So how is the ECB's sale of equity in the Hundred going? Is everyone diving into a swimming pool full of money, a la Scrooge McDuck ? Not quite.
Last month it was suggested that the process could drag on for "another year" , with the board looking for the "right partners" - which sounds a bit like a school of clown fish looking for the "right" deep sea predator to buddy up with in pursuit of long-term shareholder value. Sure enough, one of the ECB's initial suitors, Lalit Modi, then bared his teeth , calling the proposals "overambitious", "disconnected from reality", and likening it to a Ponzi scheme. That swimming pool of money is beginning to look more like a shark tank.
Should we have seen this coming? Anyone who's watched The Wolf of Wall Street will know that not all finance bros are solid, upstanding types. And if your plan is to suck up to various IPL owners and hope to siphon off the benefits without being trampled over roughshod by the forces of market capitalism, well, good luck with that. The Hundred already finds itself bobbing vulnerably in a sea of T20 leagues that are not the IPL. With friends like Modi and Co, who needs enemies?
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Steven Smith just loves batting. He doesn't want to sit around in the change room waiting for someone else to get out before he can have a go. He wants to be out there from ball one, fidgeting his way through a whole day's play before sitting awake all night and replaying it in his head, complete with leaves and swooshing sounds. He wants to do a job for his team, bravely putting a hand up in the wake of David Warner's retirement to go up the order and fill a hole… Sorry, what's that? Open the batting against Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammad Siraj on a flyer in Perth? You know, it is nice to have a little bit of rest before going out. We don't want to weaken a strength. Cam Green's injured, is he? Well, maybe that No. 4 spot is quite comfortable after all ... [continued until the end of net practice in four hours' time].
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Standards in a once-proud cricketing nation have clearly slipped. How else to explain the PCB's reaction to Pakistan's unprecedented humiliation in the first Test against England ? Sure, there was the whimsical move to add Aleem Dar to the selection panel - as if presuming decisions made by umpires still go unquestioned - and 26 different appointments over three years in that department suggests the incompetency pathway is well established. Dropping Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah was ballsy; so too picking three spinners, none of whom has played a first-class match since January. But where were the dramatic and heedless mid-series interventions from unaccountable suits? Where was the threat to sack the captain, or the destabilising public comments about the coach, who's only been in the job a few months? Did anyone even consider parachuting a nephew of a board member into the squad? Come on, guys. These are the basics.
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England's success in Pakistan has provided further proof of the merits of their Bazball philosophy - not least the commitment to treating cricket as something they do between rounds of golf. And they continue to break new ground in this regard. Whereas it was once enough to view a four-day finish as the perfect opportunity to squeeze in 18 holes, in Multan they turned up without their fast-bowling consultant, James Anderson, from the start, as he had a prior appointment with the Alfred Dunhill Links . He eventually arrived on day two of the first Test, which England went on to win by an innings - so clearly all is cushty. Now it must be only a matter of time before this privilege is extended to the players, with long, hot days in the field broken up by a little fourballs or some time on the putting greens to keep them fresh.
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There were strong " stop, he's already dead " vibes around India's recent hosting of Test and T20I tours by Bangladesh. As if losing the Kanpur Test in about 12 minutes of actual cricket either side of a monsoon wasn't painful enough, Bangladesh were then put through the meatgrinder to the tune of 297 in the final T20I. In that Hyderabad game, according to ESPNcricinfo's Forecaster, India's chances of winning passed 90% inside the first batting powerplay, and hovered at 98% and above from the tenth over onwards. In a world where the BCCI gets almost 40% of the ICC's revenue distribution because, well, it says so, this is probably the sort of contest we deserve.
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