Because cricketers are worth it. Greed, ego and contract negotiations
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We keep on selling stories saying we should refrain from mindlessly chasing money. Books and movies have always coated these narratives in saccharine and rammed them down our throats. These days, social media stars compete to signal such virtues.
In his book, Head, Hand, Heart, David Goldblatt talked about modern society’s disrespect for caring and manual jobs compared to the money and power bestowed on highly-educated, desk-based roles. He used the example of funeral speeches highlighting qualities such as kindness, compassion and altruism when, in fact, the dearly departed may have spent most of their living years feeling forced to chase status and money.
Spinning stories to conceal real motivations is nothing new. George Orwell’s parable, Animal Farm, pointed out society’s hypocrisy in this regard back in 1945. And, turning to a more modern example, it seems that those NHS heroes worthy of weekly nationwide applause during the pandemic have become irresponsible inflation-causing militants when, after years of stagnant wages, they demanded enough money to keep them away from the local food bank.
I bring it up because convenient tales are being woven in the pursuit of ever more in global cricket. Whether it is “pay English players what they want or we will lose them to franchises” or “India deserve nearly 40 per cent of ICC revenues”, these stories are the justification for more basic motivations.
In a pure business sense, of course, these positions are logical and ‘correct’. But it assumes there is no such thing as “enough”. In fact, it wallows in the very notion we should always want more.
It is not enough to be a millionaire playing Test cricket for England, enjoying fame and fortune far beyond your county peers, let alone the general public. You should be a multi-millionaire playing at all the best franchises around the world.
You are elite. You are special. You deserve it.
At this point, someone chips in with phrases like “short career”, “maximise earnings”, “looking after your family”. The last of these is the best example of a narrative mask.
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How much do you need for your kin to live in reasonable comfort and, anyway, why should your elite, ultra-rare and valuable skills mean you deserve a lifetime of luxury and should never work again? Especially as so many look to stay in the game in some form anyway. It is not like boxing where the risk: reward calculation includes factors such as the ability to tie your own shoelaces in 10 years’ time.
Yes, the market might be willing to pay that much but we all know that in doing so, sports organisations often hamstring their long-term futures in chasing short-term success. And, of course, when this comes to pass the players and executives are gone but the supporters remain.
If you look at lessons from the world’s richest leagues, the NFL and the Premier League, such elevated status often ends up destroying the stars’ families through bankruptcy and divorce anyway.
In truth, ego is often both the driver and the danger in the desire for more. For players and executives and, as a result of their negotiations, their clubs.
More shows the world that we are special.
More means we are better than others.
More means we have smothered our insecurities for a while.
The chase goes on for so long that, eventually, more just means more.
And here’s another.
The other prevailing narrative in cricket right now is that India deserves such a huge slice of the ICC pie because they provide the vast majority of the “value” in the game. By this they mean “money” and, yet again, it is perfectly correct and logical if you adhere to the laws of sports capitalism. On this podcast, Richard Gould described the financial carve-up as the game going “from a Big Three to a Big One”. It has been reported as the world’s largest nation, in population and cricket, flexing its muscles and stealing the pot. But roll back a decade or so and the documentary Death of a Gentleman shows how the Big Three did exactly the same to the other cricket-playing nations. This is akin to 20 English football clubs leaving the rest to form their own competition in 1992 then, 30 years later, the top six trying to stitch up that same breakaway group.
There is no such thing as “enough” in these scenarios. And there never will be.
Just as the best, most highly paid cricketers in the world can only live in one house at a time and drive one car, at some point, India will require competitive opponents in order to enjoy their dominance at World Cups. Fertile foreign territories also provide elite talent and grow the game. If you say that a “rising tide and lifting all boats” then you need others to do more than just stay afloat. Plonking a shallow, cookie-cutter franchise on foreign soil will not work in many territories and, even when they do, it will not serve the game’s interests first. It will look after the mother ship.
When Muhammad Ali received a three-year ban from boxing for refusing the draft in 1967, Joe Frazier, his bitter rival, gave him money to allow him to keep training. Smokin’ Joe knew it would benefit them both if the ‘Louisville Lip’ was fit and ready to fight as soon as the suspension was lifted. They met at Madison Square Garden less than a year after Ali came back in a bout dubbed the Fight of the Century. Frazier knocked down ‘The Greatest’ en route to a points win. Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the largest single payday for any entertainer or athlete at the time. However, Ali went on to win their two subsequent bouts.
I do not want to be guilty of virtue-signalling myself. I work for money and will maximise it if I can. But, it is within reason. Creativity, expression, new experiences and, yes, family have been far more important in my career choices. I could earn much more doing something I find detached and dull.
Perhaps I am in the fortunate position of not having to depend on access to sports players and executives for my income but I feel that outright greed is given too much of a free pass by the media. Especially television who, of course, provide the money to fuel the machine. Meanwhile, for their part, supporters often fan the flames of wage inflation with expectations of immediate and constant success.
I am not proposing some sort of sporting socialism, though the beauty of US sports’ draft system in evenly distributing talent is that it adheres perfectly to Karl Marx’s “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. But please could we not draw the line at destroying so much of the specialness in the game to move a player’s salary from $2m to $3m or pumping up the bonus of some mansion-dwelling executive by an extra $100k? And let’s not spaff all our resources on unnecessary tournaments because the agents say their star now needs an extra 0 on his pay cheque or he’s packing for his latest plum T20 gig at the Timbuktu Tallywhackers.
I can almost hear you tutting at my naivety. You’re probably right.
But, if we cannot limit our demands, then at least we must admit that we are selling ourselves short and believing the fairytales spun by the talented and powerful to protect their precious egos from the stark realisation of their true motivations.
Personally, I am tired of greed being disguised as some sort of greater good.
Enough is enough.
