'Broken sport' – Franchise free-for-all undermines player incentives

You are a T20 cricketer who has been playing for a team that has performed below expectations in the franchise league for the past three weeks. The final group match is approaching, and a win is enough to advance to next week's final tournament, but there is a dilemma.

Your agent calls and tells you that a team in another league is looking to replace a player who left on international duty. You're their first choice, but if you're not available next week, the deal may not go through. How will that knowledge affect your mentality heading into the must-win group matches?

Similar scenarios have been occurring almost every day this month. Every time a team was eliminated from the SA20, overseas star players hopped on a plane to Dubai or Dhaka to play in the ILT20 or BPL. More than a dozen players have already made multiple league appearances this month, including Sam Curran, Liam Livingstone and Jimmy Neesham.

For economically rational cricketers, the financial incentives are obvious. Early elimination from one league will likely give him an extra week in another league, maximizing his overall earning opportunity. Caution is required in situations where it may be in the players' interest for the team to lose. One franchise official described this as “a sign of the sport's demise.”

There is no suggestion that players deliberately underperformed in one league to secure a spot in another. However, one agent said: “It's a strange thing to put that in the back of your mind.” The blame lies not with the players who are making the most of cricket's T20 boom, but with the administrators who have allowed the market to mutate without regulation. be.

There are other perplexing scenarios for players who represent a franchisee of one Indian franchise while playing in the IPL itself for another franchise. Last month, Nicholas Pooran made his debut for Lucknow's Durban Supergiants, the South African branch of the IPL team, against MI Cape Town. His spell lasted three games and nine days later he represented and captained MI Emirates in Dubai.

The status quo doesn't work for fans, whether they like it or not. While purists lament the demise of bilateral international cricket's status, even young fans who grew up in the league are underserved. Is there any meaningful way to follow, let alone support, a franchise whose teams change every other day, often without any publicity?

This season, the six ILT20 franchises fielded 129 players, the majority of them from overseas, in 30 group matches. His seven franchises in the BPL used 133 in his first 28 matches. That number is likely to rise even more this week when Keshav Maharaj plays for Fortune Barishal while South Africa's non-strength Test team play New Zealand.

The fundamental issue is that five leagues – BBL, SA20, ILT20, BPL and PSL – hold at least part of their seasons between late January and late February. The problem was further exacerbated during this cycle by the World Cup, which ran until November 19, and will be exacerbated again with the 2024-2025 Champions Trophy scheduled to begin in early February. Everyone wants a window, but there isn't space for everyone.

There are several attempts to find a solution. His FICA, the International Federation of Cricket Players Associations, will invite players to a global scheduling symposium in the second half of this year. FICA chief executive Tom Moffatt told ESPNcricinfo: “The collective opinion of current players is important.” “They are in the mines and should be at the center of these conversations.

“This is ultimately a scheduling issue…The same national governing body that controls the international cricket schedule also owns most of the domestic leagues. It is difficult to achieve, but international cricket If the global schedule were built around a clearer schedule window, it would therefore be possible to make the leagues clearer, achieve proper balance, and naturally line up the leagues more symmetrically.”

Solutions will require long-term thinking as well as cooperation, as exemplified by the Caribbean Premier League's success in avoiding conflict with the Hundred for the 2024 fixture period. Interestingly, league slots are often vague until weeks before the start, with leagues being airbrushed out of the Future Tour Program (FTP) despite stipulating a number of other things. It's about being there.

But with the men's international schedule effectively locked in through the FTP until March 2027, cricket administrators cannot wait that long to address the perverse incentives the league has created. Instead, boards must find collective regulatory solutions to these issues and get them approved at the ICC level. These may include:

1. Contract restructuring
Most leagues operate on a contract system, where players are paid the majority of their salaries through retainers, with match fees and win bonuses only making up a small portion. Changing the balance could potentially avoid situations where players benefit financially from early elimination.

2. Mandatory “cooling off period”
Franchise league contracts and No Objection Certificates (NOCs) have been rewritten to require players to declare their availability for the knockout stage of the tournament when participating in the draft or signing a contract. If they declare themselves eligible for the knockout stages, they should be unable to take part in any other domestic cricket until the day after the final, regardless of their own team's progress.

3. Standardize Blast's “Bravo Rules”
England's T20 Blast has long stipulated that in the case of knockout matches, each county can only field players who were in the matchday squad for at least one group match, but this was the case on final day in 2010. This rule was devised specifically in response to Essex's signing of Dwayne Bravo. Teams should follow suit and encourage the use of local talent within their squads. Curiously, the ECB introduced the same regulation in the second season of The Hundred, but then removed it during the third season.

4. NOC Limits for Centrally Contracted Players
The board may consider following the precedent of the Pakistan Cricket Board and setting limits on the number of NOCs granted to players within a certain period of time. This makes extremely short stints less appealing for players who plan to play in the league for a good portion of the year. .

The fourth suggestion was put forward by Ricky Ponting last week, but the context of his comments – when he was announced as the new coach of the Washington Freedom, in addition to his roles with the Delhi Capitals and Hobart Hurricanes. – outlined the scale of the challenge. In order to bring about change in sports, leadership from management is needed in sports where this has been lacking.

Cricket surrendered itself to the free market long ago, and its governance now depends on an uneasy truce between self-interested actors. Players and their agents have more power than ever and want to make hay while the sun shines. Not only do boards want to keep players, they want to keep players happy. Not only do leagues want to attract fans, they also want to make a profit. The only unrepresented interest concerns the sport itself, and there is no central authority with sufficient powers to rein in these actors.

Franchises not only want to raise their profile, they also want to win. Therein lies an important question. How do SA20 team owners feel about the idea that an early exit might give players the chance to earn an extra week elsewhere? Private investors lobby for regulation The irony is that if you become a party to it, it won't apply to anyone.