A delicate balancing act
The Week That Was includes the death of a murderer, and The Weekend That Will be has the Mighty Wahs and a Fox in the garden.
Two totally unrelated stories this week to me highlight what a complex and delicate time it is for traditional sports models.
First, New Zealand is sending this squad to face a full-strength Pakistan away from home in a bilateral T20 series: Michael Bracewell (c), Tom Blundell, Mark Chapman, Josh Clarkson, Jacob Duffy, Zak Foulkes, Dean Foxcroft, Ben Lister, Cole McConchie, Jimmy Neesham, Will O’Rourke, Tim Robinson, Ben Sears, Tim Seifert, Ish Sodhi.
Sheesh. T20 is a fickle format and you only need two or three players to fire to give yourself an opportunity every match, but even so, if they come home with more than a single victory in the five-match series you can colour me stunned.
It’s not just the paucity of top-line players in the New Zealand team to consider - even former Black Cap Tom Bruce opted for Lancashire over a quick trip to the subcontinent - though it does little for the credibility of the series.
That it’s happening slap, bang in the middle of the Indian Premier League almost guarantees that it will slip by unnoticed by the vast majority of the cricket world, and that might be a good thing.
It is possible to look at this in isolation and say it’s decent content churn for Pakistan’s host broadcaster and that it provides further development opportunities for fringe New Zealand talent1, but hold this series up against the IPL and tell me what looks more attractive to sponsors and fans: a tournament worth billions, overflowing with the game’s best players, stuffed full of private money and with a finite start and end point; or context-free, bilateral international cricket?
The second story that caught my eye involved Netball New Zealand and it wasn’t so much the fact they’re about to take a serious revenue haircut with a huge decrease in broadcast revenue, but that they are looking west to “save”, my word, not theirs, the sport.