It is a brave move to stage a World Cup in a country where the chairman of the board believes “the younger generation” and the “Asian community” are not attracted to your sport, and braver still to make those two audiences such a key part of your marketing strategy. Which is what the International Cricket Council has done for this tournament.
The ICC invited dozens of kids and dozens of Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani fans to play street cricket at its World Cup launch in Brick Lane on Wednesday. It was a good party. Full of people laughing, playing, eating and drinking. Colin Graves did not attend.
Dave Richardson, the ICC chief executive, did his best to be diplomatic about recent comments by Graves, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s chairman. “Well‚ that is very much an English viewpoint,” he said. “Globally we are seeing that the average age of our fans is lower than even football and certainly rugby.”
As for whether or not he felt the sport needs a new 100-ball format, Richardson said: “From an international point of view, probably we would say no.” He added some caveats about how it was important to give the competition a chance, then added: “But certainly there isn’t an appetite to create another format.”
Richardson said: “Our strategy is clear, in that we’ve got three formats of the same game, and it is challenging in itself to keep them from cannibalising each other. But what it does do is provide us with an opportunity to provide an offering to everybody, every type of cricket fan.”
In England, Richardson said, “there is a bit of a challenge making sure we re-engage with the youth and grow the game from a participation point of view”.
The 2019 World Cup is the best opportunity English cricket has to do that. Steve Elworthy, the tournament managing director, said that “55% of people who came to the Champions Trophy hadn’t been to cricket in the last five years or so – and there was a huge Asian support base for it – we want to build on that”.
Brick Lane is only five miles from Lord’s but in another sense it is half a world away. And here, in the heart of London’s Bangladeshi community, there was a real sense of cricket as a modern, multicultural sport, a vibrant game loved and played by people from all parts.
The ICC has even commissioned Caleb Femi to write a poem for the tournament, which includes the line: “Fly your flag with pride, after all it’s Britain, everyone’s welcome.”
Femi’s poem is splashed in brilliant colours across the top two storeys of a fabric store just down Brick Lane. The ICC was worried that the owner would refuse but he is a cricket nut and said he would be delighted to oblige.
Elworthy said: “We have stated ambitions to engage with a million kids between now and the end of the tournament. We have 100,000 tickets earmarked for under-16s, we have an opportunity to drive huge participation.”
The ICC is doing its part. It is planning “inner‑city takeovers” from “Durham to Taunton, fan zones, live screenings for the semi-finals and finals”. It may work, it may not. But the enthusiasm, fresh thinking, is more likely to make a positive difference than the ECB chairman is, so long as he keeps droning on about how no one likes or understands the sport any more.
ICC to meet al-Jazeera over fix claims
The ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit will meet al-Jazeera journalists in the next 48 hours to examine its evidence that players from England and Australia had committed spot-fixing in Test cricket. Both England and Australia have denied the claims.
Dave Richardson, the ICC chief executive, said it would be “very surprising” if international cricketers were involved in fixing but he promised the ACU would investigate fully all the same.
“I’m a little perturbed by any accusation that we would attempt to sweep it under the carpet or pretend that nothing has happened,” he said.
Richardson is confident that the International Cricket Council has “got the mitigating measures in place” to make sure fixing does not happen in international cricket, but he admitted there was a growing problem with corruption in domestic Twenty20 competitions. Al-Jazeera’s documentary also exposed an alleged plot to launch a corrupt T20 league in Dubai. The knock-on effect of the tighter security at the international level is that the fixers “are now trying to create their own leagues, at a much lower level, and the danger is they will start going to domestic tournaments”.
He said: “Those leagues do provide an additional opportunity for the people that want to get involved and try and fix. We’ve got to take much sterner action in the future.”
The ICC will bring in regulations to ensure domestic tournaments held outside full member nations take place only if the organisers work closely with the ACU in doing due diligence on team owners, and on developing an anti‑corruption code and a player education programme.
