All tagged cricket
In 2023, one-day cricket enjoyed its 60th birthday.
David Tossell has written a book on the evolution of the format. He describes those early days as “nicely naïve”. But, at the same time, they were the foundation for every major innovation in cricket ever since.
These days, the 50-over game is under an existential threat due to the rise of T20. Can it survive, is it worth saving and what would be its legacy?
Alex Phillips does not look or sound like a revolutionary but his ideas could shake up football.
He spent 15 years at Uefa, including a couple as Head of Compliance and Governance. He was seconded to the Asian Football Confederation for three years and now leads the World Football Remission Fund, a FIFA body administrating how money "stolen from the game" should be returned for its overall benefit.
In this podcast, we discuss good governance, the ramifications of the failed Super League project, educating owners and fans, setting examples and, of course, content.
In the next 10 years, cricket will try to cross its biggest and most important new frontier - the USA. They have been awarded co-hosting rights for the 2024 T20 World Cup and a buzz is building around the chances of inclusion in the Olympics in Los Angeles four years later.
Minor League Cricket started last season and its Major League big brother begins this year. Tom Dunmore is VP of Marketing for both tournaments. In this podcast, we discuss the story so far, the challenges they face and the vision for success.
The use of data in the analysis of sporting performance is well-known but not yet universally employed.
Poker has become viewed as a Petri-dish for strategic thinking based on probability which, if applied correctly, can provide long-term success.
Dan Weston is a former professional gambler and poker player. He was also one of the UK’s top slot-machine players in his young days.
Now, he is applying his shrewd statistical knowledge to cricket as recruitment analyst of Leicestershire CC and the Birmingham Phoenix.
Sarim Akhtar's face has become synonymous with anger but he is actually a very happy chap.
However, when the television cameras momentarily caught his expression at a cricket match two years ago, the Pakistan fan was furious after his team had dropped a catch. Within hours, the anonymous meme-makers had pounced on the picture and spread it around social media. He has been 'Insta-famous' ever since.
How should you react in this situation? Ignore it, embrace it or just make as much cash as you can?
Rob Moody runs a YouTube channel with over 900,000 subscribers and holds an important influence over the agenda in his sport but he has never made a penny.
If you are a cricket fan with access to the internet, it is highly likely you have seen one of his videos. Robelinda2 is the ‘go to’ channel for the rare, unusual or controversial moments in the game. His archive has received over a billion views in its 10-year existence by curating niche cricketing content that is appetising to fans and acceptable to rights-holders.
This is an unusual digisport success story. Yet, there are many lessons to be learned.
The Barmy Army started 2020 by celebrating their 25th birthday, ended the summer with official recognition from the England captain but will see out the year, like so many of us, ‘battening down the hatches’ for a difficult 2021.
Managing director Chris Millard told the Barmy Army story to Sports Content Strategy - its past, its Covid-hit present and how it is the trying to shape the future of international cricket supporting.
The story of this supporters’ group is well-known. Paul Burnham, Gareth Evans and David Peacock were part of a cluster of doughty fans watching Mike Atherton’s men slide to another inglorious Ashes defeat in Adelaide in the winter of 1994/95. They sang and drank with gusto, seemingly oblivious to the score, the opposition or the need for sun-block. The Australian press branded them “the Barmy Army”, a name that the trio were shrewd enough to copyright in the UK and Australia. They printed and sold 100 T-shirts with their new name. By the next Test, they would need 3,000. Since then, the Barmy Army have followed England though thin, thinner and occasionally ‘thick’, providing loud, passionate support from the stands. Outwardly they conform to the stereotype of the travelling English sports fan, however, their ethos has always been different. Aware of their behaviour and self-policing, they have raised £500,000 for charities in the countries they visit. Their funds helped to rebuild a Sri Lankan village destroyed by a tsunami. It was renamed in the group’s honour.
Managing director Chris Millard told the Barmy Army story to Sports Content Strategy - its past, its Covid-hit present and how it is trying to shape the future of international cricket supporting.
In 2019, the Indian Premier League averaged 25,700 spectators per game, a figure that left the cricket tournament nestled neatly between La Liga and Serie A as the eighth most popular annual sports event in the world.
The content created by IPL franchises is generally excellent and the crowds are as passionate as you will find for a relatively new event. However, it rarely gets the credit it deserves.
Achint Gupta is Head of Media and Content at Kolkata Knight Riders, a major IPL franchise with a social media reach akin to that of a major Champions League football club. They were producing their only documentaries long before other sports teams started to eye a spot on Netflix.
They are also internationalising their brand and developing unique content strands that combine Bollywood glamour, Indian music and a different attitude to storytelling.
Luke Sutton is trying to change the narrative around mental health and elite athletes, using lessons from his own story.
At the end of a long career in county cricket, team-mates staged an intervention over his alcohol-consumption and self-destructive behaviour.
On retirement, Sutton became an agent for one of those concerned friends, record-breaking England Test bowler Jimmy Anderson. Since then the agency has expanded, taking on footballers, boxers and Olympians.
At the end of 2019, Sutton released a book called Back from the Edge, which recounts the mental descent during his time as a wicketkeeper-batsman and how he turned his life around.
Sutton has vowed to run his agency with his clients' long-term well-being in mind, even if that leaves 'money on the table'. He also has strong views on the way elite athletes are perceived and how they are handled by the press, public and the sporting authorities.
Cricket, lovely cricket.
England's national sport has been under pressure for many years, with the four-day County Championship widely perceived as the domestic competition in the most precarious position.
However, there has been genuine hope in the blossoming audience for a relatively basic video streaming service synced with the traditional radio commentary.
It is a League-Wide scheme developed by the England and Wales Cricket Board but Somerset CCC have been at the forefront. Digital marketing & communications executive Ben Warren runs the service for the club.
With a controversial new franchise-based tournament starting next season and threatening to take attention from the longer-form game, the pressure is on.
But can digital media really help save county cricket?
Daniel Weston is a Germany international cricket players with a distinctly Aussie accent. But, having had considerable success growing the sport at home, his love for the sport has inspired him to start the Europe Cricket League. The inaugural event will see the best clubs in France, Romania, Russia, Denmark, Italy and Holland do battle at the La Manga resort in Spain this summer.
The focus will be to serve fans with a predominately digital and social media product, not only because it is cost-effective and modern but the ignorance of the sport by traditional media has forced fans to follow it that way.
Time to explore a new venture whose audience has been entirely overlooked until now.
Guerilla Cricket, and its previous incarnation Test Match Sofa, challenge the long-established norms of broadcasting England's national sport.
This is not the cosy cake-filled commentary box of the BBC. It beers and banter in a basement flat plus humourous, sometimes sweary, jingles at major moments. (You’ll hear a few of those through this podcast).
But real innovation (not just the copying and twisting that content creators constantly do) so often starts at this level and has to fight resistance from those in incumbent positions.
So is Guerilla Cricket a revolutionary new model for live commentary that could be rolled out across other sports?
Or is it just a hobby that can only exist in its sporting niche?
Listen and then you decide
