And a more revealing one with Mike Atherton in the Times here, going over the same territory but perhaps with a sligtly better map, one whose contours ought to be understood by the most diehard tradionalist:
"Tom Harrison is bullish. After a two-year period during which hard decisions have been taken and difficult discussions had about the future of the game, the 45-year-old chief executive of the ECB is pushing a new Twenty20 tournament as one part of a fresh domestic schedule that he hopes will bring in significant revenues as well as drive audiences and participation to new heights.
Given his optimism, our meeting place, the Renaissance hotel near King’s Cross in central London, is aptly named. Renaissance is exactly what he hopes to achieve on and off the field over the next rights cycle, which will take in a five-year period from 2020, the first season in which the new T20 tournament will be held.
He sees huge opportunities for the sport. “If you take the amount of engagement we have across all the different platforms that we are broadcast on, then it’s massive. We talk to newspaper editors and broadcasters about what the second biggest sport in this country is and it’s not a debate. It’s cricket,” he says.
“This is partly because of our command of the time of year — there is less clutter — and we have more ownership of that window. We are probably quite a lot bigger than we think and our job is to get some understanding of that market within the next few years so that we can start future-proofing our business.”
The first stage of that process has been to persuade the counties of the need for a new T20 tournament, aping elements of the Big Bash in Australia. On March 27 the counties will be asked to vote for a change to the constitution, which means that a new competition involving eight teams only can be sold to the market.
Is it a done deal? “We have been talking with the network throughout and they have been involved in every conversation. There is a lot of detail that we won’t have ready for the end of the month but we are three years away from the first ball being bowled. We accept we have a lot of work to do but we have to get on with the business of accepting it’s going to happen.
“The constitutional change is something that enables us to sell the media rights. There will be significant constitutional reform over the next 12 months — broader governance reform — so we are trying to get to the point where we can complete the business of selling this tournament and get on with planning it. I am confident it will go through.”
Why shouldn’t counties see this constitutional change as the thin end of the wedge, a change that could marginalise them from future involvement in other competitions? “I think that comes down to trust and an understanding of the direction of travel,” Harrison says. “We have spent two years building a framework around what we are trying to achieve as a game over the next five years. We’ve probably had more collaboration in the last two years than the game has ever had, since the ECB was constituted. We need to be in it together.”
Yet the impression has been of a stifled debate, with counties forced to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA), and the voice of county members muffled. “There is a way we’ve had to go about this. Discussions have been difficult — there’s no getting away from that — but it has been a constructive argument,” he says. “People have felt they could air their views but there has to be some respect for a process and when you are talking about commercial values there has to be an element of confidentiality. It was never intended as a gagging order, rather a professional process put in place to do serious business. NDAs mean that a conversation is about to get interesting.”
Clearly, Harrison is staking a lot on the new tournament but what if he is wrong? “The tournament is just one part of a broad strategy to grow the game, which includes reorganising our international season at home, a new participation strategy to get more kids playing, a strategy to be more relevant to South Asian communities, to grow the women’s game and female audiences. There is an awful lot going on. The game is changing fast and we have to recognise that.
“We can be more relevant to children and we need to focus on that market because the return on investment in attracting a five to eight-year-old into the game, as a player or simply being a lifelong follower, is enormous,” he says. “We understand that challenge better than we ever have done. We know by thinking differently about what that child’s first exposure to cricket is through their local club, by giving them something positive that gets them dragging their parents back time and again is a rich and powerful connection. If we get that right it will pay off over a lifetime.
“We need to cater to that market through everything we are doing, not just T20. The England team has to connect. I recognised that at Trent Bridge after the Ashes win [of 2015], seeing the players out there with the crowd, spending longer with them than the period of play that morning, being very accessible at their moment of triumph. That is so important.”
Harrison is the best-qualified chief executive that English cricket has had. He combines a first-class cricket background with Derbyshire, a lifelong love of the game with Teddington CC, as well as broad business experience through, initially, the marketing department of the ECB and then IMG, with whom he gained an intimate knowledge of the television and Asian markets.
Since his appointment he has kept a low profile as he has grappled with three key responsibilities: the England teams, which are the public face of the game; the ECB’s competence as an administrative body; and, most importantly, the health of the wider game. It is this last responsibility, that is at the forefront of his mind.
He was forced to tackle some immediate issues with the England team. His first action was to replace Paul Downton with Andrew Strauss, which then led to Peter Moores’s sacking, and there has been a significant turnover of staff at Lord’s. Bubbling away in the background, not always quietly, has been the conversation about the new T20 tournament.
He offers a hard-nosed, pragmatic rationale for the new tournament based on a compelling argument, most of which is rooted in the dramatic changes that have taken place in the decade since the Indian Premier League altered the landscape for good. English cricket’s income is partly derived from selling rights at home, as well as the collective rights sold for ICC events, but also they derive considerable value from rights to cricket in England broadcast in India. It is this last revenue stream that is vulnerable as the IPL sucks interest its way.
“International cricket is coming under pressure with successful ICC events on the one side and domestic T20 leagues on the other,” Harrison says. “We are outliers in this debate in that we rely on Test cricket and international cricket for over 90 per cent of our revenue. We don’t control international cricket, if there is risk there we need to look at it. We need to derive our revenue from something that we control, and that something is domestic T20.
“We’ve been down this road before, being reliant on other markets. The game has been complacent about revenues from the Indian market. That’s dangerous and we’re about to find out how dangerous that is because it’s changing. English cricket can do an awful lot about plotting its own destiny but can do very little about how the Indian television viewers respond to its product.
“We’ve grown fat on the revenues from India and we need to recognise that our business needs to be self-reliant. The T20 debate is as much about what is happening in Test cricket in India as it is our domestic game. Where we’ve found real consensus — and I use the word carefully — is when we have talked about the big picture and the big picture is that we are too heavily reliant on international cricket and bilateral international cricket so those are risks that we need to mitigate and part of my responsibility is to ensure that we are prepared to meet those challenges.”
There are those who would say that the NatWest Blast is doing just that. Ticket sales are up by more than 60 per cent in the past four years, and awareness of the competition is growing. “The data that tells us that T20 is the best vehicle for driving new interest in the sport is definitely right,” he says. “The Blast has done its job well, driving local communities to clubs on an appointment to view, and driving crucial local revenue for the game, so we are building on a success story. But we need to adopt a new strategy and attract new communities.
“We know T20 will drive new audiences to the game. The demographic profile in Australia is up to 50 per cent female for starters and the young index is extraordinary. The buzz around T20 as a global format is extraordinary. Recently we have seen statistics that say T20 as a format is bigger than the FA Cup. That is partly the Blast but it is T20 more generally: the IPL, Big Bash, England competing in a global final, the soap opera of the draft, players’ salaries going through the roof. The Blast has its place in that.”
But will it have its place, given the inevitable saturation that will come with an extra tournament? “We have to do a great job of differentiating our product, so we have to work really hard at trying to connect the Blast to the new tournament in a way that is relevant, meaningful and interesting for fans and we don’t take away anything that has been achieved. The counties have made a fantastic success of the Blast and that’s why I understand there has been some resistance.
“The new T20 tournament is exciting people. The hardest discussion we have had about this has been with the county game. The moment you take it outside, the reaction has been extraordinary with broadcasters — free-to-air and subscription — the fans and commercial partners. There is real excitement and hope that cricket can get back on to free-to-air TV with this domestic product. These conversations are happening so I know we are right in this.”
One of the reasons Harrison was selected for the job is his expertise in the television market, so he will be judged partly by the size of the next deal, currently worth £75 million per annum [full disclosure: I commentate on cricket for Sky Sports]. “What we have to achieve through the next cycle is to recognise what the world looks like in 2024,” he says. “It’s the balance of reach and revenue and the ability for us to change our business within the context of that, so we have to recalibrate the distribution of our product. The great news is we have so much more content to sell. It is a huge opportunity. We are a nailed-on subscription driver for pay TV; that has been the case for a long time and we will demonstrate that we can grow the pay TV market for our partners in that space. We are exciting the free-to-air audience and are now relevant in that space for international and domestic cricket, for men and women. In terms of social media platforms, that’s another interesting conversation as a gateway to a whole new audience.
“We are lucky. We have a vibrant market and a great product. Think of the last time we went to market: we have got international T20 which didn’t exist then, a whole new genre of international cricket which is rating way better than anything else. We will hopefully have some context around Test cricket although we can’t guarantee that. We are big drivers of that conversation but it might take a bit of time.
“We will hopefully have context in our ODI debate, proper qualification for the World Cup and a team that is playing brave cricket. We will have a new T20 domestic competition, exciting broadcasters and brands that have never had a conversation with cricket before — some of these broadcasters haven’t been talking to cricket for ten years — and we have women’s cricket and the Blast.
“We’ve got some very bold expectations.”
