Few international sports competitions predate the country that hosts them, but few are as old as Ashes.
The England-Australia cricket series was first played in 1882, before the founding of Australia. On Friday, the 73rd edition of the competition begins in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham, England.
But while the Ashes series looks as healthy as ever, tickets for the first four days of all five tests have sold out, with top players on both sides speaking out about the importance of the event to their careers. But the cricket version leaves the teams playing on decidedly unsteady footing.
The Ashes series consists of five so-called test matches, each lasting up to five days. The series is won by the team that wins the most of these games. Test cricket has long been considered the highest level and perhaps the purest form of the sport, as it is a challenge that interweaves skill and endurance.
The only problem is that most people in the world don’t seem to have that time anymore. South Africa will not play a test series of more than two games until 2026. The West Indies will only play one match over the next four years.
The pressure is also affecting England and Australia. In 2013 Ashes’ tour lasted all summer. That year Australia played several English county teams to adapt to the environment before the match against England, and played a few short-form games after the Ashes ended. These extra games helped the county cricket club’s bank accounts and contributed to the atmosphere of Ashe’s festival.
This summer, Australia will only have five ash tests packed into six weeks in early summer. Talented players from England and Australia spent April and May playing the much faster and increasingly popular three-hour version of Twenty20 cricket in the lucrative Indian premier, making it an excellent choice for visitors. did not have the option of scheduling warm-up exercises. alliance. (Australia also participated in the World Test Championships, a new event created by the sport’s governing body to increase interest in Test cricket. The Australian won the championship by beating India in London.)
The England and Wales Cricket Board, known as the ECB, is also trying to finish the Ash early to leave the peak of the summer free for its own IPL-inspired venture called Hundreds. I tried.
This seeming rush to get through the ashes, cricket’s most revered event, caused surprise among the ruling class. “When he repeats the test five times, the story unfolds and you want to take your time savoring it,” said former professional cricketer Simon Hughes, who has commented on Ashes for 30 years. “When you compress it to six weeks, it’s a little smaller.”
For players and others alike, there is a sense that Ashes, and Test cricket more broadly, are on the verge of a major change. The abundance of money and opportunities to play Twenty20 cricket in countries such as India is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. And with Test cricket and Twenty20 demanding slightly different skill sets, many players in the sport see greater advantages in focusing their energy and training on shorter games.
“The most important person in cricket is not the National Board, but the owner of the IPL franchise,” said Australian cricket writer Jarrod Kimber. “Look at the NBA, or the English Premier League. In any league, when you have team owners with a lot of money, they become much more important than managers.”
The main concern of IPL owners is to keep players healthy and on the team, who can receive millions of dollars for a few weeks of work. But it’s also true that IPL owners now want to tie their stars to 12-month deals to ensure they’re not only playing in the IPL season, but also in other Twenty20 tournaments where IPL franchises have acquired teams. is an open secret ofinclude SA20 new event in south africa United Arab Emirates and usa.
All six SA20 teams are owned by IPL teams, as are four of the six teams in the new American Series, Major League Cricket.
This shift in the balance of power could have significant implications for cricketers and Ash. For example, 23-year-old Australian all-rounder Cameron Green, who will play a key role for the Ashes, was sold to the Mumbai Indians for $2.1 million in the latest pre-IPL campaign player auction. This was his second highest fee ever paid in an IPL auction and underscored Green’s relative inexperience. But it was also an effort to tie Green down early in his career, give him IPL experience and create options for the Mumbai national team through teams in South Africa, the US and the UAE.
If Green takes the next step and accepts a year-long deal from Mumbai, the authority to approve representation for Australia would be given to his side, not the National Cricket Board. This would be a reversal of the current system in which each country’s board must allow its players to play in franchise leagues abroad.
The change in power has put national boards under strain. The England Cricket Board has identified “the emergence and growth of global franchise leagues and pressures on player wage inflation in a highly competitive market” as major risks to its financial position in its latest financial report. bottom.
“We need to make sure playing for England remains an attractive option for players,” said ECB CEO Richard Gould. But he is an IPL owner who has deeper funds.
Mr Hockley, Australia’s cricket chief, admitted he was in a similar position. When Cricket Australia signed new five-year contracts for both male and female players in April, the average contract value for men playing for the national team rose by 7.5 per cent to $650,000.Green made more than triple her earnings in her 7 weeks of IPL
This bit of simplistic economics means that national boards will soon have to rely on the allure of playing for their country to convince players to spend increasingly precious time on long-running series like Ashes. It means that there is a possibility that
You won’t see any of this behind-the-scenes bargaining in this year’s Ash series. Packed stands, crisp white players and a clean outfield will give the impression that Test cricket is still inviolable, at least in England. However, this will likely be the last Ashes series where all players will be employed primarily by national boards.
In the words of Australian cricket historian Gideon Haig, Ashe was “the best runner in the worst race in town.”
