Australian Cricketers’ Association boss Todd Greenberg on his fears for the future of Test cricket
It’s happening around the world - cricketers turning their backs on their nation’s Test teams for the riches of franchise T20, and there are growing fears it will start to happen here too.
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Australian cricket’s player chief fears market forces might leave only three nations playing Test cricket in a decade as cricketers “follow the money” on the franchise circuit.
With a second Indian Premier League window being explored, and the prospect of a Saudi competition offering unfathomable riches for players, the primacy of central contracts is eroding.
Australian Cricketers’ Association boss Todd Greenberg notes that New Zealand, the West Indies and South Africa have all been weakened by the cash available in short-form cricket, and said on Thursday that Australian cricket authorities would “be crazy” to think top Aussies might not also soon turn down the chance to play Test cricket given the prizes at stake elsewhere.
It is already happening on a limited-overs front, with Tim David and Daniel Sams both turning down international white-ball opportunities to play franchise cricket, while David Warner, who is retiring from Test cricket at the end of this series against Pakistan, may miss white-ball matches against the Windies to play in the UAE’s ILT20 league instead.
However, the situation is more dire elsewhere, with the Proteas set to send a badly undermanned team to NZ for Tests later this summer as the South African board prioritises its Indian-backed Twenty20 competition.
The Windies will also send a depleted team Down Under next month with former captain Jason Holder putting ILT20 commitments in the UAE ahead of a Test series.
Greenberg said it was incumbent on Australian authorities to try to save Test cricket elsewhere.
“My message is, ‘we’re under pressure.’ And pressure might be a good thing, because it will lift all of our opportunities up and make us the best we can be, but other countries are really struggling,” Greenberg told this masthead at the MCG during day three of the Boxing Day Test.
“And we can’t play against ourselves. So I’d like to think that Test cricket is more than just Australia, England and India in 10 years’ time. We want to make sure that Pakistan and South Africa and New Zealand and others can continue to play against us.
“I worry that countries like South Africa and New Zealand in 10 years time may no longer be able to afford to have their best players playing and disappearing because of the push and pull of global leagues. So that is a concern. And I don’t think I’m being an alarmist. I think I’m being a realist.”
Greenberg said that while he didn’t think there was an imminent threat of Australian Test guns turning down central contracts while still in their prime, that could easily change over the next decade.
“We’re already seeing countries all over the world and particularly in New Zealand, South Africa, where that’s already happening. And so my message is, ‘it’s not happening here at the moment, and it might not feel like it’s gonna happen here at the moment, but it’s happening in other countries in our sport.’ So we’d be crazy not to think that those pressures aren’t going to be applied to us at some point in time. So we’ve got to have this conversation now. Make sure we’re ready,” Greenberg said.
“Member boards are all trying to play as much bilateral cricket as they can, for all the obvious reasons. The ICC are trying to play more global events for all the obvious reasons. But then on top of that, there are T20 leagues going across all over the world with a lot of private investment. And so when you put all those three things together, and the absence of any strategic leadership is sitting above that, we find ourselves in the position that we’re in now, where it’s almost impossible to make any sense of any sense of comprehension of what the schedule looks like. And so for cricket fans, it’s hard to keep up.
“And for players, it’s near impossible (in terms of) load. So there are real challenges in that system. And, you know, historically any sport any athlete will follow and follow the money. And so when the advent of private investment coming up all over the world, players are getting drawn. So these contracts and we’ve seen that with the recent IPL contracts that you know, there are enormous sums of money being paid significantly higher than what players can earn in a central contract. And that challenge is not going away anytime soon. It’s just going to get stronger and more difficult.”
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Originally published as Australian Cricketers’ Association boss Todd Greenberg on his fears for the future of Test cricket
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