Decision to stage ten Ashes Tests next year has cheapened the last sacred thing in cricket
by admin on Jun.20, 2012, under Other
These wise words were uttered last week by Jonathan Trott when looking ahead
to this Australian overkill.
They should have been at the forefront of the minds of English and Australian
administrators before they saturated the Future Tours Program with ten Ashes
Tests in a row next year.
Why are we letting them get away with this? The official reason contains a
morsel of truth, which has then been inflated to justify the whole exercise.
The World Cup has to be decoupled from Ashes winters in Australia. England did
not give themselves anything like their best chance in the World Cups of
2003, 2007 and 2011 because they followed hard on draining Test and one-day
series in Australia.
But there is no excuse whatsoever for packing in an extra Ashes series here in
2015, instead of waiting for 2017 in accordance with the four-year
home-and-away cycle that has been sanctified by tradition for one damn good
reason.
A hundred years ago or now, however tastes and attention-spans may change, a
four-year cycle is best.
So while decoupling Ashes winters from World Cups is part of the truth, a much
larger element of it is that English and Australian administrators wanted to
pack another Ashes series into the Future Tours Program and increase the
money they can get from their broadcasting deals.
Well, let’s see if this short-term expediency pays in the end. Players and
spectators have got bored with briefer back-to-back series against New
Zealand in 2008 and West Indies in 2009, never mind ten consecutive Tests
against the same opponents.
The piece of paper on the side of the Ashes urn has a verse that was composed
after the Hon Ivo Bligh led a team to Australia in 1882-3:
When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studs, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.
Somewhere in the marketing department of the England and Wales Cricket Board
or Cricket Australia, somebody in a suit has decided to rewrite the history
of the longest and finest rivalry in cricket, or indeed sport:
We are going to monetise the urn, the urn
And increase our capital return, return.
Cash-tills will ring loud
And accountants feel proud
As we now cash in on the urn, the urn,
And exploit without shame the urn.
Proof of the pud? The next World Cup will indeed be decoupled from the Ashes
in 2015.
But the World Cup after that will be staged in England in 2019 – in the very
same summer as another Ashes series.
