I am going to preface everything I say here by saying: I love cricket.
Some of my favourite sporting moments of all time have involved the Australian cricket team and, to a lesser degree, the Tasmanian Shield side.
However, there is no doubt that as I have aged, my flat-out passion for the summer sport has waned somewhat. I know part of this is simply a realisation of getting older and having more responsibility, but I have also wondered aloud if the relevance of our national sport has decreased to an alarming point.
I am of the generation that, growing up, enjoyed the dominant Australian side.
I was so blessed. Ponting. Warne. McGrath. Hayden. Langer. The Waughs. Gilchrist. Gillespie. Lee.
The cricket season to a young boy growing up in Hobart was everything summer was, and went from October to February.
I spent countless hours at my local club –playing, watching or in the nets, on the hill at Bellerive watching the Tigers or glued to whatever Test, ODI or even ING Cup game was on TV.
As every year goes past though, it feels like the wider Australian public loses slightly more of a connection to the game. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when, and why this happened – there isn’t one singular reason. However, in mainstream Australia, it now appears the cricket season goes from (maybe) the first week of December until the middle of January. Max.
This summer will be big of course, with the Indians in town. However, these series that actually capture the public’s imagination feel all too fleeting. The uproar around the Bairstow stumping in the Ashes last year was actually quite refreshing as it felt like the first time in half a decade when the wider Australian public were back in tune with the baggy green.
There is no doubt that the sandpaper scandal did damage to the psyche of the average Australian cricket fan in how they see the game. Australians can’t cop cheaters, and the players were quite rightly lambasted.
Steve Smith. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
However, I feel as though this is a very surface-level approach to looking at cricket’s issues. There have been plenty of previous scandals. Underarm. John the Bookie. Warnie’s drug ban. Can’t bowl, can’t throw. Jesus, Lillee and Marsh backed England to win at Headingley in 1981, imagine that now!
One of the main issues with cricket as a whole is now the amount of it that is played.
There is simply so much meaningless cricket that doesn’t matter anymore, and when, due to the economic realities, this cricket that doesn’t matter starts to encroach on the cricket that does matter – as we saw in the 2024 South Africa vs New Zealand Test series – that’s a massive issue.
In that instance, players with a SAT20 contract were not permitted to travel to NZ for the Test series, which saw a B team represent a country in the highest form of the game. Their captain was a debutant.
From an Australian point of view – another huge mistake for the health of the game is hiding all bar the home Tests and the away Ashes behind a paywall. Taking home Australian games – in particular the ODIs – off free-to-air TV has seen its relevance diminish beyond repair. Again, I understand the need for a balanced profit and loss sheet and all the mouths that need to be fed monetarily from a Cricket Australia point of view. They will argue that this money will be put back into junior development and growing the game.
However, at what intangible cost? I grew up with the ING Cup on Channel 9 on a Sunday from early October, which then rolled into the Tests, which then rolled into the ODI tri-series. I could name the entire Tasmanian XI, the Test side and then the ODI-only players off the top of my head, and so could all of my mates. I do wonder how true this is for today’s kids of the same age. Cricket, and cricket that mattered, was easily accessible to all.
The easy clap-back to this is that there is cricket on FTA TV every night of the week in December and January in the form of the Big Bash, which was a runaway success in the early-to-mid 2010s.
Usman Khawaja bats for the Brisbane Heat against the Perth Scorchers. (Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)
However, they didn’t realise that its success was in its simplicity in how condensed it was – and the fact that it was on at a holiday period time of year when people’s minds were in tune with the cricket. People were tuning into every game because in a 7-8 game season, you had to win. It was interesting to watch international stars go head-to-head with the best of our state competitions.
Chasing every last lucrative dollar out of its golden goose, CA increased the number of games in the season dramatically and quickly. In the 2016-17 season, there were 35 matches played. By 2019-20, this was 61, and fans were losing interest. The Big Bash started to clash with the tennis into late January, marquee internationals were departing after three games due to the sheer length of the season eating into other schedules, and as a result, you are watching good-to-average grade cricketers play on primetime TV.
In previous years, I would always try to ensure I would get to a Hurricanes game when home for Christmas. It was the biggest ticket in town over the holiday period, and given cricket in the form of the Tigers and Hurricanes were one of our few sides in a national competition, the Canes were a source of immediate pride. I remember attending a New Year’s Day game (2016) at Bellerive with 18,000 people there, in a city of about 225,000 at the time.
Last year, the Hurricanes’ highest home crowd was 9,130. There is no doubt in my mind now that the NBL’s JackJumpers (partly thanks to their stunning success, but also the fall of the BBL) are the more relevant summer sporting side for Tasmanians.
The rise of the Big Bash and its franchise-based model worldwide has also sounded the death knell for the relevance of state cricket. The 2006-7 Shield (Pura Cup) title is one of the proudest days in the history of the state, yet the Shield, and the final are now bare afterthoughts.
The One Day comp, previously well followed and available on FTA, now commences in late September on weekdays at second-rate venues.
The wash-up is that there feels like a general malaise around cricket as a whole in Australia now outside of the Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney Tests.
And the ironic thing is – this is an all-time great Australian team.
In the last 18 months, they have won the World Test Championship, retained the away Ashes and won the World Cup in absolutely stunning fashion over hosts India in Ahmedabad. Travis Head’s 137 in that game should be rated as one of the greatest ever knocks by an Australian batsman, and spoken of in the same hushed tones as other great Australian World Cup final knocks such as Ponting’s 140* in 2003 or Gilchrist’s squash-ball inspired 149 in 2007.
Travis Head celebrates his century during the World Cup final. (Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Given the domination of the world cricket scene by franchise-based models and the amount of mouths that need to be fed financially, I’m not sure how this is fixed.
The future of Test cricket is perilous, even more so after the new IPL rule this week saying players who have been selected at auction will be banned from subsequent auctions for a period of two years if they pull out of the tournament for load management reasons.
Cricket that matters is being slowly cannibalised by endless cricket that doesn’t really matter – because endless meaningless cricket makes more money.
From an Australian point of view – at the very least – every international played at home by the men’s team needs to be on free-to-air TV – no matter how much of a financial hit that is. The Big Bash season has sensibly been reduced to 44 games from 15th December to 27th January, which is a great step.
The state ODI comp should be of greater relevance again, promoted, and at the very least should be played at decent venues (always the main state grounds where possible) on weekends and Fridays to ensure actual genuine interest. This year’s games are largely played between Tuesday and Thursday which is treating it with utter contempt. It, along with the Sheffield Shield should also come back as soon as possible after the Big Bash.
If things stay at the current status quo – I really do wonder what the state the game will be in another 10-15 years.
Some significant leadership and courage are required by administrators to ensure the public get to see more cricket that matters rather than a glut of cricket that doesn’t.
