Monday 11 June 2012

Cricket or Rugby : Who spreads their game best

Irelands George Dockrell after taking the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar
The rapid rise in the standards of associate cricketing nations has seen a huge increase in the focus on how the International Cricket Council views emerging cricket nations and whether it is a desirable thing for the ICC for those associates to make it to the top table and become full members.
The moment where neutrals began to sit up and wonder exactly what drove the sport was immediately before the 2011 World Cup when it was decided that the 2015 world cup would contain just 10 teams without any qualification method with the apparent consolation that there would be full qualification in 2019 a full 8 years away for the associate players involved in the 2011 tournament.
This decision was changed a couple of months later but the damage had already been done.  Rugby on the other hand committed in 2011 to keep their tournament as a 20 team tournament (12 qualify from previous world cup performance, 8 others through qualification process)  until at least 2019 despite the fact that there are just as many if not more one sided fixtures in the rugby world cup. With  a 3 tier system and 11 top tier countries rugby union is an easily comparable sport to cricket on an administration and governing level at least. Taking the example of how the respective sports treat world cup qualification spots is one thing but how they treat upcoming nations is the probably more important.
     During the 80's Romania were consistently beating top table teams at rugby union. This it has to be said was mainly due to the communist government at the time pouring considerable funds into the sport for propaganda purposes. Their scalps included France, Wales and Scotland generally during the November International series. Clearly showing themselves to be strong enough to compete in the 5 nations a competition for top tier countries Romania it would seem was never invited to join and with the fall of the communist government the game proceeded to decline in the region. In recent years money has been poured into Romanian rugby perhaps an acknowledgement that something should have been done to help the country twenty years ago. Today there is a Romanian team competing in the European Challenge Cup the Romanian Oaks while IRB funding has ensured the team has plenty of internationals available to them in a season. At the recent World Cup a strong performance against Scotland showed the gap between them and the six nations teams has narrowed further. How the IRB reacts should Romania perform consistently well against a tier one country while dominating their tier two opponents will be interesting. Italy and Argentina s promotion in the last twenty years show reasons to be encouraged.
    The best cricketing comparison is probably the Kenyan cricket team which peaked at the 2003 world cup by reaching the semi final. Their victories in that tournament included Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and a strong Sri Lankan team. This relative success was rewarded by a place in a quadrangular series against Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. After that however there were very few fixtures available to the team something which undermined the growth of cricket in Kenya. Admittedly there was an administration deficit within Kenyan cricket which also caused disruption during this period. The fact remains though that Kenya were denied the opportunity to compete regularly against top nations. In fact crickets structures were so backward during this period that Kenya only played two one day internationals in three years. Similar to how the IRB have since treated Romania funds have arrived to help cricket in Kenya since but crucially not at the moment where investment might have caused real quantifiable growth in the sport.
     Looking at both organisations and sports these attitudes of a few years ago don't quite answer the questions of this piece. As with most debates of this nature looking more closely at the finances within the two organisations will probably bring us closer to an answer. The first question I wanted to answer was how much of the revenue generated within the game is given back to tier 1 nations. Taking cricket first the De Woolfe report a report commisioned to help the ICC reach best practice exposes the fact that after funds given to the global development programme 75% percent of  surplus profits are divided among the ten full members. The remaining`25% is divided among the associate and affiliate nations mainly on a performance basis. This revenue is divided immediately after ICC run events and is unrelated to any prize money handed out. A good example of the inequality this creates can be seen in the 2007 world cup where Zimbabwes cut amounted to $11 million. Ireland on the other hand received $56000 and an undisclosed amount in media rights. While this situation has improved the massive disparity in funding between associate and full members leaves very little opportunity for an associate nation to become a major cricketing nation without major private financial backing to create a fixture list.  In rugby the IRB's profits are mainly taken from the Rugby World Cup but rather than being divided equally among full members after an event they are spent over the next four years with money used in a much more targetted fashion. The fact that a major nation like New Zealand feel the need to threaten to not compete in the next world cup due to the cost of playing in it tells you profits are not being sent back to full members in the same way that they are in cricket. Digging further profits from the last rugby world cup amounted to £90 million with the IRB's commitment being to spend £150 million on rugby over the next four years. The precise details of how much of this money will reach developing countries isn't clear but fixtures for tier 2 countries in both June and November as well as extra competitions are listed as a strong priority. Looking at the most recently printed figures regarding the IRB's strategic investment programme the 2009-2012 period, 66% of this £48 million of finance was spent in tier 2 and tier 3 countries. The only other funds which could trickle directly to tier 1 nations being annual union grants which totalled a fairly minute £7.4 million across 117 countries.
     Other easily comparable areas include how players qualify to play for a country and how often tier two nations have the opportunity to play tier 1 or full member countries outside of a world cup.   In rugby union once a player earns a cap for a country they are no longer eligible to play for another country. High profile cases have shown this regulation is water tight and not open for change. In cricket a player can switch from an associate country to a full member overnight while to switch in the opposite direction requires a four year wait. My opinion is this makes playing for a test nation (playing test cricket is often given as the reason) is seen as the natural progression and a promotion a notion which doesn't belong in international sport. The ICC would argue it improves an associate nations cricket resources. Obviously I feel the system in rugby or football for that matter where your country is always your country is more favourable. Looking at fixtures against tier 1 nations the best associate cricket nations play between 2 and 3 games against full members per annum currently. In rugby the 6 nations and Rugby Championship tournaments make it difficult to create opportunities for tier 2 countries to compete with the best however most still manage 3 to 4 games per annum using windows in June and November. Player release is an issue both sports contend with and to be fair cricket has made great progress in bringing the right balance to this area in terms of rules. The rules are also fair in rugby however rugby's club fixtures and the length of the European season in particular means some tier 2 nations are forced to rest their best players for certain internationals. In cricket for mainly monetary reasons most associates can only call on their best qualifying players where a better offer does not exist. Ryan Ten Doeschate of Holland would be a strong example of this. Finally a quick look at the average tier 2 team in rugby and cricket shows that more tier 2 rugby players are full time professionals in tier 1 countries. This could be a reflection on player ability or on the fact that tier one countries in rugby are not as cautious about giving professional opportunities to players from outside the main club.
    I've wrote this piece to try and discover whether these two sports can make further inroads around the globe in the coming years. Both sports have accepted new countries to the top tier in the past.There are good reasons in both cases why this should only be done when the circumstances are right. My fear is that one of the sports has a core aim to spread their game internationally while also growing revenue. The other sport has spreading the game globally as a casual objective compared to its other aims. Rugby doesn't currently have a tier 2 nation who have consistently competed with the best countries in the world and are massively dominant against other tier 2 nations.   If it did the evidence above suggests they might be treated better than cricket teams in this position have been.

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