Williamson news points to wider issues
A mostly US-based Week That Was and the barbarian hordes descend upon Eden in the Weekend That Will Be.
The curious thing about the Kane Williamson story was that it was only partially a story about Kane Williamson.
Declining a national contract and relinquishing the white-ball captaincy is a big deal, for sure, but you have to take it at face value that a special set of circumstances presented themselves and that his availability for the Black Caps will be only marginally affected.
It is worth remembering that Williamson has been frequently unavailable for New Zealand over the past three or four years anyway through a combination of injuries and rest periods, so any move to elongate his international career should be investigated, even if it means he spends three months of the year with his young family in a yurt on the Mongolian steppe.
The possibility of Williamson’s white-ball availability for New Zealand being increasingly confined to major tournaments and high-profile home series is also only peripherally a high-performance programme story - though some serious work needs to be done at Lincoln to calm fears that the national side is teetering on the edge of a mismanaged decline.
It’s a story where the subtext talks louder than the headline and that subtext is all about New Zealand’s place in a modern cricket world.
It is a place both privileged and cursed.
NZ Cricket’s privilege comes from the fact it is one of 12 test-playing nations (and of those 12 only nine actually play regularly), which means for years they have received outsized dividends from ICC events. One administrator I talked to describes this arrangement as a cartel that has been extraordinarily beneficial to New Zealand because our lack of financial and commercial heft means we take out more than we can ever put in. In that context, it is pivotal for NZC that international cricket remains strong and that its content remains attractive to broadcasters and sponsors.
Where it is cursed is size and geography. As cricket moves away from a sport based on cosy bilateral arrangements interspersed with splashy ICC events, to a 12-months-a-year T20 franchise-driven sportotainment enterprise, New Zealand is in danger of being left out of the loop.
This can be viewed through the prism of the country’s domestic T20 league.
The Super Smash is a functional tournament, but it is not attractive to overseas broadcasters or investors due in large part to a time zone that sucks and a budget that might struggle to cover the costs of a Virat Kohli’s beard oil. It remains an important part of the product range NZC sold to Sky initially, then Spark Sport (whose sports book is now in the hands of TVNZ, following the telco’s departure from the streaming market), but its sex appeal to a local audience is diminished significantly if the best available players do not play in it.
So where does all that leave NZC and its place in the New World?
That’s a complicated question and one NZC are wrestling with now as they prepare to launch a new strategic plan.
What they won’t be doing is seeking licences to play in the Big Bash. Two separate sources used the phrase “when hell freezes over” to describe the chances of that happening, so we can take that off the table. While there are some playing benefits to a Kiwi franchise or two in a transtasman competition, commercially it makes no sense unless NZC was to be offered equity in the tournament and why would Cricket Australia do that?
Furthermore, CA does not seem sure what to do with the Big Bash. At present it schedules international programmes concurrently, ensuring that the country’s best players, like Pat Cummins, rarely feature. (Contrast that to Cricket South Africa which, to the chagrin of New Zealand fans when it sent out a woefully understrength test team earlier this year, has cleared out January for the SA20 and SA20 alone.)
The BBL also suffers from similar time zone issues as it relates to India and while it enjoyed a small ratings spike last season, its appeal had been on a steep downward trajectory for years. This from the Sydney Morning Herald before season 12:
In the halcyon days of 2016 [the] Big Bash League was riding high, with a national average rating of over a million viewers per game, eclipsing both AFL and NRL. On one glorious night that year, more than 85,000 people filled the MCG for the derby between the Melbourne Stars and the Melbourne Renegades...
Smash cut to 2022-23 and… rights-holder Channel Seven is staring down the barrel of depressingly low viewing figures, widespread apathy about the competition, and fears that what in 2016 looked like a powerhouse of domestic sport is on a terminal decline. Last season’s average free-to-air ratings hit a low of 386,000 per session. The MCG recorded its lowest-ever crowd for a Big Bash game, with only 5802 people showing up for a double-header at the ground that had heaved with humanity half a dozen years earlier.
“There’s a reason we’re hearing noises about us being included in the Big Bash and they’re not coming from this side of the Tasman,” one source said, indicating that while such a move might provide a small audience boost to the BBL, in almost every way NZC would be shooting itself in the foot by pursuing licences.
Instead, it would seem to make more sense to seek commercial and high-performance alignment with tournaments that have significant growth potential and which don’t compete in the same part of the calendar. To that end, the most logical partnerships would be with Major League Cricket, which runs in July, and (hold your nose) any future venture in Saudi Arabia, which would likely be held in October.
Cricket is in a fascinating, complex and volatile place at the moment - for a couple of days our greatest batter found himself in the middle of it.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
It might just be that the greatest baseballer who ever lived died this week.
From ESPN, on the death of Willie Mays, aged 93:
“You’d sit on the bench and watch Willie Mays,” Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson said. “It was so exciting just to watch him. People did that with Jim Brown. They did that with the acrobatics and greatness of [Michael] Jordan. It’s like players today going to watch the pregame warm-ups of Steph Curry. To watch Willie warm up, to throw the ball underhand, to make a basket catch. The beauty and the grace. For the kids today, it was like watching Simone Biles. It was like watching [Mikhail] Baryshnikov. It was poetry in motion. It was so beautiful, so pretty, to watch this athlete just run on the field, catch a ball. I loved to play against Willie Mays because it meant that I got to watch Willie Mays.”
The New Zealand rugby community was in mourning after the death of Connor Garden-Bachop, aged 25.
From a joint statement issued by New Zealand Rugby, the New Zealand Māori Rugby Board, Highlanders, Wellington Rugby and the New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association:
Connor was a fantastic young player, an exciting New Zealand age-grade representative and a proud Māori All Black. Wherever he played, he was a committed and popular teammate with infectious energy and someone who could light up the room.
The Boston Celtics won their 18th banner this week and did it in such dominating fashion from the start of the regular season to the 106-88 drubbing it laid on the Dallas Mavericks in the fifth and final game of the NBA finals that it will go down as one of the most dominant seasons in history.
Yet somehow it has stayed a relatively unloved team (outside of Boston at least, where it is beyond loved). Maybe it’s because they’re a genuine team and lack a transcendent star - because the NBA has built its billions on being a superstar league.
From the Guardian:
Despite their domination, despite their champion worthiness, these Celtics still seem a little bloodless. Technical, precise, and brutally effective, their basketball nevertheless fails to raise a pulse… Boston lost just three games over the course of the playoffs, clinching the championship without ever letting things drift even close to anything resembling a clutch. The Celtics planned and micro-managed and mental-mapped their way to glory; this was basketball played well away from the ledge, the outcome assured, the threats expertly defused, the sweaty moments barely even producing a bead of moisture across the collective brow…
Where, in all of Boston’s harrying and busy work in defence and attack, was the excitement?
Sheesh, tough audience.
If it’s possible to feel sorry for an athletic 35 year old whose astonishing talent for hitting a stationary ball around beautifully manicured lawns has won him more riches than Croesus, then it happened on Monday morning. Oh Rory…
Golf is a ruthless game of record books. By hook or by crook, [Bryson] DeChambeau was determined to use this occasion to permanently remake his reputation and burnish a bright, new future as America’s pleasantly beefy hero. Meanwhile, by the painstaking distance of 6 feet of putts, Rory has very slightly diminished his legacy. We can only hope that there’s another major win in his future — but with each passing tournament and near-miss loss, it becomes harder and harder to conceive of when his day will come.
When you think of all the crap happening in the world today, it’s hard to summon up an extra bit of outrage for the Chinese olympic swim team, but if you believe in fairness, you probably should.
China has selected eleven swimmers that are embroiled in a major doping scandal for next month’s Paris Olympics.
Earlier this year it emerged that 23 of the country’s swimming team were cleared to compete at the Tokyo Games in 2021, despite testing positive for a banned substance months earlier…
“This is the train-wreck we were worried about and it’s exactly why we called for a real, independent prosecution of these previously hidden positive tests, especially given that the statute of limitations hasn’t run out,” [USADA CEO] Travis Tygart told BBC Sport. “All athletes deserve to know that it’s a fair and just outcome for these Chinese athletes to be at the Paris Games competing against other athletes who have been held to the strictest standards.”
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
Is Patrick Tuipulotu primed to do a Willis Reed in a Super Rugby final that shapes as a real barnburner? It seems inconceivable you can recover from a torn tendon that quickly, but why wouldn’t you want to be part of an occasion like this.
As desolate and miserable as Eden Park looked during the semifinal, it should be humming tomorrow as thousands of Chiefs fans fight their way across the Bombays to get to Auckland.
To get in the swing of things, I asked four friends/ media types for their picks:
Scotty: Torn, but Chiefs - the only red flag is card trouble.
Mike: Chiefs mana. Have lost a final, so they won’t do it again in front of 20,000 travelling fans invading across the Bombays.
Dana: Blues.
Patrick: Blues by 8. Their pack has gone to the next level and they’re great at defending leads.
My pick: Chiefs by two. Even during the regular season they looked like they were priming themselves for playoff-style footy.
Not sure if it’s because of the absence of perennial champions Crusaders, but this really feels like a final to savour, where that almighty bounce-of-the-ball-on-the-night cliche might just ring true.
Blues v Chiefs, Auckland, tomorrow 7.05pm, SS1
***
It’s not the weekend, but Scott Robertson names his first All Black squad on Monday evening, 5.30pm, live on Sky.
I am happy to go on record and say it is far too early to start writing nonsense about must-win games… but then again, I don’t really know how else to describe the Warriors trip to the cellar-dwelling Titans.
Perhaps we’ll call it a highly-preferable-not-to-lose game.
The home loss to the same side was crushing, especially after racing to a 12-0 lead and looking unstoppable. In that respect, it almost mirrored what we saw last weekend against the Storm.
Do the Warriors not like front-running or something?
Gold Coast v NZ Warriors, Robina, tomorrow 5pm, SS 4
It’s been a Euros of long-range goals and own goals.
Oh, and a lot of England angst.
Wrote Jonathan Liew in the Guardian after England’s 1-1 draw with Denmark.
This was a performance that was actually too bad to be boring, a performance that actively courted our disapproval, a thin gruel laced with rat poison and carpet tacks.
Netherlands v France, Leipzig, tomorrow 7am; Turkey v Portugal, Dortmund, Sunday 4am; Belgium v Romania, Cologne, Sunday 7am.
Those are the big three in my house, though I will try to catch parts of the World T20 Super Eights stages, including highlights of the England-South Africa clash overnight. Connor ‘McJesus’ McDavid attempts to force the Stanley Cup finals to a decider when his Edmonton Oilers host the Florida Panthers at midday tomorrow. You can throw a blanket over the leading drivers in IndyCars, including Scott Dixon in third, as they head to Laguna Seca, while the F1 roadshow stops in Barcelona.
12-months-a-year T20 franchise-driven sportotainment enterprise is the most horrible, vomit worthy turn of phrases and prospects I have ever come across in all my days 🤢
Thanks for your great work Dylan. Please allow me a peek behind the curtain? When you wrote "It is worth remembering that Williamson has been frequently unavailable for..." did you know where you were going to place Kane and his family? It made me chuckle. I'll ignorantly assume the other possibility is that you were dared to fit 'Mongolia' somewhere into today's newsletter.