Trust the Aussies to react like that.
Last week, after a record 21-game winning streak, Australia concluded a successful nine-month season with three consecutive losses to the West Indies. The result? Their players' association decides the structure of one-day international cricket needs an overhaul. Talk about shifting the focus!
All right, so that's the cynical view dispensed with. Putting the questionable timing of their announcement aside, the radical proposal the Australian Cricketers' Association delivered last Thursday on the restructuring of one-day international cricket is worthy of serious consideration.
The ACA's document (which can be found at http://www.auscricket.com.au/news_june2003.htm), designed "to stimulate thought", proposes that the structure of one-day cricket as we know it be replaced entirely by a Premier League-style competition in which each of the 11 ODI nations play 30 games against each other per year to decide an annual champion. Each team would meet the other ten three times (once at home, once away and once at a neutral venue), each country would host 15 games (ten home games, five neutral) and each country would visit every other for two games (one vs the home nation, one neutral). There would be a promotion and relegation system to encourage developing teams, and fans would get to see every team in their country each year.
Apart from political and safety issues that would arise if every country were required to travel to every other, and the logistics of installing an entirely new system of ODI cricket, the proposal appears simple enough and the benefits manifold.
While debate over the merits or otherwise of the official ICC Test ranking system will continue, structurally Test cricket is now in something approaching reasonable shape. It faces many difficulties -- safety and political issues, the imbalance between five-Test series played between "traditional" nations compared to two-and three-Test series between others, too many one-sided series', Bangladesh -- but at least every country is supposed to play every other on something resembling a regular, organized basis.
Not so in one-day internationals. In the calendar year 2002, 145 ODIs were played, an average of one ODI every 2.5 days. Already this year there have been 96 games, albeit including the longest-ever World Cup. This is overkill, but it is not just the surfeit of games but their relevance which is disconcerting.
Since the start of 2002, nine multilateral tournaments have been played, excluding the Champions Trophy and World Cup, which accounts for 47 per cent of all non-World Cup and Champions Trophy games during that time. Apart from the prize-money, the majority of these tournaments have no particular purpose, history or context. Their primary function is to generate revenue, but the question is at what cost.
Pakistan, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka were competing in a tri-series event just 11 days after the conclusion of the World Cup and Australia's players managed to convince the ACB to abandon a planned tri-series in Morocco this August. No other serious sport has such an ad hoc structure.
At the current rate, there will be 550+ ODIs played before the next World Cup in the Caribbean in 2007, most of dubious importance. The ACA agrees with soon-to-be ex-ICC president Malcolm Gray's view that the number of uneven matches around the world is damaging to cricket. However, the ACA is also critical of what the authorities have done to address this long-recognised problem namely, schedule even more games!
"The fact is that in their own analysis, cricket authorities have identified that the product of cricket is potentially damaged by the over scheduling of uneven matches, yet they continue to put more of it out there for us to consume," ACA CEO Tim May said. The reason for this was identified as money, with one-day cricket recognised as cricket's key revenue generator.
It's time the necessity of income was more effectively balanced against the short-and long-term health of the game and its players. If star players burn out, or cricket endures further corruption revelations, eventually the golden goose will die.
Players claim burn-out is a genuine concern and match-fixing, which still appears to be treated with extraordinary indifference by past and present players, cannot be taken seriously enough. Restricting the excess of relatively inconsequential one-off tournaments at neutral venues was one of the recommendations in Lord Condon's corruption report in April 2001. How much more warning is needed?
In sport, context is everything, and most ODIs lack it. "The extension of the One Day game, apart from the introduction of World Cups, has largely been an unstructured exercise," May said in the proposal. "A series here and a series there, some best of five, some best of seven, some tri series -- no real structure and apart from the sides competing, no real relevance. It is confusing, at times boring and as Mr. Gray notes it is getting predictable."
The document, which May acknowledges proposes "a significant departure from cricket's tradition," would give non-World Cup games crucial context. Just as importantly, the ACA claims there are indications the format would "command far greater media rights and sponsorship monies," which from a governing body's point of view would be the central issue. One-day cricket, then, would continue to remain the sport's prime revenue generator.
Additionally, the importance of each game in contributing towards a yearly championship should ensure match-fixing is less of a concern than it must currently be, and though this is likely not considered a key point, it surely should be.
Suggestions from players' associations on the structure of their sport, which this is, really should be accorded greater value than recommendations from any other source. As the game is their career, players are key stakeholders and theoretically should have a better understanding than others of what is best for the sport from a playing perspective.
One of Lord Condon's anti-corruption recommendations included the statement: "The players are not sufficiently involved in the administration of the game and ownership of the problems." The ACA document is an attempt at taking ownership and not just the Australians' but the thoughts of all players should be heeded, particularly when they concern the very relevance of the games themselves.
The ACA says its proposal has been informally submitted to both the ACB and the ICC. Hopefully we will hear much more about it in the future.