Sportstalk with D'Arcy WaldegraveHeath Mills: On looking to save the international cricket calendar
The World Cricketers' Association has gone upstairs to the DRS in a bid for bilateral series to stay at the scheduling crease.
The players' arm of the sport has interviewed dozens of stakeholders and concluded an annual calendar with assigned windows is required from 2028.
WCA chair and New Zealand CPA boss Heath Mills says their evidence suggests the days of people savouring series without a wider context are fading.
The WCA are taking their proposal to the ICC governing body for further discussion.
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You're listening to the Sports Talk podcast with Duncie Wilder Grave from News Talk ZB.
And it's warm. Welcome now to Heath Mills, the executive chair of the World Cricketers Association the WC. A high Heath, big time of you guys at the moment. You've been working hard, good.
Yeah, we have.
Actually, it's we're really pleased to produce the report that were released last night. It's been about six seven months in the making. And look, I think you know our boards had a conversation about twelve months ago and as we often do, we went around in circles about various degrees of frustration with the structure of the global game of cricket, where we have franchise leagues and competitions clashing with bilateral international cricket. We've got bilateral international cricket declining and value and unless people engaging in it because it doesn't have a lot of context and the meaning. We have outdated read regulations and obviously the preenial problem we have in our sport with decisions are made by a global governing body that really isn't one. It's a members organization and people look after themselves and we've given various degrees of recons and thoughts and opinions on that over the years, and we just decided, look, we actually are not aware of a report being completed that looked that reviewed cricket and from a scheduling the economics, regulation leadership point of view, and decided to commission one ourselves. And we're very fortunate we got Paul Marsh to lead a working group who is used to lead the Australian Crickets Associations, current CEO of the AFL Player Association, obviously part of the Marsh cricket family, and a whole of experts joined him, Tom Harrison, former ECB CEO and obviously a significant broadcasting career, and Sangral Gupta from it from Star Sports in India, along with a number of past players. So it was a really good working group met with about close to seventy different stakeholders players, past players, administrators, current and past broadcasters, and really the overwhelming response was cricket's got issues, the value of bioacual crickets declining, the structure of the competitions at the international franchise level is confusing for fans and cricket needs to actually take stock and come up with a better system and try and develop a program that people can follow understand is more efficient and potentially maximizes its opportunities, which it's not doing at the moment. So we're very pleased with the report that the working group come up with and I'm very delighted to put it out under public domain with its associated recommendations, and we hope it gets good discussion and debate.
Make a good point in the scheduling is chaotic, inconsistent and confusing. There's a three words you don't want in any structure the report itself. It's quite a convoluted, confusing name, protecting history, embracing change, a unified, coherent and global future. But it is what it is. The big question here, Heath World Crickets Association, how much strength have you got in your arm? You can say all you want, you can report all you want, but can you get any movement with the power brokers of World Cricket And I looked toward the BCCI.
Yeah, it's a really good question and one we've been asked a lot. And of course we're only one stakeholder in the game. The players. The majority of the players.
Views the reality is we need to work together.
We have invested in this report, pulled lot of time and effort energy into it. We think it's got really solid recommendations. We don't believe there'll be a panacea, but we know that some stakeholder groups and some of that you mentioned will try and poke holes in it. They will try and discredit parts of it, and they try and say some parts of it can't work in their environment. You know, the recommendations are at a high level, the conceptual. There are ways to address any issue anyone might have. We know that the ICC and the boards aren't going to say this is fantastic, we're going to adopt it tomorrow. What we want from this is discussion. So we want media to engage in it. We want media to question and challenge in it. We're putting it in front of the ICC, It's been put in front of the Cricket Committee where the ICC last night and the Woman's Cricket Committee today. We've sent it to all the national governing bodies. We hope that they will look at it, they will read it, they will come back with views on it, and hopefully, if we keep it in the public domain enough enough discussion occurs and enough pressure goes on the governing bodies to do something about the problems because the problems aren't going away. Whether it's this report, it's recommendations, or a crisis inflection point in a few years time, something needs to be done.
We know the.
Value of bilateral international cricket is declining, we know the interest in that is not what it used to be. We know the interest and the value in the leagues is growing. So you're one of the key recommendations here for US is creating four windows for what we describe as core international cricket, for twenty one day windows where international cricket can be prioritized, and we hope through doing that it's going to have more value because the best players will be available to plan it, which we just don't see happening at all at the moment. And aside from ICC events and major Test match series.
I suppose if you look at that, when you establish yourself as an international player, you become a superstar then and then you can move on to the franchise legs. Without that, the international cricket and the relevance of there's no one to pack for all of these franchise legs. There are no names. They need each other. It's a symbiotic relationship, isn't it.
Well, I'm not certain that that's going to be the future. What we know is that the leagues have been privatized. As you know, there are team owners now her own teams across multiple leagues. We know that they are now developing academies in the major cricket playing countries, and there are players who are getting picked up for the leagues who have played no international cricket or vertu of very little international cricket. And we have even in our own country players that have played not a lot of international cricket who are now for all intents and purposes on the international franchise circuit.
So yes, whilst I would agree with.
You initially five ten years ago that was the case, there's no certainty that that's going to remain the case moving forward. So we strongly believe that we need to protect some aspects of international cricket and sure the best players play because that's critically how a number of the balls derive most of their revenue. So you know, it's important that we protect it. But we also have got to provide opportunity for the leagues to grow. The leagues have been very good cricket, and you look at the explosion and cricket the number of countries around the world enfranchise cricket.
So there's a lot of good in that.
But we just need to make sure that we've got clear windows and we've got clear competitions that people can follow and understand. And it's not about playing a biolactual international cricket ten months of the year sometimes with bu le se level teams because the best players aren't here playing the games. That's not a saint sustainable future. So we'd rather the game was more proactive and did something about that.
Heath Mels, You need the support of the players in general. If a lot of them are splintering off and getting paid well by these individual enterprises, have you got enough faith that you do Actually, as I said before, have the strength in your arm been backed by the players overall in general, because that would be a huge thrust for you.
Yes, but that comes back to the central problem of poor regulation in our sport. So there's virtually no regulations. We have a globaling body, there is a members organization where everyone acts in self interest. They are not great custodians.
Of our sport.
Because our sport is now global, it's transnational, it's across multiple formats and I mean.
Private, private leagues.
It's a hugely different to what it was fifteen years ago. So we need a global governing body that's empowered to look after the best interests of cricket worldwide. Players can only operate in the environment that the governing body.
Set for them.
So if players are sitting off to T ten leagues, T twenty leagues leagues and prioritizing leagues over international cricket, that is because of the lack of regulation.
In our sport. And that comes back to the administration.
Does this lead into the collapse of the ICC? Does this mean it had to be retooled completely? Is this what you're aiming for or.
I don't think we'll see the collapse of the ICC. We were just like the ice DC to be modernizeder. But we would like to see the administrators come together and do something about the schedule and look at some of these reck inndations, prioritize for windows of years, more windows for international cricket. We like them to look at their economics. Absolutely, we think the finances of the game are not optimized that if we had more coherent playing programs and jepardy and international cricket where every game counted towards a two year final and T twenty cricket with an ICC event or the one.
Day we will a couple of test cricket.
We think there's money been left on the table and we think that if they got.
Better regulation in place, that we would.
Our game would make a lot more sense. That we would be able to have good movement of players around the world that's tracked and more importantly, make sure that their welfare is looked after, but that they are able to prioritize international cricket at seven times of the years. So all those things can happen with strong leadership. They can happen under the current ICC structure. People just need to come together and recognize are we governing for the past or are we governing for the future. Are we governing for ourselves or we are are we governing for the whole global game?
Holistically, ipl and BCCI they are a huge force in global cricket. They make an extraordinary amount of money. They are driving this and they don't pay their players a great deal. Percentile wise, when you look at the NBA and the EMBL, all of those big American sports and others, is there a want from the IPL a BCCI to actually release some of that funds for the general health and well being of their players because without the players, they haven't got a league. But they've quite quite dominant in that space, aren't they.
It doesn't appear to be a want at the moment.
I think the IPL pays its plays about eight percent or something like that, which by International Global Franchise League standards is about forty two percent.
Where it needs to be.
But anyway, nonetheless, that's what happens if you don't have a player association. And there's no player association in India. Look, I think that, you know, people look at India. The BCCI has done great things for our sport. If you look at the IPL, it's a phenomenal competent, there's no doubt about that, and they are the.
B center of cricket.
But if I'm sure they want a global game, I'm sure they want the game to grow around the world and many more countries actually start playing cricket more. Seriously, that's not going to happen unless we have a competitive competitive balance in our competitions. So I think that in some of the stats and the report, the number one country and it will be in your obviously, generates about two billion dollars a year. The number thirteen country generates two million. How are we possibly going to have a competitive international program if that's the case. So one of the only leavers they have and to ensure this competition is the ICC distribution. So maybe when we've suggested maybe they need to have a look at there are other examples around the world where you've got an international sport where no countries allow more than ten percent of the distributions.
Have they got it right? Have we got it wrong? No?
No, But we should be looking at those sorts of things. And it comes back to I think that question, do we want a global governing game, a global game?
Sorry?
Or is that just rhetoric? Do we just each want to look after ourselves? As long as the big three continue to look after themselves, we're going to have this mess.
Timing to eat so much better than that, so.
We've got to wind things up. But let's talk about timing because in glacial paces sometimes a term that is used with major sports and global sports because it is problematical troublesome to get things running at a decent pace with so many concerned parties. What does the WCA want to achieve in what kind of time spam? When do you want to see this change? Have you got a plan? Is to weigh the way this progresses.
We think these changes can be implemented in eighty months to years time.
And it outlines that in the report.
That the pace of the change is entirely dependent upon the ten to eleven twelve member board full member boards of the ICCY ultimately control it. So New New Zealand Cricket sits around that table on the ICC and has a clear responsibility for the current program that we're faced with, the current schedule, that the mess that we have in terms of that scheduling. So those ten countries, they are the ones who need to make a decision here do they want to embrace this report, have a look at the recommendations on certain that they can probably be improved in the areas and there people will other stakeholds will have different views. We're happy with that. We just want a discussion. That's why we've done this piece of work instead of just relying on anecdotal recons.
Which is what we all do.
We've invested them pulling together a comprehensive report with evidence in research compared as to what cricket could look like moving forward would be the lot. We love them to engage. It's up to them whether they choose to do that or not. What we are going to do is each time someone comes to us in the next in the years ahead with does this component part doesn't work or we want to change test cricket into two divisions and looking at things in isolation, we're going to point back to this report and so you cannot look at things in isolation. We need a global direction and there are strong recommendations here that you need to start to think about. But we've got something now on paper that we can reference and we're going to continue to do that when people have issues with the current structure that we currently have to deal with today.
Starting framework is what you need. A good work well done on the mokey behind this. It's the WCA, the World Crickets Association Executive Chair Heath at Mills, wishing you the best for that, because yeah, as I said, it ain't broken, don't fix it. But it's broken and we know it, and it's nice to see Heath Mills that that has been recognized.
Thanks Darsie, appreciate the time.
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