Cricket is at a crossroads. The explosion of commercial T20 league cricket around the world, while presenting an opportunity to spread the sport, also has the potential to impact longer formats. Or more importantly, how the game is taught.

The onslaught of the shortest format of cricket (or rather, multiple shorter formats) has also begun taking a toll on players with some opting to retire from Test or One Day cricket to prolong their careers. It has also led to a scenario where aspiring cricketers might choose to focus solely on the money-making machine that is T20 cricket over the traditional formats of the game. While that is entirely understandable to sustain a career, the basics of the sport will still need to be strong.

Regardless of what players choose, say former India cricketer Snehal Pradhan and former first-class cricketer K Jeshwanth, the upbringing of the players must remain the same.

Speaking on a panel discussion at the Sports Law and Policy Symposium 2022 in Bengaluru, Jeshwanth, now the Director and head coach of SIX cricket said, “Don Bradman played cricket with a bat and ball. Today, Suryakumar Yadav is also playing with a bat and ball. Nothing has changed (in that aspect).”

Stating that change is most often welcomed, he added, “I have spent a lot of time coaching on the fields. If there are no changes to the sport, then it would be boring for me as a coach as well. Cricketers also need to change and it is a good challenge for a coach to decide when to bring in these new cricketing shots or deliveries.

“Why I use Bradman’s name is that the basics haven’t changed. This is what coaches need to keep in mind when you are coaching kids. The challenge is that young players do not have the patience of learning basics. The coaches need to ensure that the youngster is learning the basics while also being in tune with the changes in cricket,” he said.

“If the foundation is strong, you can build any structure on top of it and tweak it as you please. But if your foundation is weak, even if you reach the top, there’s no way of guaranteeing that you’ll stay there for long,” he added.

Reaffirming Jeshwant’s position, Pradhan, former pacer and now manager of women’s cricket at ICC, said, “The basic skills, they do not change. 80% of a cricketer’s learning curve is all about the basics. It’s the last 20% where it diverges based on what format you are playing. What we are seeing now is that because kids are watching a particular form of cricket, they want to jump straight into that last 20%. They need to be taught the basics first.

“What does change is the physical demand on the players. I was lucky enough to grow up with first-class domestic cricket, List A and T20 cricket and that was a completely different physical challenge. The skills really were not so different. It is basically a shift in attitude and a shift in preparation.”

Growing cricket

Though interest for cricket in India is still pretty high, the same cannot be said for cricket powerhouses Australia and England.

A 2021 report by ABC news found that cricket, which used to dominate Australian summers for decades, has seen a drop in registration numbers with many children opting to play football and basketball.

A 2014 report by the England and Wales Cricket Board found that among children aged 7-15, cricket was the most popular sport for only 2% of the demographic. The number of recognised club cricketers also dropped by 64,000 in a year. Things are however said to be changing since the summer of 2019.

“During my first trip to Australia for a tournament about 10 years ago, I was walking past this beautiful pristine cricket ground with perfectly cut grass and a turf pitch in the centre. And outside the ground was a board which said ‘Players required’,” Pradhan said.

“There is no doubt that cricket is popular in Australia, England and West Indies and hopefully, these reports of enrolment numbers in school cricket going down prompts authorities to do something,” she added.

One of the regions that the ICC has identified as crucial to the growth of the game is the USA. The 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup will be co-hosted by the USA and the West Indies with the ICC also pushing for cricket to be included in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Major League Cricket, an upcoming T20 league, is one of the pathways for cricket to grow in a country in which basketball, baseball and American football rule the roost. The Knight Riders Group who are one of the founding members of MLC, are also constructing a cricket stadium in LA to strengthen cricket’s Olympic bid.

However, the top-down approach rather than introducing cricket through the highly-effective US collegiate system has raised concerns. Sam Taylor, the managing director of Sportradar, believes that in the US where sports team owners wield immense power, the top-down approach is the way to go.

“The US is a territory that the ICC has targeted to get more fans from. It plans to get 50 million new fans by the end of 2032 from the US. The best way to reach that goal is taking funding from where you can to make the sport visible. With a market like US, it needs to be sort of a top-down introduction to cricket, get capital injection and visibility and start to then let that flow down to the grassroots facilities. We have to be realistic in a market like the US despite the obvious pitfalls,” he said.

Pradhan argued making cricket more accessible in countries so as to develop a culture and not relying on immigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to drive the sport in the country.

“Cricket is a tricky sport to excel at. It takes time and you also have to spend a lot of money on things like your cricket kit. There are ways to introduce cricket which is easily accessible for kids at a younger age. There needs to be a culture for the sport for it to grow natively. That has proved to be challenging. We have seen a number of teams driven by Indian immigration to those countries,” she said.

“But you also have teams like the Thailand women’s team which qualified for the T20 World Cup. The Thailand team is made up entirely of Thai players who have taken up the sport natively. It is not a sport made of expats. That shows there is potential if cricket is taken smartly to those markets. It requires proper investment in that 80% that I and Jeshwanth sir spoke about.”