“This is the world we live in,” has been an increasingly common phrase in English cricket over recent years. It was the world we live in that meant Jofra Archer missed the first Test of the summer after finishing at the IPL a week earlier. It was the world we live in that has seen The Hundred sold off to private investors and it is also the world we live in that the ICC announced by stealth this week that the 2027 ODI World Cup would be reduced to 12 teams from 14.
The ICC will claim it is still 14 teams, but don’t believe it, as the three lowest-ranked entrants will now play a tri-series between them, the winner of which will become the 12th and final team in the World Cup proper. Unsurprisingly, the likes of Netherlands, Scotland and Ireland are spewing. For three years, they have been playing more than 30 games across the world to qualify for the World Cup, and a year out, they are told that their 1,000-day effort, if successful, will be rewarded with further qualifiers. But hey, this is just the world we live in. And the new World Cup format does mean that India and Pakistan are now all but guaranteed to play each other twice. So that’s more money for the administrators, which is why we’re all here.
It is also the world we live in that the plum job of England Test head coach is not the plummest job in the land any more. Andy Flower, who coached England from 2009 to 2014 and led them to an away Ashes win in 2011, had been the runaway favourite to replace Brendon McCullum. But, in a press conference on Friday, Flower, who is the head coach of London Spirit in The Hundred and Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL, ruled himself out, saying: “The bottom line for me is that I’m very happy in the work that I am doing at the moment.”
His two white-ball jobs amount to three months of work a year and pay him handsomely, and according to some reports, more than what he would earn with England for less time and less scrutiny. ECB CEO Richard Gould had said that England would be happy to let their new head coach job-share with the IPL, stating, “We need to be progressive with these issues”, (AKA “it’s the world we live in”), but the fact is that, on closer inspection, how the two could be done at the same time seems impossible. For starters, England are set to play Bangladesh in a one-off Test next year that could take place during the IPL. Has the pendulum of power really swung so far that the ECB would be willing to let their head coach miss matches in order to coach another team? And don’t say that it’s just the world we live in.
The two names that have now become favourites to take the role are Stephen Fleming, who has won five IPLs with Chennai Super Kings, and former Australian head coach Justin Langer. If McCullum was known for being zen and laid-back, the appointment of Langer would be a shift as far in the opposite direction as is imaginable.
All the while, McCullum remains in charge of the white-ball team, whose ODI recovery heads to Lord’s on Sunday with their three-match series against India tied at one-all. For the last month, it has been to McCullum’s detriment that off-field matters have been dominating on-field. Now, he is the beneficiary. A series win will be a step in the right direction, a series defeat quietly forgotten, with all eyes paying attention to who will be the next man to lead the England Test team.
‘It is in everyone’s interest that it works’ – The Hundred kicks off again
The blended world continues on Tuesday as after a week in which the England Test team have dominated the conversation and the England ODI team have been playing, The Hundred kicks off in its shiny new uniform with new private investors of each of the eight teams.
This is the deep-breath bit. The ECB, to their credit, magicked up £520m for the sale of the competition, with around 10% of the proceeds set to go to the grassroots game and the
£20-27m promised to the non-host counties a short-and-long term saviour for many. But you can only sell the golden goose once and now everyone must brace for what comes next. A worrying early sign was that a week out from the tournament, five teams had sourced front-of-shirt sponsors. The result being that the ECB is allowing teams to accept gambling sponsorship for one year only. Turning to the casino to fix a short-term cash-flow problem. What could possibly go wrong?
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Team names have also changed. Oval Invincibles are now MI London, Manchester Originals are now the Manchester Super Giants and the Northern Superchargers are now Sunrisers Leeds. All three name changes see the teams reflect the names of their IPL counterparts.
Players like Harry Brook, Dani Gibson and the uncapped James Coles are now substantially richer with deals worth £470,000, £190,000 and £390,000 respectively. And if you remember last month when Archer missed the first Test against New Zealand as the six-day period between his IPL campaign finishing and the Test summer beginning wasn’t enough time to prepare, well the gap between the end of The Hundred and the start of the first Test against Pakistan is three days. Nothing’s going to get simpler.
Tomorrow has arrived today. Power has been ceded. But if it works, the game as a whole will be richer for it. You are right to be sceptical. You are right to be nervous. But it is in everyone’s interest that it works.
Photographs by Gareth Copley/Getty Images; Philip Brown/Getty Images