Moving forward...

Plans for this Substack

I’ve been thinking for a while about how the cricket writing industry is evolving, and in my view, there’s a big niche for short-format, analytics-driven content which isn’t covered to a large extent by the traditional cricket media.

As a football fan, I’ve been a long-term subscriber to The Athletic UK whose content I find excellent - decent value for money and a clear point of difference to what you can find in newspapers, or most free/clickbait websites. I genuinely think that a cricket version of The Athletic, if marketed well around the world, would be a great business idea for somebody. I tweeted about this yesterday, and the response I received makes it very clear that many others - even without me having a huge reach - are in agreement.

While it would be great fun for that person to be me, I’m not in a position either financially or time-wise to consider such a huge project. However, I do want to do my best to see where I can take this Substack, which has been really well supported since I set it up last year.

With that in mind, I am going to make a commitment to increase the regular content on this newsletter, and offer several subscription options. Having these options allows me to focus more time to create unique content and lots more of it, mainly focusing on short-format cricket tournaments, drafts and auctions - the future of cricket but also the type of analysis which generally cannot be found in the typically red-ball oriented cricket media. While I’m increasingly of the mindset that red-ball teams can benefit from analytics to a much greater extent than they are currently utilising, there’s already enough red-ball bias in the traditional media, and I want to create something different to that.

For those people who enjoy reading my content but don't want to commit to a subscription, don’t worry. You’ll still be able to access a full post every week, which is a big increase on the previous level of content which I’ve been providing.

Anyone who would like to subscribe on a monthly or annual basis will be able to access a minimum of two further weekly articles (which works out at slightly below £1 per article on a monthly basis and even better value than that via an annual subscription), plus have priority questions for any Mailbags or Q&A sessions.

The final tier is for founder members - they will have all the benefits of annual and monthly subscribers, but will also benefit from a 20 minute zoom call for a private Q&A session, and guaranteed email responses for any reasonable questions.

I’m excited to see where this can take this Substack, and I want to start off by asking you all to comment below with any article suggestions and content you would like to see me cover.