How cricket reflects our age.
A game of cricket is an extended narrative. It’s also an exercise in cause and effect. Luck aside, if you play a bad shot, you may be dismissed; if you bowl a bad ball, you will probably be hit for runs and vice versa. There is a causal element of culpability.
But the ever shorter limited-over forms of the game dispense with cause and effect. In T20 or The Hundred, if you’re out to an ugly swipe, you shrug and say, “That’s the name of the game”; if you’re hit for six you note the heavy bats and shortened boundaries, shrug and say, “What do you expect?” Those shrugs have taken cause and effect out of the game. But if you take one of the defining qualities out of a game, what are you left with?
It has been a slow train coming. In 1963, in response to concerns over falling attendances at county matches, the MCC introduced the first one-day competition. Snappily titled The First Class Knock Out Competition for the Gillette Cup, each team batted for a maximum of 65 overs and, rain apart, a result was guaranteed in a day. The following year, matches were reduced to 60 overs. Five years later, the John Player League was established, 40 overs per innings, and in 1972 the 55-over Benson & Hedges Cup completed the short-form roster. This was also the length of one-day internationals, which were introduced in the early 1970s, although the first World Cup, in 1975, won by the West Indies, was contested over 60 overs for each side.
Through time, sponsors changed as rapidly as over quotas were reduced. Internationals were reduced to 50 overs, the Gillette Cup became a 40-over swish, while the Benson & Hedges Cup gave way to the 20-overs-per-innings T20 Blast. This was played in the evenings to attract an after-work crowd enticed by a beer and cheerleaders, big-hitting, non-stop spectacle.
“A test match can take five days and still end in a draw, T20 guarantees a result in four hours”
T20 has become the most popular form of cricket globally. Whereas a Test Match can take five days and still end in a draw, T20 guarantees a result in four hours. With the introduction of the (Indian) IPL and (Australian) Big Bash, competitions propelled by marketing gurus and television dollars, and adorned by the world’s finest players and the new format’s popularity, cricket’s future was assured.
Or was it? This summer, citing familiar concerns over dwindling crowds and diminishing interest, particularly among younger demographics, the England Cricket Board (ECB) introduced The Hundred, a 100-ball competition, so 20 balls per innings shorter than a T20 encounter.
The trajectory has been remorseless. In 1939, England played a 12-day Timeless Test in South Africa, which ended in a draw when England’s boat home could wait no longer. The next time these two countries do battle play might last three hours. Where does it end? Fifty ball matches? Two innings of 20 balls? A one-ball game? We have already had a World Cup Final decided by a single-over ‘match’.
The prime culprit for cricket’s dwindling popularity is the ECB’s decision to sell the sport to pay TV, thereby prioritising immediate financial benefits over the inevitable diminution of youthful interest. In the UK, only around 20% of households have Sky Sports. In a 2017 survey, more people recognised John Cena, the American WWE wrestler, than Alastair Cook, then England cricket captain and record run scorer. The number of adults playing has fallen from >500,000 in the mid-90s to 270,000 today. The line between cause and effect is clear.
But there is more to cricket’s downfall than pay TV and myopic executives. Sport holds a mirror to society and in cricket’s struggle to retain its audience lie trends pertinent to wider culture. As CLR James observed, “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
The obvious trend highlighted by concertinaing match lengths is our diminished attention span. Social media, streaming individual songs, surfing the net, pop-up ads, soundbites and the lowering incidence of people reading anything longer than 140 characters point to a society unable or unwilling to concentrate for long periods. The hit needs to be instant and repeated.
On a graph, the decline in the length of matches inversely correlates with the rise in consumer debt. They are flip sides of the same coin. Both reflect consumers’ expectations that they can have whatever they want immediately. The internet makes everything permanently available, but the growth in debt, the expectation of instant satisfaction regardless of the capacity to pay, reaches back to the introduction of the credit card in – surely no coincidence – the early 1960s.
“The game is a continuum, each ball a miniature skirmish, entirely of itself but part of something greater”
Yet cricket is a game of nuance, of ebb and flow, of barely visible pressure building remorselessly on a batsman until released by a good shot, a bad ball, a slice of luck. Pressure then reverts to the bowler, who must restore control by tight bowling or taking a wicket. The game is a continuum, each ball a miniature skirmish, entirely of itself but part of something greater. It is a team game for individuals, much like life. As the novelist Philip Roth asked in another context, “How can you be an artist and renounce the nuance?”
The modern world has no time for nuance. Thus cricket has become the preserve of financier and marketing man, professional manager, digital strategy baron. An ancient game has been reshaped via spreadsheet, by the infinite impulse for non-stop entertainment.
This is not necessarily a criticism, simply an observation about a game that has always mirrored its age. Literary novels, playing Monopoly, collecting flowers, have all been replaced by Netflix, the scrolled screen and pop-up ad. Hierarchies have broken down. Experts are derided. Cricket is reflecting the change.
The same year, 1963, that the MCC introduced the Gillette Cup, the Gentlemen versus Players fixture was held for the final time. A contest between amateurs and professionals, men unable to share a dressing room even when they were on the same side, Gentlemen versus Players had become anachronistic as the 60s rocked and rolled. Although such decisions and innovations helped to stem the flow of deserters, neither fully reversed the trend.
The Twenty20 shrug resonates in wider society. The lack of cause-and-effect culpability arising from Twenty20 and The Hundred cricket is analogous to the modern trend for individuals – particularly politicians, who set the weather – not to take the blame for their own actions. Rather, they point the finger at some exogenous force or maintain they hadn’t done anything wrong. Does anyone care? In the age of social media, the news is 24/7, T20 and Hundred results remorseless. It doesn’t matter. You can always scroll on.
