Burning down the house

Abstract

Professional cricket, in terms of playing standards, opportunity, profitability, adaptability and reach, has never been as good, for players, administrators and audience, as it is in 2008. However, administrative greed, and a reluctance to see players' unions as partners, have bred an unrelenting fixture list, making increasingly forbidding demands on the men who make it all possible – the players. ‘Burnout’ is the buzzword. One solution, however, has emerged: the briefer, three-hour Twenty20 limited-overs format, an historic development whose economic potential was emphasized in September 2007 when India won the inaugural World Twenty20 tournament.

Notes

 ¹ Examples of recent literature about the politics and racial aspects of cricket include: Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket. Volume 2: The Age of Globalization; Carrington and McDonald, ‘Whose Game is it Anyway? Racism in Local League Cricket’; Malcolm, ‘It's not Cricket: Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Inequalities’; Marqusee, Anyone But England: Cricket, Race and Class; Murray and Merrett, Caught Behind: Race and Politics in Springbok Cricket; Williams, Cricket and Race; Steen, ‘Whatever Happened to the Black Cricketer?’, an article published in The Wisden Cricketer in August 2004, and subsequently adapted for the Evening Standard and The Observer, which won the UK section of the 2005 EU ‘For diversity, against discrimination’ Journalism Award.

 ² Shawn Cumberbatch, ‘IMF CWC Warning’. Barbados Advocate, April 17, 2007. http://dlpbarbados.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/caribbean-economies-whiplash-from-cwc.

 ³ Briggs, ‘Burned Out or Fired Up?’, 47.

 ⁴ Briggs, ‘Burned Out or Fired Up?’, 48

 ⁵ John, ‘Excess fare’, 49.

 ⁶ John, ‘Excess fare’, 49.

 ⁷ John, ‘Excess fare’, 49.

 ⁸ Richard Hobson, ‘Schofield to Lead the Inquest into England's Debacle Down Under’. Times Online, January 16, 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article1293353.ece.

 ⁹ Briggs, ‘Burned Out or Fired Up?’, 47.

¹⁰ Steen, ‘The Oval And After’, 77.

¹¹ Steen, ‘Leading the Way to Player Power’.

¹² Condon et al. , Report on Corruption in International Cricket. http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2001/may/23paul6.htm (section 120).

¹³ Steen, ‘Leading the Way to Player Power’, 37.

¹⁴ Steen, ‘Pitched Right’, India Today, August 4, 2003, 27.

¹⁵ Steen, ‘Pitched Right’, 27.

¹⁶ The Times, Main Section, London Edition, September 25–28, 2007.

¹⁷ England and Wales Cricket Board, ‘Speed admits Twenty20 hope’.

¹⁸ Crincifo, ‘Twenty20 Won't Bring in the Money – FICA’.

¹⁹ ‘May Calls for Cautious Approach from ICC’. Daily Times, Pakistan, September 29, 2007, www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page = 2007%5C09%5C29%5Cstory_29-9-2007_pg2_4.

²⁰ ‘May Calls for Cautious Approach from ICC’. Daily Times, Pakistan, September 29, 2007, www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page = 2007%5C09%5C29%5Cstory_29-9-2007_pg2_4

²¹ Chappell, ‘A Cure for Cricket's Cancer’.