“Our top players could quit playing for the country at any time. They’ve got enough T20 leagues. They could quit and still be very well off.” – Pholetsi Moseki, CSA chief executive
Telford Vice / Cape Town
CONVENTIONAL cricket is defenceless against a raid on player resources threatened by the looming spectre of Jofra Archer’s mooted 12-month contract with Mumbai Indians, figures on several sides of the issue concur.
Archer has been named, but not confirmed, as one of numerous English players whose primary professional allegiance could in future be to IPL franchises and their satellites. Archer and his colleagues would spend the bulk of their time in T20 leagues around the world. Their top priority would be franchises and not national teams — who would need the franchises’ permission to deploy stars like Archer as part-timers in the international arena.
That would upend the order of importance as perceived by the game’s establishment, which puts international cricket first. But T20 leagues, particularly the IPL, have become the biggest revenue source available to players, administrators and broadcasters.
International cricket makes money if it involves India, or is the Ashes or an ICC event. Much of it survives more because of sentiment and adherence to tradition than business sense. It positions itself as a project of patriotism or nationalism. It is neither. Professional cricket of any kind is, first, foremost and always, an industry. Its accepted model is facing an existential crisis.
“Our top players could quit playing for the country at any time,” Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s chief executive, told Cricbuzz. “They’ve got enough leagues in which they participate. The Kagiso Rabadas and the Quinton de Kocks are playing for the country because they want to, not because they have to. Even without the Jofra Archer situation a number of players could quit and still be very well off.
“When it comes to finances CSA will never be able to compete. We want people to still want to represent the country. Fortunately our players still have things they want to achieve as Proteas. Long may that continue.
“All we can do as administrators is appeal to their love of playing for the country, support them as much as we can, ensure everything runs smoothly, and hope that we don’t lose players to year-round contracts.”
Moseki is able to speak frankly because he isn’t a lifelong cricket tragic with one foot mired in nostalgia and the other in the impossibility of the international game being returned to the apex. He is an accountant, and thus wedded to reality.
So he knows better than to try and talk player agents out of nudging their clients into the most lucrative contracts: “I wouldn’t even bother. It’s the capitalist model — they’re worried about their bank accounts. A player who has been forced to stop playing for their country by an agent probably, deep down, wanted to stop.
“I don’t mean that if you decide to stop you are not patriotic. It’s a personal decision. It’s like deciding to work for government or a non-profit organisation when you can make more money in the private sector. I can’t blame the agents. It’s their job.”
Moseki might be surprised that not all agents feel that way. Not entirely, anyway. “If you’re looking purely from the point of view of money in the pocket the Archer scenario is a no-brainer,” Francois Brink, an agent, said. “And if it happens once it can happen again, and the dam wall will burst. It’s a matter of what the player wants.
“Everybody can make lots of money if a deal like that does come to fruition, but agents should advise players of the advantages and disadvantages. I’m just an agent — I’m between the principal, our client, and the third party. If that’s what the principal wants then you go with it. But I don’t think every cricketer would have a sustainable career just playing white-ball cricket around the world.
“You have to think carefully whether this is the road you want to take with your player. Is it worth it in the bigger scheme of things? For big stars like Jofra Archer signing the Mumbai deal probably is. But I fear for the Dean Elgars and the Temba Bavumas of the world. If this is going to take over, what’s going to happen to those players? What’s their place in that world?
“Even players like Joe Root and Kane Williamson. I think they’re terrible T20 players but there’s no doubt they can play the longer format. Which way is someone like Harry Brook’s career going to go? If you’re Chris Gayle and you’ve done everything you want to do in cricket and you’re 35, that’s cool. Jofra Archer is 28. It’s a different ballgame.
“Someone like Dewald Brevis might think, ‘If Jofra can do that why can’t I?’ Players like him and Tristan Stubbs can play all three formats, and it would be sad if they went for an Archer-type deal at their ages. You can’t always chase the money. You have to look at the bigger picture.”
Root and Williamson are both 32 and have played 224 Tests between them, scoring 57 centuries amid their combined total of 26,288 runs. They are modern greats. But Root’s T20 strike rate is 126.16 and Williamson’s 122.66. Brook’s is a middling 146.31 and, at 24, he averages 80.90 after 10 Test innings in which he has scored four centuries. Brevis, 20, has yet to play for South Africa’s senior teams. Stubbs, 22, has earned one ODI and 13 T20I caps. The world cricket is hurtling towards might mean Brook, Brevis and Stubbs never have the opportunity to reach the heights scaled by Root and Williamson.
Brink saw another example in two of his company’s clients, Chris Morris and Vernon Philander: “One made a lot more money than the other but Vernon is the joint fourth—fastest bowler to a hundred Test wickets. He’ll go down in the annals as one of the best bowlers who ever had the new ball in his hand. There’s a place for every type of player.”
Morris, who took a dozen wickets in his four Tests, was signed by Chennai Super Kings to play in last year’s IPL for a then record USD2.23-million. Philander claimed 224 wickets at 22.32 in 64 Tests. He never played in the IPL. Morris’ net worth this year was estimated at USD9-million. Philander’s? USD1.5-million. Philander was more skilful than most bowlers the world has seen, but Morris, with his superior pace and bounce and batting ability, was more marketable than Philander.
Andrew Breetzke, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association, took a step back from that snapshot of today’s game to pull the overview of the changing landscape into focus: “A few years ago international cricket was the pinnacle. Next to that you had the IPL, which was important and carved out in the calendar. And then you had domestic cricket, which had lots of sponsors because it was important. Now domestic leagues have taken over and international cricket is dwindling. Sponsors are going to T20 leagues because that’s where they’re getting maximum exposure. Domestic cricket is becoming a second cousin twice removed. International cricket is just another format of the game being played around the world. It’s not special anymore. The ICC have carved out their [annual] event, so we have another franchise event — just the franchises are now countries, not teams.”
Breetzke saw the likelihood of the ECB replacing the Hundred with a T20 tournament involving Indian ownership as a tipping point: “When that happens I think we’ll start seeing those 12-month contracts seriously being bandied about.” But that could be a way off: “I don’t think the 12-month contract is imminent because most of the top players are not on one-year contracts with their countries. They’re on two and three-year contracts. You’re probably looking at it three or four years down the line.”
Hybrid contracts, where national boards sign up players for specific series and tournaments, could be the future “because you can’t compete with Stubbs getting R9-million [USD465,000] for four weeks of work in the SA20. You have to be creative in how you do it.”
Currently, Breetzke said, uncertainty was the only certainty: “People are saying let’s sit back and wait to see where this all goes. Is it all sustainable? How much T20 cricket can the world handle before, commercially, it doesn’t become the golden elixir of everything? At what point does the Indian market say enough already? And does the international cricket market then become more attractive again?”
It only adds to the lack of surety that cricket is unlike sports like rugby union and football, in which global authorities decide who plays whom, where and when. “The ICC are nowhere near in control. In cricket we don’t have a governing body. We have a members’ association that looks after the interests of the members, not the game. That’s the fundamental flaw in the model of international cricket. There’s no custodian of the game; it’s a free-for-all.
“So who has got the power? The BCCI do in terms of finances. But in terms of where contracts are going and control of the game you’d have to say the IPL teams are motherlessly powerful, especially if they get five or six teams around the world. It’s their way or the highway. IPL teams have a massive influence in cricket’s power politics. They aren’t the head but they’ve turned the head of the BCCI. The rest of us quiver in their wake.”
Could the juggernaut be stopped? “The only way they could have serious opposition would be, as a start, England and Australia clubbing together and saying this isn’t good for the game, that things need to be done differently and that they are going to things differently. But they won’t do that because they are also so dependent on Indian money.”
Breetzke hoped he saw a T20 turning point in the Big Bash League deciding to shorten the 2023/24 edition from 61 to 44 matches, but bemoaned what he considered a vacuum of “direction and constructive debate on where cricket’s going. It’s almost like a ship that’s left port in tumultuous, stormy weather with no destination. Let’s hope it doesn’t end up on the rocks. Let’s hope we make it.”
Maybe it will be up to the players themselves to force change, if they can look past the money. “It’s ruthless in those T20 leagues,” Breetzke said. “You’re not necessarily looked after in the same way as when you play for your country. ‘If you’re out of form that’s tough — you’re not getting a game. Good luck in the nets. If you’ve got a tight hammy, we’ll help you out but we expect you to bowl. If you don’t perform this season we’ll kick you out and get another player.’”
Archer, who played five games for Mumbai in the ongoing IPL before he suffered a recurrence of a stress fracture of the elbow, might know how that feels. He has been ruled out of England’s home summer, including the Ashes in June and July.
Does that matter? Archer last played a Test in February 2021 — he has missed England’s most recent 27 matches in the format. He seems to have moved on from that level of international cricket. Perhaps it’s time international cricket moves on from Archer, and others, too.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 