Cricket 2018/19
-
Two rounds of Plunket Shield gone and its only Labour Weekend. With just eight rounds scheduled this year the Wellington team has already played 50% of their home games and the club season has not even started here in Wellington yet. Whats worse the matches are Wednesday to Saturday so very little chance to get along to take in any of the play, particularly the last game against Otago that finished inside three days. I was fortunate enough to enjoy the best part of two sessions at the Basin last Saturday in beautiful sunshine albeit in wintery temperatures (two days were also lost to rain!) but looks like that might be my fill of domestic first class cricket for a fair while. Damn you NZCC game schedulers!
-
@higgins real sign of the times eh? Maximise the t20 and international at the expense of domestic comps.
Aussie do similar with their one day comp. All over in 3 weeks before the middle of October.
Vics won the comp before the cricket season started, basically -
-
What would you guys do differently?
-
Sadly we are at the mercy of what the bean counters say, or more particularly what the holders of the TV rights tell them what they want. Whatever they say they will never succeed in diminishing my love for first class cricket in favour of the limited overs version they want everyone accept as the only cricket worth taking an interest in.
-
@baron-silas-greenback no criticism inferred by me, this is a stark financial reality and not a fault of administrators. There's simply reduced public interest
-
@baron-silas-greenback said in Cricket 2018/19:
What would you guys do differently?
Honestly, it depends on whether you consider the purpose of the national board to run a business to make revenue, or to support playing at the top level. If it's the first (and it seems to be) ,then you organise to maximise revenue, and Test and 1st Class is just a distraction.
If you are after pure cricketing excellence, then you optimise for playing plenty of longer form, and play T20 and ODI to pay the bills.
SANZAAR struggled with this - hence why the current Super comp has a home semi in each country. It's not about the rugby, it's about the money. I just fundamentally disagree with this approach
-
@higgins said in Cricket 2018/19:
Sadly we are at the mercy of what the bean counters say, or more particularly what the holders of the TV rights tell them what they want. Whatever they say they will never succeed in diminishing my love for first class cricket in favour of the limited overs version they want everyone accept as the only cricket worth taking an interest in.
I did not realize they'd reduced Plunket Shield to 8 rounds this year. That is a huge worry for me moving forward.
As for Baron's question. What would you do different - Optimize the domestic T20 comp around the Dec to Jan holidays. Maintain a full domestic calendar of the other forms around it, just like normal for the last decade.
The rest of the domestic cricket doesn't really matter from a scheduling POV. Its a loss maker but you can either view it as a cost or an investment. Because we all know NZC the income is top heavy based in ICC revenue and the occasional Big 3 tour TV revenue. We surely also understand that that revenue model still relies on a strong domestic base turning out the players to populate the blackcaps.
But reducing the quantity of domestic FC cricket by 20% is short sighted. What is the justification for the change from 1,2,5 years ago? I'm off to do some googling of the annual reports.
-
I've looked into some of it further.
On the scheduling. I'm disappointed Plunket Shield is reduced to 8 rounds, but NZC this year have an NZ A tour away to UAE to play Pakistan and also have an incoming tour by India A. That is 5 extra FC games (plus plenty of whiteball games) for the fringe players.
I'm not sure if one is a financial trade-off for the other.
NZC contract the domestic player for 7 months. Whether they play 8 rounds or 10 rounds is fairly irrelevant, although there would be operational costs in hosting those 6 matches.
I've looked at the rest of the domestic calendar. There are the same number of rounds of List A and T20, so no other comp has expanded at the expense of the other. So it can only be a financial rather than playing reason.
On the financial side. The annual report is due out in a few weeks so probably not worth getting stuck into that yet. Looking at last years report they made a $10m loss and explained they have a squeeze for a few years until 2023
White said NZC faced a "challenging couple of years" but explained the loss was largely due to the International Cricket Council's new financial model. In the eight years till 2023, NZC's slice of ICC funding would increase from US$90m to US$128m but it was a case of less now, more later.
I hope that a reduced Plunket Shield doesn't get institutionalised before the money starts coming back in.
