For professional players, coaches, umpires, scorers, administrators, and stadium, union and marketing staff, and even here in the press, cricket is a job before it’s anything else.
Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE in London
GOLD pads! Gold helmets! Purple everything else! It made sense, then, that I was in the gaudiest bar on Durban’s Florida Road to watch the inaugural game in the … what was it again? … ah yes: the Indian Premier League (IPL).
It was April 18, 2008, almost 15 years after I had been startled by no less unstuffy a writer as Christopher Martin-Jenkins beginning an article on the apparition of players in coloured clothing in county cricket in no less stuffy a newspaper as the Daily Telegraph with, “Blue shirts at Lord’s!”
It wasn’t the statement that struck me. It was the verblessness and, particularly, the punctuation. An exclamation mark! From CMJ!
There I was all those years later, watching a purple and gold Brendon McCullum swash and buckle 158 off 73, an innings that was its own exclamation from start to finish, for something called Kolkata Knight Riders against something else called Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
And there I was 10 years after that, in May, at the very same venue, gobsmacked at the sheer scale of the electric Kool-aid acid test of kaleidoscopic choreographed cacophony that was my first IPL game watched up close and personal.
And here I am this weekend, one eye looking out of a window trying its best to let in all the light that might have squeezed through the soggy wad of autumnal fog over London, the other eye on the blaze of happy colour and joyful noise that has burst into South Africa’s summery sunshine.
The Mzansi Super League (MSL) is upon us, brothers and sisters of the broad church that is cricket. It’s come, as Dale Steyn and Albie Morkel has said in recent days and many others have thought for months, five years too late.
Every other bunch of two-bit suits on whichever far-flung patch of grass has been there, done that, and now the calendar is just about day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month clogged with T20s.
Also, the MSL is not what was originally advertised: South Africa’s answer to the IPL and the Big Bash League and all that. Instead, it’s the same old franchise T20 competition played by the same old teams rebranded with new names and different kit, and involving players you have never heard of unless you are the kind of cricket tragic who knows the Hung Hom JD Jaguars are the current champions of the Hong Kong T20 Blitz having beaten the Galaxy Gladiators Lantau by six runs in the final. No, I haven’t made that up.
But do we celebrate the fact that, despite everything that has happened — there are allegations that some of the dealings to make the MSL happen have been deeply dodgy, complete with bribes and kickbacks — those bumbling suits have actually got this thing off the ground? Or do we question whether events like these do anything for cricket beyond creating hype, while making money for people who couldn’t give a damn about the game?
If we’re going to ask questions like that, and we must, we must also ask which T20 tournaments are primarily anything except laundromats for dirty money and petri dishes in which to cultivate matchfixing.
We also need to establish who, exactly, gives a damn about cricket. For professional players, coaches, umpires, scorers, administrators, and stadium, union and marketing staff, and even here in the press, cricket is a job before it’s anything else.
That leaves you, and if you’ve stuck with it through all the purpleness and passionate punctuation above, you clearly love the game.
Reader, you’re on your own.
Hi Telford and I hope your enjoying London in the Autumn? The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is clearly reflected in the tone and composition of this article on the Mzansi Super League. We should bear in mind it is a new venture for CSA, SABC and all of its sponsors and stakeholders and will take at least one or two seasons to establish its profile and presence in the highly congested T20 global market place. But give it time and the cricket loving fans of SA will have something that will inspire them for the next ten years. Both CSA and SABC have taken a big financial gamble in getting it off the ground after the chronic failure of the 2017 T20 Global League and the ignominious departure of Haroon Lorgat last year. The key to success for all parties lies in getting the fans on board and making sure they have a great experience inside the stadiums on match days. To date this has not always been the case and it is an area where everyone involved with the League needs to focus their attention when it comes to the quality of the facilities and services provided for them on match days.'Price, Quality, Choice, Entertainment, Engagement and Service Excellence" are they keys to success for the League and its investors The fans are the lifeblood of professional cricket in SA and their views and thoughts and needs should be an integral part of everything CSA does when promoting and developing the League and all other formats of the game. Suggest you and your colleagues keep a close eye on all of this from your lofty perches in press boxes and CSA and the League will go from strength to strength. Best wishes to one and all in sunny SA: Jeremy DG Evans