Michael Holding’s T/20 tantrum

So Michael Holding wants nothing to do with T/20 cricket. So he dislikes the shortest version of the game, thinks that it detracts from a tradition that is rooted in Test cricket, is concerned that the balance of cricketing power has shifted to India and ponders the considerably greater sums of money which the Indian Players League makes available to those players who are suitably equipped and disposed to playing the T/20 game. So what? Mr Holding’s personal views are his own and, moreover, the stridency of those views have done much to enliven what, in their absence, would be a mostly staid and humdrum discourse. It has to be admitted though,that there is no shortage of countervailing opinion on all of the issues raised in his most recent and customarily blunt commentary on the state of the game.  T/20 cricket has brought to the game as much in substantive change as it has in terms of controversy; and that, in the view of many, is a good thing.

Under different circumstances it would probably not have been worth the while to bandy words with Mr Holding since, whether you disagree with him or not it has to be conceded that he is entitled to his private opinion. Media reportage of those views, however, makes them public comment and renders them fair game for response. What also makes a response to Mr Holding’s relevant is the stridency of his tone. One is almost inclined to think that if Mr Holding had his way T/20 would be cast into the dustbin of the sport and we would all be required to return to the conventions that applied before it was invented. If that is indeed his view then one can argue with some justification that he is simply taking his dislike of T/20 way too far.

What is perhaps most wrong about Mr Holding’s seeming strident dislike of T/20 cricket is that it appears to dismiss the validity of any contrary point-of-view He may be a keener, more knowledgeable student of the game than the average cricket fan. That, however, lends his views no greater legitimacy. Indeed, an argument can even be made to the effect that the views of the millions of fans around the world who have taken to T/20 have a far greater contextual relevance than Mr Holding’s, since it is their support, both as on-site spectators and television viewers that provides both the fan base and the financial support which, by the ICC’s own admission, had been lacking.   Contrary to what, apparently, Mr Holding would have us believe, T/20 is no aberration; It represents the evolving of the cricket to bring the game in line with contemporary consumer demand and, yes, it is a comment on what many believe is the slow pace – some would say the boredom – of the longest version of the game.

The argument here, of course, is not whether Test cricket is boring or not, or not whether its existence is threatened otherwise. Test cricket will always have its adherents, those who revel in the ebb and flow of the game over several days that allows for the fullest display of the  range of talents and tactics that are frequently displayed in protracted contests. There are those, on the other hand, particularly younger generations of sports fans with a lesser tolerance of extended encounters who want to witness the full extent of a contest without having to wait five days for the eventual result. To those fans – and they probably number in their tens of millions, perhaps more – Test cricket is no sacred cow.

This, in a sense, is not a matter of cricket but a matter of people’s right to choose, and if, as appears very much to be the case, the emergence and growth of Twenty/20 cricket is in consonance with what appeals to contemporary audiences, then there can really be no rational reason – Mr Holding’s point-of-view notwithstanding, for inhibiting the further development of this particular form of cricket. People’s choices are what dictate the direction of the market.

Mr Holding, incidentally, is not alone in his concern over the threat which T/20 is perceived to pose to Test cricket. ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lagat alluded just recently to that concern except of course, that he appears to prefer to go the way of pumping up Test cricket to give the game more appeal rather than to wage war on T/20 cricket. That, indeed, is the desirable way to go. Test cricket, like everything under the sun has to find its own ways of continuing to render itself relevant. It is much the same with any other product on the global market. Shifts in consumer loyalty have become commonplace in a globalized society where brand loyalty can only be sustained through the continual of satisfying customer taste.

It may well be that Mr Holding, from his particular vantage point as an exponent of the longest version of game is not inclined to regard cricket as a commodity in much the same way as rice or raisins. The truth is that that is exactly what cricket – all forms of cricket – is. More than that, T/20  cricket is a microcosm of a wider global transformation – call it globalization, if you will – that has transformed both societal and individual attitudes to customs and traditions in most if not all facets of human existence. Part of this is due to the revolution in international communication that has literally shrunk the world and some of it is due to the emergence   of new tastes and values that are not always mindful of traditions. Access to education, for example, is no longer constricted by the traditional classroom and service providers in the education sector, globally, have been quick to embrace the information super highway as the principal medium for the delivery of education. Indeed, they have had little choice but to do so. It is much the same with other spheres of our existence. Technological change and rapidly altering ‘consumer behaviour’ have compelled us to make changes to the ways in which we do things.

More than that cricket as a sport appears to be on the verge of winning large new markets, particularly in Asia where audiences continue to grow accustomed to shorter encounters in sports such as boxing, basketball, football (which has invented Futsal precisely for the reason that cricket invented T/20 – and baseball; and even in the absence of any klind of market survey one suspects that among those emerging audiences T/20 is likely to be the preferred version of the sport.

The transformations in the nature of the sport will inevitably alter its balance of power. India is not in competition with the ICC. That country’s adeptness at business and commerce plus the power of its huge audiences lies at the heart of the grip that it has on the game. There is really little that the ICC can do a break the grip that India has on the game. Remember, Mr Holding that the view has already become entrenched that Test Cricket is no sacred cow and, if, for example, any attempt is made by the ICC to rein in India by threatening an IPL that has already become a near global multi-billion dollar business empire, there really is no telling how the cookie will crumble. Indeed, it is not unlikely that we could witness a level of upheaval in the game that could make the Kerry Packer insurgency seem like child’s play. As for the players, one only has to recall how they reacted to the more money incentive to join Packer to determine what is likely to happen if the ICC crosses swords with India. That, not T/20, could pose a real threat to the future of Test cricket.

Here in the Caribbean the dream of a lucrative T/20 empire that could have ignited dreams of fame and fortune among thousands of young men and women were stillborn. Stanford saw to that. Still, it cannot be denied that T/20 embraces and is embraced by the various essential features of the colour and culture of Caribbean people……. the music, the dancing, the costumes, the energetic participation and the general atmosphere of partying. That is part of what we are and this year’s ICC World T/20 championships afforded the Caribbean what was perhaps an unprecedented opportunity to parade who we are to the world. If our team’s proficiency in T/20 is sadly lacking so too has been our fortunes in Test cricket and the available evidence does not suggest that the latter is a consequence of the former. Here, one is not uncaring of those Caribbean cricketing traditionalists who still romanticize about the feats of our Test Greats which numbers, in the view of many, include Mr Holding himself – continue to reflect fondly on our past Test accomplishments and still regard those accomplishments as being at the very heart of the notion of cricket as a unifying force in the region. Like Mr Holding they too may well continue to cling to the view that the essence of the game reposes in its hallowed traditions which Test cricket symbolizes. One understands this as much as one understands the undeniable contemporary demand among a new generation of fans for thumping sixes, stumps being shattered, spectacular fielding and demonstrations of the kinds of stamina, fitness and athleticism that are absent from Test cricket. Fast, keen encounters that end in relatively quick results hold their own compelling attraction.

FUTSAL has football’s way of helping to enhance spectator appeal. Global advances in this particular form of the game have done nothing to quell the passion of spectators for World Cup football. Good, strong traditions will always survive. That does not make demand-driven change any less inevitable.

The Indian Players League (IPL) may well cut across some of the traditions associated with the longest version of the game though one is inclined to be more concerned with how it impacts other issues apart from Test cricket. Nor am I particularly bothered it might impact not so much on Test cricket but, for example, on issues like match-fixing; and while Mr Holding appears to have issues with the fact that T/20 now makes it possible for a player to “earn US$800,000.00 for playing six weeks in the IPL” an amount which it takes them six years to earn in Test cricket, that can by no means be expected to become a point of controversy. When the remittances of international cricketers are compared with those of professional footballers, boxers and basketball and baseball players, cricket continues to be a sort of poor step-child of international sport. Why should talented young Caribbean men and, hopefully, in the fullness of time, women, whose working lives are probably a third of those of bureaucrats and public servants and chief executives not be allowed the opportunity of maximizing their earnings when they can? Why should they not seek to hone their skills to cater to this particular form of the game which, as is clearly the case these days, demands particular kinds of specializations.  Are they simply expected to place themselves permanently at the disposal of Test cricket purely for the sake of tradition, recognizing fully the limited space in the Test while denying themselves the opportunity of earning a better living than that afforded by Test cricket?

Here, the moral argument reposes in accusations of unbridled greed by a new breed of cricketers whose have completely shifted their focus from the game itself to its material benefits though, of course, the question is bound to arise as to whether that kind of judgment is not entirely unfair in the context of a Caribbean in which, in just about every field of endeavour there continues to be a definitive shift by people from commitment to giving service and upholding tradition to a focus on self. The case for personal aggrandizement over collective commitment may not be an altogether invalid one but are our cricketers alone in this preoccupation?