Its time for the ECBs money first stance to change...
Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2026 2:29 pmLast night I was listening to American sports mega-podcaster Colin Cowherd muse on his show that the World Cup has managed to penetrate deep into the American public during the current tournament, because it has a "brand" that appeals to 16-24 year old people who define what is "cool". Cowherd cited things like its more normatively shaped athletes having a straight forward, more accessible sex appeal or cool to American's who usually follow sports only played by 35 stone, 7ft tanks, and marvelled at how accessible and normal footballers are on social media. Football, he concluded, is a business you can sell to people, and that is a recipe for popularity.
Cowherd always comes across as a traditional soft-Republican, so within the context of that political outlook in America it shouldn't surprise anyone that any assessment of a past-time's viability should start, and be uniquely concerned with, brand awareness and how it links to generating cash. Nevertheless, claiming the most followed past-time on Earth since the 1800s, the vast majority of that time being an amateur sport, is only successful because of its ability to bank, is quite incredibly dim-witted. Football is popular because it is universal and accessible, because it requires a minimum of space and a single, cheaply bought ball to play. Its inclusive, and has penetrated social culture for those reasons. It would exist, and has existed for more than 150 years, as a sport that is amateur or unconcerned with business. And while modern day football has been corrupted off the field by corporate greed and interest, the product is still the same, and mostly unchanged. Football has a reason to exist independently as a sport just for its own sake, and will always exist irrespective of the business model applied.
Cricket in many ways is completely different. Part of its major appeal is its irrelevance, the enjoyment of the journey and not the end game. It's easy to see this as something that is unappealing, and many of crickets detractors will routinely mock the fact 5 day events can be draws, or even 25 day long series. They seem to miss the point that this is the reason its great and unique, nor accept that it has existed successfully this way for nearly 150 years. Sports don't exist for this long and have nearly 10 million viewers on a single August day in my lifetime without some appeal, or satisfying something people crave in their lives. Nevertheless, this hard to define vortex of things that appeals to the cricket lover can easily be misrepresented as something lacking in our game. The conclusion ends up being there is no reason for test cricket to exist as a 5 day, random one off event that has no end goal, just because its difficult define exactly what we gain from going through the process.
It's in this black hole of ideas and expressions, cricket has become vulnerable to corporate mentality. Much like in the way an American like Cowherd, with no depth of understanding abou football, can only see its potential as a business idea, the same is true of cricket administrators who are piloted in from corporate backgrounds into our national game. In the absence of a more tangible cultural or spiritual reason for it to be, the goal has artificially become money. As Jonathan Liew in the Guardian put it recently, the ECBs entire existence seems to be concerned with "monetising its future self". Cricket is no longer something we can just enjoy for what it is, warts and all. Any part of it that does not contribute to the central task of making money is hostile to its very being.
It's easy to maybe not see this happening before our eyes, but its so prevalent in how the game is discussed. After the very last test we played, as NZ wandered around the outfield celebrating a rare away test win in England, it was left to Aggers to shove a microphone into Daryl Mitchell's face and ask that all important question; "what exactly is New Zealand's brand"? It was delivered like a barb, from a position of superiority. We might have lost to you, but winning and losing is nothing without a brand. For Mitchell's part, he just looked miffed and responded that NZ just play to win. Well who would have thought? What value does winning have if it doesn't spawn an Amazon documentary after? Or sell slogan t-shirts ?
It might seem like a throw away comment, but Aggers is the very essence and leader of an English cricketing press corps that is so intertwined with promoting the ECBs initiatives through client journalism and blind bias, it felt no accident that he used the word "brand". I wouldn't be surprised if the very question he asked was dreamed up during a brainstorm at ECB towers, by professional PR types creating a list of ready made questions to ask in the event of failure. "If England lose a series, skip to page 16, subsection 2 and ask one of these 5 questions". It points towards a game so unconsciously beaten into submission by business considerations being at the forefront, we come to demand from successful other teams at their moment of victory, "well, what's the point. You won, but how much money did you make""?
The big question I come to ask myself with all this is where the idea from Bazball really came from. Did the ECB so desperate for brand penetration and profit just happen to stumble upon a coach who randomly gave them a type of cricket that was the embodiment of vacuous corporate nonsense, or was this the manifestation of a corporate strategy to win hearts and minds? When you look back, its hard to dismiss the later - Bazball from the outset made no secret it was there to "entertain" and not to always win. Would rather lose than draw, if if that meant losing the grand battle of a series, because drawing is not sexy. Drawing gives the game no reason to exist. Bazball was all passing moments easily condescend into short Instagram videos, not about consistency or longevity, or soberly batting out 90 overs. A perfect brand for social media engagement, unconcerned with sporting excellence.
Once seen, its something you cannot unsee. I am not picking on Aggers especially, but yesterday an advert came up on my phone advertising an Australian cricket documentary from Amazon. The short clip was basically Aggers romantically talking about how the true essence of test cricket was watching fast bowling at its most lethal, while Mark Wood ran in at Leeds in 2023 trying to kill Usman Khawaja. When we ask ourselves, why did the ECB give Mark Wood a 3 year deal when he never plays and his performance is bang average, its because of this. The ECB don't give a sh*t that Mark Wood is not fit to lace Ollie Robinson's boots, because videos of Robinson bowling 79mph stump breakers don't generate clicks in the same way on Instagram. It really comes down to that at the end of the day, when the goal is marketing a false product, players and their abilities are only as useful as the clicks they generate as romanticised versions of themselves. Our whole bowling attack was snarly and fast because that is sexy - not because anyone believed it was tactically better.
As one journalist put it, "Robinson bowling 80 mph seamers is now the iconoclastic, counterculture hero" of English cricket. I couldn't agree more. It says a lot for the state of English cricket that Robinson turning up producing world class, no fuss performances all his career can feel remotely radical, but every wicket he takes feels like two fingers being held up to those people in our game that have prioritised sex appeal over winning. The very cynical part of me would even say that moments like Harry Brook in the second innings might even please his superiors. Bad publicity is publicity non the less, and Brook smashing out to deep backward square after the most brain dead innings I have ever seen generates buzz and interest far more than it would if he'd blocked 70 balls and been hit on the pad for 11. Even failure feeds this machine with what it needs. It's probably why Rob Key hasn't been fired.
It's not only the test team that has suffered from this. Franchise cricket is the perfect business model for those who sell the idea of sport being only about money, because the history of sports franchises shows that their ties to any part of the communities they operate is non-existent. If the city doesn't keep pumping in fans or the local authorities keep on building them new stadiums and facilities, they just uproot to a town that will. This is why American football you have the "Raiders" and not just "Los Angeles" playing. If Los Angeles doesn't do its part in making money, then it no longer deserves a team, and will not have one. County cricket clubs have souls, communities and history.... all barriers to profit. They have to go.
Everything about the Hundred has been engineered for short term brand buzz. We redefined the whole format pointlessly, just as a selling point. We created new teams no one has affiliations to, just to get kit launches and brand logo launches. We have players randomly dotting around like mercenaries unattached to a particular public, just to have auctions to show on youtube. And then the whole summer of English cricket reserved and condescend into a few 30 second videos of someone ramp scooping a yorker into the park adjacent to the ground as a commentator tries to drum up faux excitement. Real sport speaks for itself, it doesn't need this nonsense. It doesn't need pre-game concerts, dancing girls standing on carboard boxes with fireworks every time someone hits a boundary, and so on. Its all so cynically contrived and false. Even the boundaries, brought in to 40 yards so miscued, terrible shots fly for 6, turns mistake into success. A 4 or a 6 used to be entertaining because you worked hard for them, not because you are a 29 year old full adult playing on an u-11 sized pitch.
And then there is the 4-day game. The lifeblood and spiritual essence of the sport in our country, filleted, gutted and left to rot. The ECB have no interest in county cricket, and do not want it to flourish as a stand alone competition that produces interesting outcomes. Just look at a team like Sussex who had the audacity to spend a tiny amount of money over their means in the spirit of trying to compete strongly - the ECB were not having that. The fact the price tag of Sussex's ambition totalled less than the interest on the money owed to us by the ECB is none of their concern; this money was not generated to spend to win titles and bring joy to your fans. Hell no... it was money made so that it could be invested in making more money. Sporting success and titles can be ignored, success is in the profit margin. After all, the ECB has awarded all the franchises to teams who risked their futures in similar profit making pursuits. This is the spirit to be rewarded. Kent and Sussex produced all of England's woman's golden generation, but Cardiff gets a woman's team because they built a big shiny stadium on loads of debt. Sound Financial management is sold as danger, and risk has been celebrated. Only teams like Surrey should win championships, because only teams who make lots of profit should be allowed success.
In the end, I am left pondering on Daryl Mitchell's response to Agnew. Contained in that short response was the very essence of why I watch cricket, and why I love it. There is no healthier belief than an idealistic quest to be the best you can at a pursuit, simply for your own self-respect and enjoyment at being successful. Its the reason why any amateur ever takes up a past-time or derives enjoyment from it.
There is nothing more depressingly nihilist than a belief that sports only exists as a business. It bleeds sport of any of its magic, and does us no good. Test cricket in its current form might die, and the counties with it.... and what will be the result? Probably the same game, just without sponsor's, people getting paid 900k a year, and advert breaks... because people have always gravitated to the unique magic of the game, and always will.
Cowherd always comes across as a traditional soft-Republican, so within the context of that political outlook in America it shouldn't surprise anyone that any assessment of a past-time's viability should start, and be uniquely concerned with, brand awareness and how it links to generating cash. Nevertheless, claiming the most followed past-time on Earth since the 1800s, the vast majority of that time being an amateur sport, is only successful because of its ability to bank, is quite incredibly dim-witted. Football is popular because it is universal and accessible, because it requires a minimum of space and a single, cheaply bought ball to play. Its inclusive, and has penetrated social culture for those reasons. It would exist, and has existed for more than 150 years, as a sport that is amateur or unconcerned with business. And while modern day football has been corrupted off the field by corporate greed and interest, the product is still the same, and mostly unchanged. Football has a reason to exist independently as a sport just for its own sake, and will always exist irrespective of the business model applied.
Cricket in many ways is completely different. Part of its major appeal is its irrelevance, the enjoyment of the journey and not the end game. It's easy to see this as something that is unappealing, and many of crickets detractors will routinely mock the fact 5 day events can be draws, or even 25 day long series. They seem to miss the point that this is the reason its great and unique, nor accept that it has existed successfully this way for nearly 150 years. Sports don't exist for this long and have nearly 10 million viewers on a single August day in my lifetime without some appeal, or satisfying something people crave in their lives. Nevertheless, this hard to define vortex of things that appeals to the cricket lover can easily be misrepresented as something lacking in our game. The conclusion ends up being there is no reason for test cricket to exist as a 5 day, random one off event that has no end goal, just because its difficult define exactly what we gain from going through the process.
It's in this black hole of ideas and expressions, cricket has become vulnerable to corporate mentality. Much like in the way an American like Cowherd, with no depth of understanding abou football, can only see its potential as a business idea, the same is true of cricket administrators who are piloted in from corporate backgrounds into our national game. In the absence of a more tangible cultural or spiritual reason for it to be, the goal has artificially become money. As Jonathan Liew in the Guardian put it recently, the ECBs entire existence seems to be concerned with "monetising its future self". Cricket is no longer something we can just enjoy for what it is, warts and all. Any part of it that does not contribute to the central task of making money is hostile to its very being.
It's easy to maybe not see this happening before our eyes, but its so prevalent in how the game is discussed. After the very last test we played, as NZ wandered around the outfield celebrating a rare away test win in England, it was left to Aggers to shove a microphone into Daryl Mitchell's face and ask that all important question; "what exactly is New Zealand's brand"? It was delivered like a barb, from a position of superiority. We might have lost to you, but winning and losing is nothing without a brand. For Mitchell's part, he just looked miffed and responded that NZ just play to win. Well who would have thought? What value does winning have if it doesn't spawn an Amazon documentary after? Or sell slogan t-shirts ?
It might seem like a throw away comment, but Aggers is the very essence and leader of an English cricketing press corps that is so intertwined with promoting the ECBs initiatives through client journalism and blind bias, it felt no accident that he used the word "brand". I wouldn't be surprised if the very question he asked was dreamed up during a brainstorm at ECB towers, by professional PR types creating a list of ready made questions to ask in the event of failure. "If England lose a series, skip to page 16, subsection 2 and ask one of these 5 questions". It points towards a game so unconsciously beaten into submission by business considerations being at the forefront, we come to demand from successful other teams at their moment of victory, "well, what's the point. You won, but how much money did you make""?
The big question I come to ask myself with all this is where the idea from Bazball really came from. Did the ECB so desperate for brand penetration and profit just happen to stumble upon a coach who randomly gave them a type of cricket that was the embodiment of vacuous corporate nonsense, or was this the manifestation of a corporate strategy to win hearts and minds? When you look back, its hard to dismiss the later - Bazball from the outset made no secret it was there to "entertain" and not to always win. Would rather lose than draw, if if that meant losing the grand battle of a series, because drawing is not sexy. Drawing gives the game no reason to exist. Bazball was all passing moments easily condescend into short Instagram videos, not about consistency or longevity, or soberly batting out 90 overs. A perfect brand for social media engagement, unconcerned with sporting excellence.
Once seen, its something you cannot unsee. I am not picking on Aggers especially, but yesterday an advert came up on my phone advertising an Australian cricket documentary from Amazon. The short clip was basically Aggers romantically talking about how the true essence of test cricket was watching fast bowling at its most lethal, while Mark Wood ran in at Leeds in 2023 trying to kill Usman Khawaja. When we ask ourselves, why did the ECB give Mark Wood a 3 year deal when he never plays and his performance is bang average, its because of this. The ECB don't give a sh*t that Mark Wood is not fit to lace Ollie Robinson's boots, because videos of Robinson bowling 79mph stump breakers don't generate clicks in the same way on Instagram. It really comes down to that at the end of the day, when the goal is marketing a false product, players and their abilities are only as useful as the clicks they generate as romanticised versions of themselves. Our whole bowling attack was snarly and fast because that is sexy - not because anyone believed it was tactically better.
As one journalist put it, "Robinson bowling 80 mph seamers is now the iconoclastic, counterculture hero" of English cricket. I couldn't agree more. It says a lot for the state of English cricket that Robinson turning up producing world class, no fuss performances all his career can feel remotely radical, but every wicket he takes feels like two fingers being held up to those people in our game that have prioritised sex appeal over winning. The very cynical part of me would even say that moments like Harry Brook in the second innings might even please his superiors. Bad publicity is publicity non the less, and Brook smashing out to deep backward square after the most brain dead innings I have ever seen generates buzz and interest far more than it would if he'd blocked 70 balls and been hit on the pad for 11. Even failure feeds this machine with what it needs. It's probably why Rob Key hasn't been fired.
It's not only the test team that has suffered from this. Franchise cricket is the perfect business model for those who sell the idea of sport being only about money, because the history of sports franchises shows that their ties to any part of the communities they operate is non-existent. If the city doesn't keep pumping in fans or the local authorities keep on building them new stadiums and facilities, they just uproot to a town that will. This is why American football you have the "Raiders" and not just "Los Angeles" playing. If Los Angeles doesn't do its part in making money, then it no longer deserves a team, and will not have one. County cricket clubs have souls, communities and history.... all barriers to profit. They have to go.
Everything about the Hundred has been engineered for short term brand buzz. We redefined the whole format pointlessly, just as a selling point. We created new teams no one has affiliations to, just to get kit launches and brand logo launches. We have players randomly dotting around like mercenaries unattached to a particular public, just to have auctions to show on youtube. And then the whole summer of English cricket reserved and condescend into a few 30 second videos of someone ramp scooping a yorker into the park adjacent to the ground as a commentator tries to drum up faux excitement. Real sport speaks for itself, it doesn't need this nonsense. It doesn't need pre-game concerts, dancing girls standing on carboard boxes with fireworks every time someone hits a boundary, and so on. Its all so cynically contrived and false. Even the boundaries, brought in to 40 yards so miscued, terrible shots fly for 6, turns mistake into success. A 4 or a 6 used to be entertaining because you worked hard for them, not because you are a 29 year old full adult playing on an u-11 sized pitch.
And then there is the 4-day game. The lifeblood and spiritual essence of the sport in our country, filleted, gutted and left to rot. The ECB have no interest in county cricket, and do not want it to flourish as a stand alone competition that produces interesting outcomes. Just look at a team like Sussex who had the audacity to spend a tiny amount of money over their means in the spirit of trying to compete strongly - the ECB were not having that. The fact the price tag of Sussex's ambition totalled less than the interest on the money owed to us by the ECB is none of their concern; this money was not generated to spend to win titles and bring joy to your fans. Hell no... it was money made so that it could be invested in making more money. Sporting success and titles can be ignored, success is in the profit margin. After all, the ECB has awarded all the franchises to teams who risked their futures in similar profit making pursuits. This is the spirit to be rewarded. Kent and Sussex produced all of England's woman's golden generation, but Cardiff gets a woman's team because they built a big shiny stadium on loads of debt. Sound Financial management is sold as danger, and risk has been celebrated. Only teams like Surrey should win championships, because only teams who make lots of profit should be allowed success.
In the end, I am left pondering on Daryl Mitchell's response to Agnew. Contained in that short response was the very essence of why I watch cricket, and why I love it. There is no healthier belief than an idealistic quest to be the best you can at a pursuit, simply for your own self-respect and enjoyment at being successful. Its the reason why any amateur ever takes up a past-time or derives enjoyment from it.
There is nothing more depressingly nihilist than a belief that sports only exists as a business. It bleeds sport of any of its magic, and does us no good. Test cricket in its current form might die, and the counties with it.... and what will be the result? Probably the same game, just without sponsor's, people getting paid 900k a year, and advert breaks... because people have always gravitated to the unique magic of the game, and always will.