later, I'm still heavily involved.

What, what do you, I guess in all these different roles, what did you find the most challenging and what did you enjoy the most?

I'm sure the travel with ICC and all those new experiences must have been fascinating.

But was it also very challenging as different cultures, different understanding and all of that, just trying to push the game compared to, you know, coming from Australia where there's already so much interest for the game.

So I'm sure it had, it came with a bunch of challenges.

Yeah, I think it was that cultural element to it.

I mean again, like one, one tournament I'd be doing in Botswana and the next I'd be doing in Italy and I'd be dealing with not just the cricket boards but also the governments.

So many of the governments were very, very interested in.

In cricket and, and the diaspora angle and.

Or getting their.

Like the kids to play.

So I met many heads of state or sports ministers.

So to kind of be able to be somewhat of a kind of chameleon and being able to kind of adapt and adjust to the different types of stakeholders that I was dealing with in government or the local boards or even like sponsors and other stakeholders was always a challenge, but it was one that I relished.

I did a gap year when I was 18 to the UK for a year in the middle of England knowing no one.

And I think that has kind of set me up to be quite resilient in understanding how to kind of trust yourself, to kind of adapt to different surroundings and different cultures.

Even though it was England, it's still literally the other side of the world from Australia.

And I've never been overseas before, so I think that was the biggest challenge.

But again, something that I.

That I relished, obviously, time away from home was challenging.

I was probably away three to four months of the year, so that was difficult.

Sometimes it was talking about cricket to again, the stakeholders, about the actual opportunity and the scale of the sport.

Some of them like, and I'm sure we'll touch upon a few of them, like in speaking to people in Nepal, for example, it was quite easy.

But speaking to someone in Italy, the government of Italy was again challenging to get them to see the size and the scale and the scope of the sport.

So, yeah, I think that'd be kind of my main takeaway was just being able to be kind of culturally adaptable and talk about cricket with passion.

Because when I was representing the ICC at these events, I was the only ICC representative there for three weeks.

Right.

So I was the face of the global game effectively in many of these markets.

So quite a big responsibility, but I really enjoyed it.

Absolutely.

That makes sense.

And what do you just, as I said, you know, some of the things you've mentioned sound like my dream job.

So selfishly, what do you think is the path if somebody wants to have a career like yours, you know, have a chance to shape cricket, travel to all these countries and have a say in how the game grows?

What do you think is the pathway that somebody young, you know, maybe they're in their teens and they're trying to figure out what they want to do with their career?

What do you recommend to them?

Yeah, like I. I applaud yourself and others who, you know, I think, I think through digital media and social media and other forms of media, the best way is probably to get recognized and heard.

There are not interesting enough, you know, many, and this is why I'm kind of writing my series to go down there, is that there's a lot of people talking about what happened in the game, what will happen in the game and maybe some things about governance issues that are always coming up in cricket.

No one's really talking about future of the game and that's kind of what my articles are about.

It's kind of the future of cricket.

There's a bit of a gap here for younger people starting out about formulating ideas about what cricket looks like them.

I mean I'm a, you know, just over 40, I've been around cricket a long time.

I'm pretty set in my ways, but I think a lot about future of cricket because of my technology background and other and other things.

But if I was kind of looking to get involved in cricket or you know, starting my career and I think through, through media, like through substack for example, or other forms and thinking about what cricket means to them as a, you know, Gen Z Gen Alpha fan, because I can't put myself in that body.

I've got a seven year old son and he's starting to pick up cricket and he loves it but he's not quite there with being able to articulate himself about what the game means.

So if I was saying to someone who's done it, let's say 15 to 22, if you've got ideas about what cricket should be or even hot takes on what happened or what will happen in your own voice, that's a really interesting way.

Get heard.

And then there's always the, you know, traditional way and I'll probably marry the two, two parts up around kind of get involved in your local pub, volunteering, understanding the game.

The more things on your CV in cricket the better.

And also your network is your net worth, particularly in cricket.

Right.

So if you're actively hosting or doing stuff on the media side, plus you're actively going out there and talking to people and seeing people and being involved, I think you'll see a really good kind of network effect go on there.

For you personally, that's great advice.

Yeah, it's always good to start young and I think having those things in mind for people who want to have a career in cricket because anyways, sport is such a place where opportunities are always limited and so there's always competition.

So starting young is always Helpful.

Now, I wanted to spend majority of our time talking about the substack pieces that you've been writing, the series that you've mentioned.

So I'll start with the Nepal growth story.

And one of the things you mentioned is even though as a country they have limited resources, one of the things that was the easiest for them is to just get the engagement because there's so much passion there.

The question that I had in my mind as I was reading that is how do you really replicate that with an Italy or Botswana or any of the other countries that you've covered?

Yeah, I mean, that's the multi billion dollar question for cricket, right?

Because I think.

But before we get into Nepal story, again, I think cricket has, you know, it's widely stated, two and a half billion fans, primarily coming out of the subcontinent and the kind of Commonwealth countries.

What it hasn't really taken hold of is vast majority of Africa or that's that's coming.

Europe's interesting, obviously large, you know, diaspora, subcontinental diaspora over there.

Now there's some green shoots coming in South America.

So if cricket can help grow these kind of, let's call them many or emerging, emerging markets, get the balls in hand and get cricket being thought of and probably never hit the scale of football, there's more than enough kind of talent interest out there for cricket to be able to scale across those countries.

Then we can hit half of the world's population and then you start getting really interesting.

And I could say also North America, of course, again, Canada and us being huge, huge markets for cricket.

So if we can unlock though all of those markets which are just kind of cricket curious or crickets, you know, let's say fourth, fifth, sixth sport down there, then the growth of the game and, you know, the commercial reality of the game change vastly.

So back to Nepal.

I mean, how do you bottle that special sauce for Nepal?

I'm not sure you can.

Like, it's just, it's incredible and I'll, I'll tell you a bit of, a bit of an anecdote to start with.

So again, my, so my first World Cricket League event, the ICC was in Bologna in Italy, of all places, which is actually one of my favorite places on earth.

Food and wine is incredible.

Nepal was in the, in that tournament as well as the United States.

We started our first game and there was about 400, 500 Nepalese fans in Italy, middle of Italy, watching their team play against I think the USA or Italy.

It was, I was like no one else had any traveling fans even Though Bologna is a great tourism destination, I was like, this is interesting.

Every single time I had an Nepal event which was probably five or six, there were at least 500 if not thousands of people.

I travel all around the world.

I was at the top NT20 this year in Darwin and there was about a thousand Nepalese fans.

It's just incredible and I think the reason why is exceptionally good team and the country rallies.

It's not dissimilar to India in a way.

In the India their national team is incredibly successful and the country rallies behind it every single time.

Came in the poll for an associate nation with limited resources.

They have done exceptionally well on the global stage time and time again.

So for me it's a bit of a kind of a national identity piece.

Any Nepalese fan that I talk to or people associate with Nepalese cricket, that's kind of the special source now can that be replicated in other associates or emerging markets?

I think, I think it's a challenge quite frankly.

They can take elements of that.

So a couple elements to take away would be quality of talent.

The talent in Nepal cricket is exceptional.

They're probably one of the best fielding sides in the world, including full members.

And again despite limited resources they've had a few charismatic individuals being involved.

Paris Khadga, who I mentioned in my articles, he was a captain when I was doing my, my events, exceptionally talent cricket but a very, very smart guy as well and he's involved with, with can and the, the T20 tournament.

So if you've got, you know, I think you've got to be successful in the field.

I think you've got to have some strong governance and Nepal struggled in that and I didn't, I did mention that they've been suspended by the ICC once but they've actually come back stronger which actually shows anti fragile cricket is there but you have strong governance on good hold and field performance then I think you've got to have some people like Paris who kind of stand above the game and get people to rally behind a few kind of personalities to say this is something that I want to be involved in and this is something that I want to elevate our kind of national conscience.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I think the one other aspect at least in my mind is the fact that they didn't have a strong like other sport which was already, you know, capturing the, the general masses imagination which I think definitely like if I think about Italy, obviously football is going to be top of everybody's mind.

So that's always, there's always competition in terms of, you know, which sport takes precedence.

But I'm sure there are others countries, especially smaller ones, where sport is.

Other sports are not as well established and where cricket can certainly take inspiration from.

Nepal.

Yeah.

And look, and Nepal just, yeah, just on that, I think Nepal also geographically next to India and time zones.

So they've been watching cricket being in Premier League and things like that over a long period of time.

So again, there's a bit of a special sauce there.

But yeah, if, if we did expand that out to kind of like, I think Africa is super interesting.

You know, you've got it, you know, you've got South Africa doing really well on the world stage and the SAT 20s doing really well and Namibia is kind of following in their footsteps.

And then there's kind of the Uganda's of this world and Rwanda's of this world and Nigeria is this world.

I think, I think for me, like Africa and North America, probably the ones that kind of can kind of unlock that.

Makes sense.

Makes sense.

The other piece from your substack that caught my attention was and kind of goes to your, you know, you mentioned technologies, your other sort of niche.

So the, the piece that you mentioned is the great cricket heist, which is.

And for our readers who've not had a chance to look at IDs substack.

Well, we'll definitely link it in our show notes.

But so you talked about how various sports are building the ecosystem in terms of analytics, the sports experience, where there's apps out there.

What are some of the ideas that you, that you've seen being implemented in other sports?

Yeah.

So again with my background on cricket and tech and I wrote two articles on cricket and tech.

One was around cricket specific tech, like deep cricket tech, and one was about the great cricket heist, as you mentioned, around using best in class ideas, innovation technology from American sports and also some European sports to adapt into cricket.

So what I kind of mean by that is crickets.

And I just say in my article that cricket's done a great job in one area in innovation technology, I think that's broadcast some, like some of the broadcast technology, the different cameras, the different overlays, cricket is one of the leaders in that space.

But when it comes to fan engagement technology, when it comes to embracing young people data usage, I think there's a lot more unlock there and we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

So let me kind of take two of those.

Two of those things.

Right.

So if I focus on cricket Technology there hasn't up till recently and probably Hawkeye and again broadcast related technology has been the outlier here.

But there hasn't really been much technology built specific for cricket.

So there are starting to become some really interesting businesses that are starting to build like what I'm calling kind of deep cricket tech.

And I mentioned a couple of those in my article.

One is deep 22 which does kind of cricket related AI machine learning clipping tools for social data analytics.

One is Stance Beam which is sensors and data to help with swing speeds for feedback and kind of social sharing and things like that.

And another is Stump Height which is kind of an officiating software specific for cricket.

So these, these builders are thinking we can cricket's a big enough sport now to build cricket specific tech.

Of course they're thinking from a scaling perspective and again I work in this space, this can also be adaptable and for other sports.

But let's start with cricket to start with, because cricket's a big enough sport, big enough revenues, it's going to grow, continue to grow.

So let's build specifically in cricket to enhance the cricket products both from a fan perspective and officiating perspective and a higher perspective.

So there's some really interesting companies being built there.

The Great Cricket Heist, which is one of the ones which I really enjoyed writing again when I moved to the US working cricket, I worked with a started with Australian sports startup which was a SaaS tool which basically help teams and sponsors match their contractual Deliverables on a SaaS platform on a website.

I've since been involved with quite a few tech companies since then.

Just an advisor role and I keep very close watch on the best happenings in the US and Europe around tech.

And what I'm starting to see is a lot of these businesses in the US and Europe go, you know what we haven't market we haven't gone into again, they're thinking about scale.

Where do they go next is cricket.

So they've built great products for the NFL or the NBA or the Bundesliga or whatever it is and they go hold on, there's 2.5 billion fans over there.

The IPL is ranked second in per match revenue.

Why aren't we in cricket?

And many of those tech companies, and I speak to quite a few of them, we want to get into one, we don't understand the game, we don't understand the stakeholders and three, wouldn't know where to start with selling it.

So there's starting to become a shift there selfishly, as in from a Cricket, selfishly side I'm thinking that's actually need to reinvent the wheel here.

We can kind of, I mean what, that's what I call the heist.

We can kind of steal best in class innovation and technology where you know, the NFL and the NBA and the Premier League have spent years and lots of money developing best in class tech for their sports.

We can just lift and shift that with some tweaks, you know, some, some, some game understanding, help them, help them with it in order to enhance the quality again from the fan experience, the data analytics side, even the amateur and the semi pro side, there's a lot of stuff out there that we can kind of lift and shift and those sports tech companies and innovation companies are looking at cricket.

So there's a way that we can implement much of that very easily, very quickly and I think it's going to be a great win for the sport.

So something that I'm watching very closely.

And I'm really, really interested in just talking about the experience.

One of the things that I often compare the cricket experience to is baseball experience here in the US and for newbies who get into baseball late in their life, immigrants like myself, sometimes baseball can be a little bit overwhelming because you go into the stadium and although the stadium experience itself is fine, and you see the scoreboard which is full of numbers and you don't know what each of these things mean.

So I think that that's where baseball has become a sport, where the people who've been following it since childhood, it's, they know exactly what they're looking for, they understand all the details.

But for a newbie, it's a pretty hard sport to learn.

Just the way it's just the way commentary works, just the way it's scored, just the way it's televised.

So I think in that specific aspect, I think the stadium experience and having apps and devices which can allow you to tailor your experience like you were saying, would be crucial because then a cricket nerd could go in and look at all these advanced stats, you know, look at control percentages or things like that, while somebody new just wants to just understand, oh, who's the bowler, who's the batter, what, what are they new?

Or they played 80 games or this is their first game.

So that ability to have apps would be a game changer for sure.

Yeah, and good point.

And that's something I discuss in the articles.

I've got kind of a couple of made up people, but one is a woman or a girl called Alicia and she's basically a baseball fan.

She just came across a couple of clips of someone, Joss Butler, hitting a six and he's like, oh, that looks a lot of fun.

They look like having a lot of fun.

How can I find out more?

At the moment you're kind of just like your baseball analogy.

That new fan is going in and trying to understand, you know, what does LBW mean?

You know, what is why, why six balls, why 20 overs?

What's this other, you know, five day test match thing?

Right.

A lot of the content that's out there once there's interest is still very much for the cricket fan.

So by personalizing it and bringing it back to what this, what this theoretical girl is interested in, to help them, guide them through the journey to become a cricket fan is kind of lacking.

There's definitely a barrier there.

So if we want to expand this 2 1/2 billion fans to 4 billion fans in Africa or North America, we have to kind of personalize this and make and lower the barrier of entry.

Now, it's not easy and I think will ultimately help facilitate some of that, but there are some really good tech out there that can kind of help, help do that.

Like you just look at what the NFL's done with Manning cast and the Nickelodeon cast as well, right?

So if cricket is something like that to help for newbies or for 7 year old kids like my son to help explain what's going on in a fun interactive way, then they feel much more comfortable rather than, oh, I've got LBW6 Bollovers T20.

It's all too hard.

I'll go back to doing whatever else I was going to do.

So we just need to, again, we don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

Much of it's already done and we just need to find those solutions for it.

So yeah, it's an interesting analogy.

The other topic from one of your recent articles was the sports anchored mixed use district, which I definitely want to dive into for a couple of reasons.

One is of course that, you know, from a sport perspective that sounds great, but also just from you know, being a city guy and somebody who believes in walking and taking public transport versus driving everywhere and worrying about parking and all of that.

That concept itself makes so much sense to me because it, you know, you could essentially do multiple things in one go and in a walking neighborhood that increases your sort of the health, you know, the, the healthiness of your lifestyle as well because you're walking more, you're exploring more and it's obviously Good for the community too.

So for listeners who haven't had a chance to read through your piece, can you give them a high level idea of this and then maybe we'll do a deep dive?

Yeah, sure.

So again, there's, there's probably two, there's two elements here and this is kind of a bit of a, bit of a recurring theme here.

There's.

I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago on the mature cricket market and how they can better utilize their cricket venues.

And then as of yesterday, which I know this will come out, come out a couple of days later, I wrote about how associates or emerging markets, I should say, because it does include Ireland and these ones and how they can maximize their venue.

So if I take those two, if I take those two pieces from a, from a mature market perspective, so I'm talking Australia, India, England, India, Pakistan, et cetera.

The first thing I'll say in my was that they're all very different.

Like they've all got very different models, very different ownership models.

In Australia they're owned by the mcgs and the SCG are owned by trusts.

In England they're usually owned by the counties.

So very different models.

Right.

But at the end of the day, what cricket hasn't done is kind of maximize the yield or usage for cricket venues.

So in my research I found that, you know, most cricket venues have been used maximum, you know, 10% usually, you know, around 5% of high yield, high revenue cricket reasons.

So that's a massive, you know, opportunity to be grasped.

And I gave a couple of examples of what's happening in the US Again because I look at that sports business over there and always I'm thinking about how can that be adapted to cricket.

And a couple of examples I made were the battery in Atlanta, which has gone to a kind of mixed use baseball, such as baseball stadiums, all entertainment Precinct, which does 365 day revenue.

The Kansas City Chiefs are moving from their famous venue in Arrowhead to another facility which is going to be similar things.

So they've kind of disregarded all the history that's happened there and moving to another one that can kind of generate ongoing yield.

Then Real Madrid, who's going to, in Europe which is going to be building an innovation and tech up around their facility, which obviously sang to me.

So my point was let's, let's kind of rethink how cricket can be used as not just a cricket destination but as a holistic destination.

So what does that look like in practicality?

It looks like you've got, you know, a cafe there, you've got a gym there, you've got cricket, you've got perhaps some other sports in the pavilion or indoor center.

So that it's.

So cricket's kind of like the cherry on top, right?

You know there's going to be great cricket being played in these markets, whether ICC events or Test series or ODI events or bilaterals.

But that's not generating the only kind of revenue and only foot traffic.

Like people go there for the cricket but they stay for everything else.

So it's a really interesting kind of model that the US and Europe to an extent is going after that cricket hasn't really executed on.

So I think there's massive upside there for the game in all those markets.

And then on the associate side of things, which again I'm very passionate about, I'm very interested in, it's like it's a different, different conundrum there.

Right.

You want to have these nations having their own venues for many reasons.

Number one is probably aspirational.

So you asked a question about Nepal and how do associate nations do what Nepal had done?

There's got to be a cricket ground there that's kind of seen, heard and aspirational for young kids to be walking past and say as a cricket stadium, I want to pick up cricket, I want to be like the next Paris cadre, I want to be the next Paul Sterling for example.

The reality is for these members is that cricket is not the biggest sport there and things like that and funding and putting a cricket venue in as kind of a again white elephant is not really financially feasible because again many of these emerging markets won't get, they don't get big cricket matches.

They might get a co hosting, right?

Like the US have got it, Ireland have got it coming up, Namibia have got it coming up.

So ICC has done a good job to start to get this going but they're not going to have big, you know, ongoing big revenue generating events.

So in that case need to be a little bit creative.

And that's where the multi use kind of districts really comes into play with these emerging markets.

And then you start to unlock different kind of capital stacks which I'll kind of just describe my recent, recent article.

So you've got, so you've got, ICC can put in some, some money if they're going to host some events which and this is what happened in Namibia recently and then maybe as well got corporate money to kind of come in and do the naming rights which helped.

Then you've got diaspora Capital.

So whether it's wealthy, diaspora from the US or Australia, whatever, who want to kind of give back to Nepal or a US or whatever to help the infrastructure.

And then you've got institutional capital as well.

And institutional capital means incentivizing institutions to invest in a multi use sport district with cricket on top.

So they can actually see a return on that.

And for that you will need again things like FAs, gyms, other sports being played on it like pickleball, football or whatever it is.

So actually can see a return on that.

And then the final layer is one of the big deals is the Olympic side of things.

So Olympic funding, now the critics in the Olympics is starting to be talked down, started to be unlocked with some of these, some of these governments.

So you've got public private partnerships, institutionals money, diaspora money, corporate money, government money through Olympics.

I think it works.

And again, it's not going to be for everyone, but I think there's a lot of emerging nations who are crying out for more cricket facilities that just haven't been able to make the numbers work until now.

So looking at that kind of capital stack, I'm quite bullish on what the future holds.

Yeah, those are definitely some really great ideas because to your point, like even here in Chicago, I know the Cubs use their stadium even in the winter for there's even a Chris Kindle market around Christmas.

So there's always something going on there.

Sometimes they'll have a movie at the stadium when you know, it's off season.

And of course baseball and like cricket uses it for a much longer duration.

There's 81 home games, so there's already, you know, good application from that perspective, that's 25% of the year already.

So I think that is definitely a good learning.

And I think to your point, like, it also helps the community around it.

You know, if there's restaurants and things like that.

I've seen places where if you voted on election day you get, you know, something free at a restaurant.

And imagine doing that for crickets in a community which is relatively new to cricket.

If you watch the game, if you have tickets, you show the tickets, you get something at a discounted price, you know, that helps both the community and the sport.

So there's a lot of scope for that.

And yeah, the big investment in the land that you mentioned, recovering that becomes a lot easier when the environment around it becomes a lot more holistic.

That's right, yeah.

And again, ultimately it comes down to exposure of sport.

I was like, so, okay, we're going to the cricket ground today to have a fun day out.

The kids have got something to do.

There's a gym, there's a cafe, there's this, that and the other.

Oh, yeah, and that's right.

The cricket, like the local cricket game is going to be played at night.

We may as well stick around.

And the kids start to see crickets, it's more in their face.

Right.

So it's something that I think about a lot.

Again, how do we grow and scale again?

There is an element of, look, touch, feel to it.

And in many of these emerging members, like cricket grounds, if there's even any at all, or they're just a long way away from, from anything and that's not going to move the needle.

So we have to kind of rethink what this looks like.

Absolutely.

The next thing I wanted to chat with you about was just sort of the.

Where do you see cricket is going?

And Obviously the next C20 World cup is coming up.

It's.

It's really not that far away.

We have 20 teams here, which is obviously a big positive.

Cricket is going to be, as you mentioned, there'll be Olympics next week.

The ODI World cup, however, continues to be 10 teams.

And test cricket, surprisingly, or, I mean, maybe it's not surprising, but for somebody like you who's been running the game, but unfortunately has been, you know, more or less.

The longer series are limited to the three major nations, Australia, England and India.

Where do you see cricket heading in terms of just, you know, the growth of the game and also how do you think, you know, having been in the icc, how do you think they're handling things today?

Yeah.

So look, free formats is great, but it's also a challenge.

And one of my first two articles really was.

I think first one was Cricket is everywhere.

But what does it mean?

There's just so much cricket on.

I struggle as a cricket fan to know what's going on.

There's, you know, even, like at the start in around January or, or December, there was the Bangladesh Premier League, the BBL, the SAT20 and the ILT20.

Right.

All at the same time.

So now my.

As a cricket fan, let alone anyone else who's just done pick the game up to understand kind of what this all means.

So I think.

And then set well.

And then the second article I wrote was around cricket needs a calendar, not just a schedule.

And the World Cricket association developed a really interesting paper last year around providing wind.

Like, think about Windows.

International cricket window, World cup window, franchise league, cricket window.

And then even like, and what I threw in there was kind of like an innovation sandbox window where you're playing around some formats or you're doing some other things.

Like there's a thousand different ways you could cut it.

But the reality is players are burnt out, fans are kind of going, who's playing when?

And one week they're playing with this teammate, the next week they're playing against them in another league, Let alone all the issues with corruption and T10s and things like that.

It's a real challenge.

Aussie has got a challenge on their hands.

Despite that, he continues to grow.

So I think if we can look at making a better sense of the calendar and providing a scarcity value, which is really like, that's why the NFL is so valuable.

I would also argue that's why the IPL is also valuable because it only runs a couple of months of the year and it's got a real scarcity value too as well.

And that's why the per game numbers are so big.

So there's a real balance that needs to happen around that.

And the reality is that the ICC probably needs to step in and do something about that at some point.

Although I used to work for many people there and I've got some sympathy or some empathy for them around how they go about that.

Because ultimately the members who are the ICC need to make money, so they need to do their own domestic leagues as well.

So couch to the three formats.

I mean, I think everyone's got their own take on it.

My take is T20 has been incredible again for associates.

Like the fact there's a 20 team World cup coming up.

Italy are playing in it.

Scotland just got put back in.

Uganda was in it last time.

The usa, Pakistan is super over.

I mean, incredible.

It really is and it does expand, expand the game.

So I'm a big proponent of T20 from a global sense.

I'll take test match cricket next.

I mean that's, that's the one that I really only care about, to be, to be quite frank.

But it is only big in those three countries.

How do you incentivize the other members to put more effort into it?

I think it does come back to windows and scarcity on that kind of thing.

Will they do the, you know, the, the two tiers?

That's interesting because at least you got some, some jeopardy and some scarcity there about who's going to be relegated, who's going to come up.

I think that would create some interest but again, that's politically, you know, sensitive because no one wants to be in tier two.

God forbid if India, Australia, England dropped into tier two at some point and then the ODIs are the really, you know, that's the real challenging one for me.

I mean, I grew up in World Series cricket and yeah, still, I still like it.

But does it have a place?

I'm really not sure.

I kind of, I struggle to see it Again.

If we're talking, let's go back to the calendar and the meaning problem.

If you take out bilateral ODI cricket, that will ease a lot of, a lot of pressure on it.

Right.

But then how does kind of the World cup into that?

Because that is a historical institution.

I was in India for the, you know, the 23 World cup and it was a great event.

But if you take that away, what's the pathway for it?

How do you qualify?

And then you've got of course Champions trophy as well, which, you know, another 50 over competition.

So all of them have their space right now on Test.

Please don't go anywhere, I want you to stay forever.

P23 Great for associates, just the oversight of things.

I think that needs real, that needs real discussion because that's where it can provide that breathing room, that space, that scarcity value.

Then I don't think we want to necessarily lose what the 50 over World cup means to a lot of people, let alone kind of the revenues that it brings into the game.

So.

I know I didn't really answer the question, but those are just some thoughts that I keep thinking about.

Yeah, no, absolutely, it is, it is definitely a tough one.

And yeah, it's, it's unclear what where the ICC stands on some of this as well because the Champions Trophy as you mentioned is coming, has come back and so it seems like they're trying to reignite the ODI game.

But is that going to be enough?

We don't know.

I think the other piece about test, forget to your point, that's the format I care the most about as well.

And I think the one piece that I feel has been missing, I totally understand the challenges or the costs of holding a four day game or five day game and that's substantially more than a T20.

So I get all of the logistical challenges around it.

But I think the piece that I feel is missing the most is the pathway.

You know, somebody like Ireland or Scotland or Afghanistan, if they're doing really well, you know, in Afghanistan's case, yes, they've become a test side.

But what happens to the next Afghanistan if Nepal are pushing and showing that they have the talent.

There's really no pathway anymore for test status.

It seems pretty arbitrary.

And that I think is the piece that's probably the most demoralizing because I think if that was well thought out and well planned, then maybe a tier two, a two tier cricket structure for test cricket could work.

But I think that, you know, it's like 12 teams that play out of which the bottom three barely play.

So which is why having two tiers is extremely risky because then you have a chance of 789 also slipping away, you know, barely getting any cricket.

Yeah, I mean we did.

When, when I was at the icc.

The other thing I was doing with World Cricket League was also the Intercontinental cup which was a four day competition with top associates.

And that's kind of, you know, fallen off the radar.

Right.

I think, look, yeah, there's been a lot of discussion about it, a lot of people talking about it.

I mean, is there a, is there a. I thought about this too.

Is there a way that you can kind of meld the kind of three formats into one?

For example, like you got, so you got your, the T20 expansion, the Ugandas and Italy's of this world T20, they perform at a certain level.

If you hit a certain level in the World T20 World cup, you get into a kind of 50 over World cup because you've shown that you have good quality.

Then 58 World cup, the top, however many get into the kind of world Test championship series, whether that's one or two.

So, and then you again with sport you need jeopardy and you need a narrative in order for, for it to be of interest and to be long term successful.

So if you've got some kind of journey there, right, where you come up through the regional qualifiers, into the T20 World cup, into the ODI World cup, into the.

Yes, they're different formats, different skills, appreciate that.

But at least there's a kind of pathway there.

And also again from a fan, you understand, like it's just like Rexam coming up from the third division to, you know, the championship and maybe the Premier League, right?

And that's a story you can hang your hat on, right?

Cricket doesn't really have that story.

So.

So why are these guys playing now?

It's because, you know, they decided to hold this Test series or decided to hold a three match odi.

But why?

Just because it was a space in the calendar.

What does it mean?

They might get some points and they go up.

You know, it's just there's no narrative there, you know, and again, as a fan who understands it, I get it as a, as a fan, like Alicia, like, is that okay?

How does, how does cricket work?

What's the story there?

There isn't really one.

It's arbitrary, it's not attractive.

Well, the only other question I'll ask you, Eddie, before I let you go, is what do you think the.

Because you're so focused on associates, what do you think the health of the associate game is?

You know, keeping aside Test cricket, just how the associate game is today versus 10 years ago.

The resilience of associate cricket is still astonishing to me.

I mean, these boards, they live hand to mouth pretty much all the time.

Right.

And it goes to show the passion of the game.

And they've succeeded in spite of that.

Those economic realities.

And again, you can only go, or you can go mainly with on field performances and the fact that there's a regular beatings.

So Nepal beat West Indies.

You know, they won the first two games recently.

Last year, Namibia beats South Africa.

I mean, like these, these countries could easily just roll over and say, we'll just play in like our local internal competition.

No, they are talented, they're committed.

And like with Namibia, they've, they've built stadium by themselves.

Yeah.

ICC put some money in because they're going to host the World cup.

And most of that money was coming from corporates and Namibia cricket going and rolling their sleeves up and getting it done.

So the resilience, pretty much all associates have shown, if not all of them, is incredible.

And then you have the women's game into that as well.

So you look at kind of Thailand and Rwanda and these kind of ones that they got.

The women's cricket game is strong in quite a lot of these countries.

So the fact that Social Security is still going strong both on field and off field, despite the challenges they've had, is great because it shows that kind of antifragile nature of the associate game.

And that's why I'm so.

And to the future.

That's why I'm so and a believer in if we can get some of these economics right and if we can attract outside capital to get money, whether it's wealthy, diaspora, whether it's governments, Olympic funding, if we can get some outside capital to supplement what the ICC does, then a lot of associate cricket, I like calling emerging market cricket.

Emerging market cricket can be huge.

I really believe that.

And that could be a let's say 10 years time, a 36 team World cup or 30 team World cup where we're no longer that really surprised that, you know, Namibia is beating South Africa or, you know, Nepal's beating West Indies just because you know what it is.

You've got high quality facilities in many nations.

You've got governments who are backing it.

You've got institutions and other and outside capital who are investing because they see the return that they see returns coming to them because of the growth of the game.

That's what I'd like to see in kind of in 15 years.

And I think it can happen because again, the base is there.

Despite all the challenges associated career has faced over the, over the years, it's still there and it's still going strong and people are still talking about interest in it.

So I'm pretty positive on the future.

In fact, I'm very positive and hopefully some of my writing, some of the people I'm talking to can and can help us get there.

I appreciate that perspective.

And on that note of positivity, I think we'll, we'll end the podcast.

Eddie, thank you so much for your time.

It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you and getting your thoughts.

Yeah, we look forward to having you again.

Hopefully we'll get a chance to Talk more about U.S. cricket, which you know a lot about as well.

But yeah, I look forward to connecting again.

Thanks, man.

I really appreciate it.

It's great questions and yeah, let's go, let's go.

Associate cricket.