Franchise cricket and Big Bash losses

[neville cardus]

What English cricket really needs, according to virtually everyone, is to follow the wildly successful Australian model:

https://www.atthematch.com/article/the-big-bash-league-model-must-be-adapted-in-england
England must learn from Big Bash and introduce franchises to benefit fans, players and English cricket - Telegraph
We need Big Bash's razzmatazz in England's T20, says Michael Vaughan
Cricket in London is healthy, but Big Bash-style revamp of England's T20 competition aims to share the wealth

There are hundreds of pieces just like these, each one bolder than the last, and all apparently convinced that they're putting the case for the very first time.

Which makes it not a little surprising that the following item, now several months old, has only ever been adverted in the context of the ACA pay row:

Big Bash records massive loss of money in first five years | Cricket | Sporting News

I don't know about you, but I'm having a bit of trouble reconciling these things. On the one hand, we're told that the Big Bash template is essential for the financial viability of the English game; on the other we learn that financially the Big Bash has been a cat's abortion. What am I missing?

 

[S.Kennedy]

When I talked about this in the county cricket thread everyone here simply told me to shut up so good luck with all this. (Then again, perhaps it was because it was me haha).

 

[Dan]

The BBL rights were initially sold off dirt cheap; the entire point was to invest big time and gain a foothold/establish the competition -- profit-making be damned (they had internationals for that). Ten paid $100mil for the five years they've had -- an estimate for the next five is closer to $250mil; there was talk at one point that the BBL rights were worth more than the entire station.

It was very convenient that CA started spinning the BBL as a loss-maker right in the middle of a pay dispute tbh.

 

[Starfighter]

It doesn't matter though because England won't copy one of the more important aspects of the Big Bash's being popular: being on a TV channel that most people can actually view.

​By the way Neville, is what Arthur Mailey said true, that you spent the winter of '56 amongst the rollers at Old Trafford depressed after seeing Ken McKay's laughable attempt to play Jim Laker?

 

[neville cardus]

​By the way Neville, is what Arthur Mailey said true, that you spent the winter of '56 amongst the rollers at Old Trafford depressed after seeing Ken McKay's laughable attempt to play Jim Laker?

It is (partially), but it had nothing to do with McKay. In point of fact I remember being rather more upset with Neil Harvey, who was guilty of one of the most shockingly wrong and ungrammatical strokes ever perpetrated by a well-bred batsman. Laker, in that Australian holocaust, removed him twice for noughts; and the second of them was quite staggeringly the consequence of a cross-batted, cross-eyed pull at a full-toss. Harvey drooped his head in shame; and I liked him for a revelation of honesty.

As for Old Trafford, I'm afraid I was always depressed there. As a child I suffered every day I sat in the sixpenny seats and looked at Maclaren and Spooner and Tyldesley. An iron rail ran round the green circle, and when I got a place on a front bench I would press my forehead against it and pray for heavenly aid for my heroes, as I saw them exposed to the barbarians from Yorkshire—George Hirst rolling up the sleeve on his great ham of a left arm, ready to swing it and hurl a new red ball at the wicket of Reggie Spooner, hurl it like a live coal; and Spooner seemed frail and his bat scarcely a solid, while all the other Yorkshire men swarmed round him. Then would I pretend to be looking on the ground for something while I closed my eyes and prayed that God would make George Hirst drop down dead before bowling the next ball. I loved Spooner so much that I dared not watch him make stroke. It is a curious thought: I probably never saw him at the moment which he actually played a ball.

The first time I ever went to the ground I heard a terrific shriek as I entered the gates. Thinking, in my boy's ignorance of the ways of county cricketers, that somebody had been killed, I rushed to the seats, heart in mouth, and was told that the noise had been Huish appealing for a catch at the wicket from a ball bowled by Blythe. Ah, the trials and suspense of my devotion to Lancashire! I cannot tell how the slender nervous and physical system that was mine ever survived the strain and wear and tear. No later crises of life—and I have known a few—have so sorely tried me.

 

[Starfighter]

That reply exceeded my best expectations.

 

[neville cardus]

The BBL rights were initially sold off dirt cheap; the entire point was to invest big time and gain a foothold/establish the competition -- profit-making be damned (they had internationals for that).

The same internationals with which the BBL so often coincides, and whose takings and ratings it considerably diminishes?

 

[GotSpin]

The BBL rights were initially sold off dirt cheap; the entire point was to invest big time and gain a foothold/establish the competition -- profit-making be damned (they had internationals for that). Ten paid $100mil for the five years they've had -- an estimate for the next five is closer to $250mil; there was talk at one point that the BBL rights were worth more than the entire station.

It was very convenient that CA started spinning the BBL as a loss-maker right in the middle of a pay dispute tbh.

Basically this

 

[neville cardus]

It is (partially), but it had nothing to do with McKay. In point of fact I remember being rather more upset with Neil Harvey, who was guilty of one of the most shockingly wrong and ungrammatical strokes ever perpetrated by a well-bred batsman. Laker, in that Australian holocaust, removed him twice for noughts; and the second of them was quite staggeringly the consequence of a cross-batted, cross-eyed pull at a full-toss. Harvey drooped his head in shame; and I liked him for a revelation of honesty.

As for Old Trafford, I'm afraid I was always depressed there. As a child I suffered every day I sat in the sixpenny seats and looked at Maclaren and Spooner and Tyldesley. An iron rail ran round the green circle, and when I got a place on a front bench I would press my forehead against it and pray for heavenly aid for my heroes, as I saw them exposed to the barbarians from Yorkshire—George Hirst rolling up the sleeve on his great ham of a left arm, ready to swing it and hurl a new red ball at the wicket of Reggie Spooner, hurl it like a live coal; and Spooner seemed frail and his bat scarcely a solid, while all the other Yorkshire men swarmed round him. Then would I pretend to be looking on the ground for something while I closed my eyes and prayed that God would make George Hirst drop down dead before bowling the next ball. I loved Spooner so much that I dared not watch him make stroke. It is a curious thought: I probably never saw him at the moment which he actually played a ball.

The first time I ever went to the ground I heard a terrific shriek as I entered the gates. Thinking, in my boy's ignorance of the ways of county cricketers, that somebody had been killed, I rushed to the seats, heart in mouth, and was told that the noise had been Huish appealing for a catch at the wicket from a ball bowled by Blythe. Ah, the trials and suspense of my devotion to Lancashire! I cannot tell how the slender nervous and physical system that was mine ever survived the strain and wear and tear. No later crises of life—and I have known a few—have so sorely tried me.

I've received an email or two congratulating me on my uncanny evocation of Cardus's style. I should make clear that I lifted and adapted this material in ten minutes from three of his books.