A few things that caught my eye
Some random thoughts...
As many readers may understand, I’ve been busy with The Hundred of late, but a few things caught my attention over the last week or so, which I wanted to write about here.
Big Bash Draft - not great for retirement funds
Firstly, the first ever Big Bash draft took place today and slightly similarly to the first draft of The Hundred, the organisers appeared a little surprised with the lack of interest in ageing superstars. I can remember the same discussion happening at the end of 2019 about players such as Chris Gayle, Lasith Malinga in The Hundred, and the only thing that I’m surprised about is that they were surprised about it.
Teams in today’s BBL draft appeared to prioritise both tournament availability and more evidence of current ability, as opposed to reputation, and kudos to those teams. While the days of declining veteran players being unable to top up their retirement pot in short format leagues are still a long way off, this display of greater meritocracy was, in my view, great to see. The IPL still has some distance to go in terms of this though - as for why, feel free to leave comments below.
I’m going to do some detailed analysis of the Big Bash picks over the next week or so, and the implications of them on the current squads, in a subscriber-only post. I’m also planning a subscriber-only mini-series related to the discussions above - declining veterans and the potentially poor value for money that they represent - over the next week or so as well.
Player movement shows media claims of Hundred bias to be hyperbole
As soon as a player moves from a non-Test match ground county to a Test match ground county, the seemingly standard blame game starts, with The Hundred in the sights of the traditionalists.
This is utter nonsense, as recent player movement is starting to show. Some of the bigger counties have been quietly stockpiling players for a number of years, but the players and smaller counties are fighting back now. Talented younger players are no longer satisfied to be picking up a salary for playing 2s and the occasional first team match, and we are starting to see a migration of high potential prospects from these ‘bigger’ counties downwards to non-Test match ground teams, so they can get game time.
Sometimes the plan might be to take one step down to take several steps up, which makes sense if a young player backs their ability. It also makes sense now The Hundred is here. If a young player is playing Second XI cricket, the chances of them getting a Hundred deal is pretty remote, but if they’re doing well in the Blast, then they have a much higher chance of a decent deal - it doesn’t really matter which county they represent to achieve this. For example, before I joined Leicestershire in 2020, they didn’t have a single player picked in The Hundred, but this year they have had Ben Mike, Callum Parkinson, Colin Ackermann and Rehan Ahmed out of their domestic players picked by Hundred teams - every player has the ability to get a deal if they are good enough.
If I had a pound for the amount of times a county coach said they were ‘bitterly disappointed’ about something, I’d probably never have to work again, but it seems to be a favourite statement when this happens. Instead of complaining (and then setting off a chain reaction when a smaller counties coach is also bitterly disappointed when they lose their star young player to a bigger team), the so called bigger counties have got to work out a way of giving these high potential younger players a sustainable pathway into first-team cricket, or this problem will get worse for them - particularly if the ‘smaller counties’ get smarter.
Football teams still ahead of cricket teams for recognising non-playing talent
The final thing I want to discuss here is the continuation of football teams to think outside the box and hire non ex-players into high profile and high responsibility administrative roles.
This post from Twitter, which I commented on, is the latest:-
The thought of someone from an analytics background to run a cricket team, either as a Director of Cricket or as a General Manager, still seems far off. From a personal perspective, this is something of a failure of the industry to understand that you don’t have to be an ex-player to be a strong administrator.
For example, two counties have had Director of Cricket adverts out recently. It might, or might not, surprise you that any requirement of having a strong analytics or data-driven background does not form much part of the job description or specifications.
However, quite bizarrely, both counties specified that the successful applicant needs to be at least a level 3 coach. What on earth having passed a level 3 coaching course has to do with being a strong Director of Cricket, I don’t know. Interestingly, such a requirement would also prevent a number of people high up in the national team hierarchy from getting these jobs, which is rather amusing in itself…