Cricket's Global Warming: The Crisis in Cricket

By Glenn Turner and Lynn McConnell

Is international cricket facing its own 'global warming' moment, a crisis that's attacking its very core?

That's the question posed by Glenn Turner and co-author Lynn McConnell in this insightful insider's account.

In the rush to commercialise and expand the game, the authors suggest, it's been turned into a 'product', and burdened by a class of amateur administrators pulling it in a direction that's increasingly at odds with the needs of the game — including the first-class game on which the whole edifice rests.

This book shows how these problems are playing out in New Zealand cricket, but those in other cricketing nations will see a lot in common with their own experience of the game.

A probing mix of anecdotes, analysis and forthright criticism of the game and its administration from one of cricket's most successful and widely experienced players.

 

About the Authors

 

Glenn Turner played 455 first-class games (103 hundreds) for New Zealand, Worcestershire in England and Otago and Northern Districts in New Zealand and 195 one-day matches in a career spanning 19 years. He captained NZ, Worcestershire, Otago and Northern Districts, twice coached the NZ team and was a national and Otago selector.

Lynn McConnell is an Auckland-based editor and writer who has written 24 books on cricket, rugby, track and field and military history. He has a background in newspaper journalism and latterly online media as New Zealand editor of Cricinfo and Sportal. Lynn recently completed an MA in history and is the director of NZSportsDaily.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TurnerMcC Publishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780473515553

Glenn Turner

Glenn Turner is a teacher-librarian with a career spanning three decades. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines including School Libraries in Canada and Preview. His interest in the Toronto Carrying Place trail stretches back to teenage summers on the banks of the Humber. He lives in Ottawa.

Book preview

Introduction

Having been earnestly involved in cricket since making my first-class debut in 1964, and with 50 subsequent years of involvement in the first-class and the international game in a variety of capacities — playing, captaining, coaching, managing, selecting, writing, television and radio commentary — I have seen cricket undergo significant changes away from the pitch. Pitches are still 22 yards long, the balls are still the same, although their range of colours is increasing in variety. Bats are mostly heavier and players are generally more gymnasium-fit and often less cricket-fit, but the basics of the game remain. It should be recognised that the improvements in technology being applied to cricket are mostly notable as entertainment tools for broadcasters to enhance their product rather than cricketers receiving the same value. Cricketers have not all of a sudden grown wings! It will not surprise anyone that I have my own views on some elements of today’s ‘modern’ game as compared to the ‘modern’ game when I played. The use of the word modern in this context is a promotional term intended to automatically indicate advancement. Can we assume, therefore, that literally today is the modern game and tomorrow is more modern than yesterday? Yes, I suppose I can be a little pedantic. When thinking of the past, the present and the future, it reminds me of a quote from Winston Churchill who said ‘a nation that forgets its past has no future’.

I hope this book is just as relevant to those in other cricketing countries who may see a lot in common with what I’ve experienced in New Zealand and beyond. I’ve attempted to counter, or at least give an alternative view to, what Joe Bennett describes as ‘PR propaganda, selling idealism, depicting fantasy, and chipping away at one’s sense of actuality’. I can hear the dedicated fans groaning with discontent at anything written that might tarnish their fun and enjoyment. For many people, the protective reaction to uncomfortable knowledge is to suppress it. Unfortunately, these natural human responses are often used by PR machines to mask actuality. I’m prepared to speak out against this deception, because I believe that in the long run, reality comes home to roost and the sooner the better — at the very least, ideas need to be challenged, including my own. Sadly, over many years, there has been a reluctance within the game to probe deeply into the subject areas that matter most. The vast majority of thought and energy appears to go into the survival of individuals retaining their positions and/or securing additional ones. Judging the abilities of players even with the advancement of technology remains astonishingly unexplored, even primitive, which I largely put down to money, boardroom and player distractions caused by conflicts of interest, and accountability issues.

I learnt a long time ago that challenging the status quo or ideas in general was a likely way to become isolated. Surrendering to the concept of working the system to retain employment rather than having the freedom to question it was too much of a price to pay, even at the risk of impotence. It demonstrated USA President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s old adage that you need to be ‘inside the tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in’. My experience having spent a considerable amount of time inside the tent does not guarantee effectiveness. Inclusiveness in decision-making still needs to apply. As a questioner, I had a distinct sense that being retained was more about a mechanism for controlling and at the same time isolating. This strategy not only stymied my own learning, but others too. The reason I continued as a selector for so long was in the hope that one day the next chief executive would accept that selection panels should be in charge of selection. Eventually, one’s patience runs out. Putting forward a contrary view in order to stimulate discussion, no matter how well meaning, is to this day mostly fobbed off as unhelpful, not being a team player or even being disloyal. It is just another example of popularity unanimously favouring those using a system rather than those attempting to improve it. I continue to believe that objectivity and scepticism are helpful and thus important. Once the decision is made to authorise and indulge the wants rather than the needs of those at the rock face, along with their players’ associations, the rot sets in. The stage is set for conflicts of interest, a lack of accountability, talented people being sidelined and a whole new wave of internal politicking for parties with vested interests to advantage themselves first and foremost. That’s where New Zealand Cricket (NZC) sits to this day.

For a professional player trying to make ends meet in the 1960s and 1970s, NZC administrations could be best described as tormenters (rather than part-time employers) towards any attempts to play as a professional. There was still a quaint, yet frustrating notion that being a professional whether an accountant, lawyer or retailer in business was okay, but in sport it was best to treat you as an amateur with all the subservience that that demanded. Yet the wheel can turn surprisingly quickly. By the time my playing career was completed and full-time employment in administrative positions was available to me, the pendulum had swung 180 degrees. Now we learn ahead of the 2019 Indian Premier League that eight or nine of the prospective New Zealand team for the 2019 World Cup will have six weeks playing that tournament with the prospect of only a week or two back at home before flying out to the World Cup. And why? Because players involved could double the earnings they make from NZC. For the likes of Kane Williamson and Trent Boult, that could make nearly $400,000 difference to their pay packet. Other countries can impose their requirements on their players but it appears NZC can’t. The decision-making power connected to the team, had shifted from the board to the players, or at least the senior players. The administration’s hierarchy followed the board’s path in allowing itself to be dominated by the wants and wishes, rather than the needs, of players and in turn stamping out any actions by any staff that might question or be seen not to follow the often ill-conceived theory of the moment.

Three of my previous four books were largely a chronological order of my playing days and my fourth book about coaching the national team. Hopefully those books (apart from Century of Centuries) also provided an insight into some of the ways New Zealand Cricket evolved during the period from 1969 through to 1998.

This book, my fifth, is an attempt to engender discussion and debate about a whole raft of subjects aligned to the game of cricket at international level with some reference to the first-class game. It gives my views on the issues covering what I think works and doesn’t work, and the reasoning behind it. Hopefully, it will stimulate conversations that extend beyond the convenience and superficiality of one-liners. Cricket is just about like everything else, there are exceptions to the rule and absolutes are rare.

Nevertheless, it is too easy for detractors to disregard what people of my age have to offer. Ideally, it is the young who need to come forward and challenge the establishment. The inspirational 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, surprisingly at such an early age, demonstrates precisely that. One of her quotes that I particularly like is: ‘Our civilisation is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money … It is the suffering of the many which pays for the luxuries of the few … You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.’ I think the game of cricket is also being stolen in front of our very eyes! Too many of the powers that be are showing the same indifference to the damaging changes already affecting the long term future of the game, in the same way that too many politicians and others have shown indifference as global warming affects the world as witnessed by the 2019-20 bushfires in eastern Australia. In addition to the horrific consequences and the devastation caused by these fires, the smoke and unmanageable increase in temperatures at the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne was just another warning of the future that sport as a whole will be facing. It would appear that politicians will continue to pay about as much attention to the catastrophic effects of fossil fuels as ruling bodies in cricket will pay to dealing with the longevity of the game they are responsible for.

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Cricket is already talking about reducing Test cricket from five days to four. Unsurprisingly, many players have raised their voice in protest at that. I view this as a strong indicator of where players preferences lie and I’d go so far as to say that most international cricketers would ditch T20 if it wasn’t for the money. The amount of time in travel and disruption it causes must surely be revisited.

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It is probably too difficult and unrealistic for cricket to come up with someone as young as Greta, but there is the likes of Ed Smith (now 41), who was in his twenties when he began writing some insightful narrative, while being prepared to challenge some of the current norms. We need more like him.

Businesses across the board have had to tighten up on their spending with the financial ‘bottom line’ being all-important. Cricket, on the other hand, receives an enormous amount of unearned capital from elsewhere, with no requirement to produce any accountability to its shareholders — the supporters of the game. Many would agree that some businesses have put money ahead of service to their customers, even to the extent of dumbing down. Yet, with all its money, NZC has spent extravagantly while still managing to dumb itself down, splashing out aimlessly, seemingly assuming more is better. This mentality has led to a series of actions that can be best described as unqualified, inexplicable and ill-conceived. A preoccupation with following perceptions, assumptions and baseless dreams has replaced common sense, facts, honesty and just plain hard work. Numerous feeble and destructive attempts to come up with novel strategies to outdo, or get the jump on, opposition teams have led to predictable failures. An ongoing ‘cargo cult’ approach has been applied by an organisation lacking in fundamental practices and an understanding of how international teams function. And one might ask, what is the NZC board doing about it and what about their accountability? A deficit of $9.3 million in 2017 followed by deficits of $3.5 million (2018) and $1.3 million (2019) is surely a strong indication of not only living beyond their means but also enhancing an attitude of entitlement and greed among its players. What a culture to endorse. Looking skyward expecting an Indian cargo plane to turn up with loads of dosh to cover financial shortfalls is perilous to say the least. What if the plane takes a wrong turn? Undoubtedly, player payments needed to substantially increase from the amateur days of the 1970s, but the degree of increase to first team players (and at the expense of others) has created more problems than it has solved, not least the values of the game.

Predictably, the gold rush has caused the roots of cricket across the globe to be over-watered to such an extent that the game and its participants have become more vulnerable and less consistently productive. It has weakened the roots of the game (certainly in New Zealand and elsewhere), reducing the incentive to go searching for more sustainable nourishment. The need to probe deeper is being lost when shallow roots will do. It’s much easier when you can stay in one place with your mouth under the tap hooked up to the Indian mains supply, no matter what the risks may bring. No need to do the hard yards to improve, or be fiscally cautious when the money is there (or anticipated) to buy a superficial quick-fix option. Furthermore, it’s much easier for players with all their so-called support staff to pass on the blame of failure to someone else for not doing their job while given more time to work out how to keep their heads next to the tap. It all works very nicely for boards too: as long as the free water is flowing, they can continue to hold down their positions, retain their status, lap up the kickbacks, and rev up the propaganda whenever necessary to hide.

These decisions have followed mostly a predictable course of players’ and team performances lacking consistency and all those connected generally under-performing beyond the anticipated norms of a game like cricket. The degree of pastoral care and pampering of players is counterproductive for everyone concerned, not least players reaching their full potential. Who among New Zealand’s players of the past 20 years can honestly say they achieved their potential? Non-playing staff have been demoted by not being valued to the degree originally anticipated. The lack of trust, respect and cohesion within the organisation has led to a high degree of dysfunction. The powers given to players, and the captain in particular, has resulted in growing egos, entitlement, large amounts of vanity and opened the door, ultimately, for increased levels of self-destruction. The current captain, Kane Williamson, appears to have escaped from most of this stuff compared to some of his more recent predecessors. Having said that, he must share some of the blame of a more recent policy of a body-line approach to bowling, aimed particularly against weaker opposition. Today they call it ‘bombing’. The current crop of players seem to be a decent lot, but it is impossible for them to have escaped unscathed by the influences of the many entrenched policy failures of the previous and current system. At least they can’t be held responsible for contributing to the unsavoury work of those that came before them.

Having witnessed first-hand the effects this money has had on the players, support staff and administrators, I want to share some of the experiences I have had particularly over the past couple of decades or more. During this period the rhetoric has certainly grown, but money has been recklessly thrown at just about everything imaginable, limiting the areas that really count: cricket knowledge, accountability and avoiding conflicts of interest. The feeding frenzy has been successful in a remarkable growth in jobs at NZC. Around 70 employees sit in their offices plus a number of seasonal contractors across their offices in Auckland and Lincoln and I imagine that doesn’t include the eight support staff that accompany the New Zealand Cricket team.

I’ve endeavoured to back up statements with examples and facts and am conscious in so doing that names, times and places become unavoidable. Does that matter? It will to some, but the stories are incomplete without them. In some instances, there have been too many injustices to ignore and those victimised along the way deserve some truth. It must be galling for them to have witnessed some of the perpetrators walking away blameless, in fact in some cases, applauded while they walked away. NZC states that its core values are: Inclusivity, Respect, Tenacity, Optimism, and Fun. By sharing what I’ve experienced, just maybe in the future some good may come out of it.

When reading quotes from, in particular, the Greek philosophers, it appears very little has changed over the past 2500 years in terms of human behaviour. It’s as though ‘modern’ young men find it too difficult to comprehend or accept that there’s nothing much to be learnt from other than Mr Google or anything that happened more than a few years earlier. What has changed over time is fluctuations in the degree of acceptance of behaviours and the forms of punishment applied to questioning or the challenging of the current norms. About 2500 years ago Socrates’ punishment for questioning the status quo was death by hemlock. More serious disagreements requiring more immediate results were dealt with by the sword, dagger or spear. Today, a military drone will do the job. Challenging the status quo today is more likely to be a much slower execution, more by isolation without the requirement for any discussion. Have we really become so much more sophisticated, or just better at selling and disguise?

I find myself constantly challenging and grappling with my egalitarian philosophies applied to everyday life when debating what works best at the international elite level of cricket, where players battle it out for supremacy, no quarter given, and where survival of the fittest is necessary, but not at all costs.

One

The glorious and inglorious uncertainties of cricket

The 2019 Cricket World Cup (CWC) final between England and New Zealand was the perfect example of ‘the glorious uncertainties of cricket’ until a manufactured rule extinguished and dishonoured the whole event.

It’s tempting to go through all the instances of luck, fortune and chance that materialised during this contest, but this book is not intended to be the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. As with many games of cricket, the ebbs and flows generated moments to savour and some to forget. The pitch conditions made batting hard work, restricting lengthy periods of bat dominating ball. Nonetheless, keeping the bowlers in the game throughout added intrigue. The status of the event coupled with the closeness and neither team being able to outplay the other was captivating and exhilarating. The resultant tie was a fitting climax to a 600-ball contest.

What a dream result for the game of cricket. Much more had been achieved than just ‘the glorious uncertainties of cricket’. It would be hard to find any plausible reasons to manipulate a change in the result if the integrity of the game was to remain undamaged. The players and the supporters of both teams (although they will have preferred their team to have won) would have understood and accepted that justice had been served for both teams to share the title — I would venture to say that the vast majority of the world of cricket would have applauded a shared title.

It beggars belief that the International Cricket Council (ICC) would even contemplate resorting to what could only be regarded as fanciful imaginary rules to alter the result. One of their own Vision Statements refers to ‘protecting the integrity of the game, and in their values, fairness and integrity and leading the drive towards meaningful cricket for players and fans’. Accountability also gets a mention, which should open the door for revisiting their decision, which has effectively discredited or even sanctioned bringing the game into disrepute. To have taken place at Lord’s, the inner sanctum of world cricket, along with the home team benefiting, sadly adds further speculation. Apart from all else, the members of the so-called winning team (or maybe just some of them) should, on reflection, feel deflated by the hollowness of the result. Ben Stokes, for starters, expressed these very sentiments. ESPNCricinfo recorded a couple of contemplative comments made by Eoin Morgan: ‘Nearly a week after leading his side to their maiden World Cup title, England captain Eoin Morgan felt the result was not fair when there was so little to separate England and New Zealand. He went on to say I’m not sure winning it makes it any easier. A little bit [troubled], because there’s no defining moment that you’d say: ‘Yes, we thoroughly deserved it.’ It’s just been crazy.’

In years to come I can predict conversations about this event being more about embarrassment than anything else. I suggest there will be no winners with this devalued result, and the England players that took part don’t deserve that either!

It could also be argued that supporting ‘meaningful cricket for players and fans’ should not include Twenty20 (T20) cricket, but that’s another story, which is covered elsewhere in the book. Many of us who have spent a lifetime in and around the game of cricket keep hoping that the game can follow ethical standards and not be drawn into following the latest whim of the moment regardless of the consequences. Why is it deemed necessary that one party must prevail over others? Perpetuating the ethos of domination, even gluttony, is not the answer and reminds me of a shameless adage: ‘Those that win can laugh and those that lose can please them bloody selves’.

Let’s park for the moment the fanciful, bizarre decision to incorporate a Super Over to decide the result of a tied final and the ensuing embarrassment when that over also resulted in a tie. Just because a Super Over was included in the playing conditions of a previous CWC is not a good reason to excuse its continued presence.

The quoted statement coming from the ICC apex body’s general manager of cricket, Geoff Allardice, was that ‘the consistent view has been that the World Cup final needs a winner’. Didn’t the 2019 CWC beat that by producing two deserving winners? He went on to say that ‘the boundary count-back rule was followed as it is in practice in T20 leagues across the world, adding that the tiebreaker after a tied Super Over needed to be derived from something that happened in that particular match’. There’s an inconsistency here. What relevance does a Super Over have to do with singling out ‘something that happened in the match’, other than wanting to find a single winner?

To use T20 rules (a hitter’s game at best) as a benchmark to be followed by any other form of cricket is a nonsense — 50-over cricket has little in common with it, has far more skills and deserves better than effectively the toss of a coin to decide the winner of any game let alone a World Cup. I suppose the rationale for rating boundaries above all else is their so-called entertainment value — how superficial, primitive and bogus. Some of the boundaries might have been edges through the slips or inside ones past leg stump or ugly mishits, etc. Compare that to batsmen skilfully manoeuvring the ball into gaps along the ground and chipping over the top of fieldsmen, picking up ones and twos. Presumably the rule makers were convinced of the need rather than the futility of attempting to come up with a fair and just way of rewarding one team over the other.

The criteria applied, when tested, was always likely to be contentious, and the ICC certainly provoked controversy with what they came up with. It has been far more common to regard wickets in hand as a more plausible calculation. After all, when describing results of matches a team is said to have won by X number of wickets or runs. Breaking from these alternatives becomes too circumstantial — not that I’m suggesting any alternatives to a tie and a shared result should have been applied. In the future should we be anticipating that winners must be found in all forms of cricket (Tests included) and therefore draws as well as ties become redundant?

Tied matches are not something that will have entered players’ minds prior to, or even during, the match let alone being aware that boundaries would be the deciding factor. I venture to say that neither team would have been influenced or adjusted their game during the 100 overs to advantage themselves in anticipation of a possible tie. As I’ve already stated, it should have been unnecessary, even demeaning, for the playing conditions to follow this path in the first instance, and to trivialise the importance of a tied result. One could go on hypothesising infinitely on the merits of the various options available in coming up with one winner. It may need to be done during the league phase of a CWC to decide who progresses to the next stage of the tournament. Surely a hard lesson has been learnt this time around that you don’t mess with a final. In October 2019 the news came through that finding a winner in a tied CWC in the future would be the playing of a second ‘Super Over’ if required instead of a count-back on boundaries. At least the boundaries have gone, but ties are still banished.

The detail in the playing conditions that applied during the CWC 2019 is something to behold. Under ‘Result’, ‘Tied Result 16.10.3’ refers you to Appendix H where you eventually find the following:

13. The team whose batsmen hit the most number of boundaries combined from its two innings in both the main match and the Super Over shall be the winner.

14.