Crystal ball: Crash Craddock’s bold predictions for the sport’s future
With cricket eating itself alive, the sport is in a state of change — it’s the perfect time for Crash Craddock to dust off the crystal ball with some bold predictions for the volatile decade ahead.
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It’s the first rule of war — know your enemy — but what if your enemy is yourself?
Cricket has become its own greatest rival as it pulls itself in all sorts of wacky directions trying to make sense of the increasingly mad world it inhabits.
Its greatest challenge is it doesn’t know what it truly wants and the words of the late Cricket Australia pubic affair spokesman Peter Young — “world cricket’s future tours planning is chess in three dimensions’’ — has never been truer.
For almost 100 years the international game meant two simple words — Test cricket — but the world has become so fractious and frantic that there are five forms of the game (including T10 and The Hundred) and by next January seven major T20 competitions across the globe.
They pit the rich against the poor, club versus country, red versus white, short versus long in a bubbling minestrone soup bowl of so many contrasting flavours it’s hard to know what the main flavour truly is.
David Warner’s decision to ask for a release from the Australian summer to play T20 cricket in the United Arab Emirates during next summer’s Big Bash is a snapshot into the world which awaits cricket in the next generation.
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Australia’s strong desire is not to give Warner a release and make him a decent offer to play the Big Bash for the first time in almost a decade.
But if he refuses the offer and wants to go anyway, Australia may have no legal right to stop him. If he goes, many are likely to follow.
It would be a sign that the world has changed but there is much change ahead — the perfect time to dust off the crystal ball and slap down predictions for the volatile decade that awaits us.
***A drum roll please for our top six:
1. IPL-dominated champions league
Within 10 years most Test nations will be forced into to a European-style soccer format where a player’s prime allegiance is to his (Indian owned) Twenty20 franchise.
He will play for teams around the world owned by the same IPL team and will be released during selected windows to play for his country.
2. The insurmountable records
Sachin Tendulkar’s record for most Tests (200) and most Test runs (15,921) and Muttiah Muralitharan’s for most Test wickets (800) will stand forever because no team will play enough Tests to see such mountains climbed.
3. Australia to take hard line
Australia will insert a clause in its player contracts demanding national players be eligible for the Big Bash League. Some players will refuse to sign the deals and settle for life as white ball soldiers of fortune.
4. IPL-owned Big Bash
The Big Bash will be privatised and almost every club will be snapped by Indian IPL teams who outbid rivals as if it was the late Kerry Packer turning up for a home auction. The owners will have plenty of intense arguments with Cricket Australia about how to access star Indian players before a compromise is reached and the Big Bash becomes a feeder system for emerging IPL talent.
5. U-S-A, U-S-A!
After decades of dreaming of cracking the elusive USA market the 2024 T20 World Cup – hosted by the USA and the West Indies – becomes the launching pad to making solid process as the game connects with the four million-plus Indian expats living in the United States.
6. ODI’s strange future
50-over cricket will lead a double life, fading away for three years before springing to life in World Cup year. Between times it will be regarded as the most mundane and expandable format but the 50-over World Cup will stay as cricket’s most celebrated title.
Sound strange? That’s modern cricket folks
The World Cup wildcard snub that dumbfounded Aussie selectors
—Ben Horne
A daring new-age selection philosophy which allowed Tim David to bypass a shot at his first Australian cap earlier this year, may be about to become a World Cup bonanza for Australia.
On the back of a breakout season in the Indian Premier League, where he exploded as Twenty20 cricket’s most formidable middle-order power hitter, David is on the verge of forcing his way into the champion Australian squad out to defend its crown on home soil this October.
And it’s largely because the 26-year-old and Australian selectors were bold enough to break the mould.
News Corp understands that David was actually selected in Australia’s Twenty20 squad to face Sri Lanka in a five-match series back in February, but declined the opportunity after a deeply honest heart-to-heart with selectors.
Advised he was not first-choice and his game time against Sri Lanka was likely to be limited walking into a squad that had just lifted the World Cup, everything was laid out on the table.
First and foremost David emphasised to selectors, that it was his burning desire to represent his country.
But the conversation then went to the what ifs, and if David spent the majority of the series sitting on the bench for Australia, he would miss the Pakistan Super League taking place at the same time and therefore the chance to put himself in the shopfront window for the IPL auction.
It’s fair to say an element of the Australian hierarchy was dumbfounded an uncapped player would ever hesitate over a potential shot at making his international debut.
But Australia’s pragmatic selection panel could see the wisdom in recognising there existed a bigger picture for both player and Australia.
And the tale of the tape suggests it’s been a stroke of genius.
David was instead sent to Pakistan with Australia’s blessing, striking at over 200 in the Super League.
With that as his platform, David then sold for $1.5 million at the IPL auction and his strike rate of 216.27 for the Mumbai Indians was the highest ever in a single IPL season.
From just 86 balls faced in the world’s premier T20 tournament, he slaughtered 16 of them for six.
As it stands, David is the third-highest run scorer (1002) in T20s across the globe this year, at an extraordinary strike rate of 183.51.
Australia now has a player Ricky Ponting is adamant could be the difference in them going back-to-back at the World Cup.
Would this have been the case if David had stayed to play a game or two of low key T20s in front of empty grandstands against Sri Lanka in February and risked the IPL?
An interesting counter case is the other star batsman pushing to break into Australia’s best T20 XI – Josh Inglis.
The West Australian has played the odd match here and there on the recent overseas tours of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, but compared to David, hasn’t really had much game time.
It could be argued it sets a dangerous precedent allowing players to choose club over country, but Australia has recognised the need to adapt to the rapidly changing dynamic of the global game.
What made David’s case so unique is he doesn’t have the conventional backbone of holding a contract in the Australian state system, meaning his career is completely reliant on what he picks up as a T20 franchise freelancer.
The match payment for an Australian T20 men’s international is just $10,000 and so unless David played 12 T20 internationals in a 12 month period he would not be upgraded to a CA contract and would be missing out on potential contracts elsewhere.
The fact David ended up collecting $1.5 million at the IPL should not be held against him, because at the time these delicate conversations with Australian selectors were taking place, his base price for the auction was just $75,000 and one only needs to look at the number of Australians who miss out on getting picked up at the IPL every year to realise what a lottery it is.
It also isn’t the first time – and won’t be the last – that Australian selectors have made pragmatic decisions like this.
Similar honest conversations took place with another T20 gun for hire Dan Christian in the lead-in to last year’s World Cup.
Whereas previous Cricket Australia chiefs had actively tried to discourage its fast bowlers going to the IPL, the current selectors actually want players to go – believing that the quality of the competition, and the magnitude of the occasion makes them better cricketers.
Selectors have come to appreciate that franchise cricket cannot be ignored and the modern game is now about managing a cricketer’s overall workload.
Resting from playing a low key series for Australia every now and then does not equate to not caring about the shirt.
The downside of the route Australia has taken with David is the World Cup is now just over two months away and he is still yet to debut in international cricket.
But it’s hard to argue with the evidence he has become a bigger asset for Australia as a result.
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