Frankly staggering news revealed in a snippet from the Guardian’s always excellent Digger column this morning, where we’re reminded that the power to market and license Twenty20 cricket – the cash cow now threatening the very future of the game godammit (see posts passim) - as a format was originally in the hands of the English Cricket Board.The ECB held the rights to this short, exciting and extremely telegenic version of the game which was first developed and played in England in 2003. The word’s always been that the ECB apparently handed over the rights to the rest of the cricket world out of a sense of altruism and for the wider good of the game (another case of our dear old mother country inventing shit which the world then takes, learns, re-invents and then hands us a damn good thrashing at).
However turns out it was nothing quite so philanthropic, apparently ECB execs simply wouldn’t or couldn't stump up the ‘six figure sum’ it would take to patent Twenty20 and so handed it over gratis to the wider world, thereby passing up on the chance to make millions of quid and incidentally stopping this IPL nonsense in its tracks.
No so much a case of ‘not killing the golden goose’ as handing it over for a right good raping and stuffing. Sometimes we just want to sob quietly in the corner.
Oh and good work IPL on banning all every legitimate cricketing website (including the superb Cricinfo - who once upon a time we used to work for) from covering your crappy greed fest. That’s really going to be good for the game.
1 comment:
I couldn't believe it when I bought tickets for the ICC trophy the other year (NZ v Aus: don't bother going to the pub that day, no staff!). When they arrived they had a letter with them stating exactly what we were allowed to bring in. Pepsi, not Coke, Walkers crisps, only one brand of mineral water. It really was annoying as hell and it's only going to get worse (witness McRonalds at the Olympics.) Charlie's had this problem at the members entrance at Lords too, believe it or not: "What's in that bottle, sir?" "Pimms!" "You can't bring it in, it might contain alcohol." "We certainly hope it does.")
This kind of restriction is now applied to photographers ("you can't bring a lens that big in here!") and journalists as well.
(The game was great by the way. The highlights were: 1) a Kiwi in front of me who sang "Glen McGrath!" repeatedly and very loudly until McGrath turned around and then changed to "What a wanker!". and 2) singing "Show us your mullet!" to Gillespie. [sportingly, he did.])
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