For the world’s best-concealed big international sporting event, it’s hard to go past LIV Golf. I’m a golf nut and would watch any contest – even Australian cricketers playing golf in anticipation of one of them impaling himself on his six iron – but LIV seems to slip by unnoticed. Apparently Brooks Koepka won recently, on an obscure streaming service in a galaxy far, far away …
A cricket World Cup is being staged on Australian soil, and so far it has travelled under an assumed name, sneaking through airports without detection. The start to the Twenty20 event, a collection of qualifying matches, World Cup-but-not-World Cup, has been low key to say the least. Call it a soft opening. But sheez, as the big games begin this weekend, the real games – Australia versus New Zealand in Sydney and Pakistan versus India in Melbourne – it feels like there is something at stake right now for the place cricket holds in the Australian sporting imagination.
Are we at an inflection point where cricket is sliding from broadcast into narrowcast, just one of many numbers on the menu of pay-per-view entertainments? Is it conceivable that a World Cup is anything less than “event viewing”?
I’ve heard many conversations, in the past year, about the drift of attention away from cricket. It’s different from those other conversations about the Wallabies, where stalwarts have a clear reason to give up: they are sick of watching referees dominate games that never work up a sweat or really get going before they’re over. With cricket, it’s more that loyal spectators have to try very hard to keep up with who and where the Australian team is playing, what format they’re in this week, what trophy (if any) they’re playing for and who is in the team. Once the what, where, when and who come into question, it’s not far before the fundamental corrosion of the “why”. As in, why we should care.
The World Cup should tie all these unravelling threads back together and refocus the mind. This is what it’s all been leading to. This is why there has been the bubbling angst over Aaron Finch’s form, over David Warner’s eligibility to lead, over human question marks Mitch Marsh, Marcus Stoinis and Glenn Maxwell. This is when we discover (again) why Matthew Wade is still representing Australia. This World Cup should resolve a long fizz of confusion and loss of focus.
For Australian spectators, the national team’s identity still centres on the obvious: who is in the team. Since the fraying of cricket into three separate formats, it’s been hard for followers to identify with a “squad mentality”. India suffers least from this, as the IPL has elevated at least 30 players into national super-stardom. But India suffers least from every new development in cricket.
Team captains pose for a selfie before the Men’s T20 World Cup.Credit:Getty
For Australia, one of the whinges I hear most often from people who can still name the 1974-75 or the 1999 or the 2006-07 Australian teams by heart (including the 12th man), is that they flounder about trying to name the current squad. This is a problem of perception more than reality. Australia are in the middle of one of their more successful and stable eras, mixing an attractive style, some interesting personalities, and plenty of silverware in the cabinet. They are the T20 World Cup holders and, in the Test arena, have outplayed every opponent except India. But somehow, all of this is not sticking to the sides.
It has been very welcome to see the T20 pace bowling strategy solidify around Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood. Selectors finally found the heart of the team in the most obvious place (behind the left chest wall). Naming Cummins one-day skipper, uniting it with the Test role, was similarly wise and shouldn’t have felt so adventurous.
Warner is also integral to this continuity. He is now the only Australian batter with a place in all three formats, and if champion batters have always been the symbolic leaders of Australian cricket, then Warner has that lower-case ‘c’ beside his name.
David Warner still plays in all three formats for Australia.Credit:Getty Images
What’s at stake in this event goes beyond inward-looking Australian anxieties. On Sunday, weather permitting, Melbourne will host a game of geopolitical significance: Pakistan and India play each other, which they cannot do on either Pakistani or Indian soil. This game will draw something like a billion viewers, and with luck a few Australians will join in and get revved up. It’s a World Cup.
I expect that, like the Tokyo Olympic Games, the public will catch on and the quality of the sport will do the rest. As a competition, T20 World Cups are usually wide open, and the form guide for this one is encouragingly useless. It’s hard for an outcome to be predictable when no two pundits predict the same thing.
For the Australian cricket scene, it feels like there’s a lot at stake. We are entering November, but it’s not just the rain stopping us from feeling that summer is around the corner. We seem to have these conversations every year: can cricket do it for us any more?
International cricket has been bruised by COVID, not so much for the loss of events as the loss of atmosphere, the loss of a sense of continuity. It might be a temporary thing. Or there might have been a permanent shift that the temporary thing just masked for a couple of years.
I wonder if, by the time this World Cup ends in a month or so, the cricket audience will be really involved. The data will show they are watching and attending games, and there is no doubt numbers will depict health. But “engagement” is such a hollow word when quantified. Will Australians be drawn in more deeply, truly engaged – that is, revolving around a common experience, knowing where their team is, knowing who is playing for them, knowing what they’re playing for; or will cricket be just another alternative to Netflix? Or, oh yeah, Facebook Live, whatever that is, or YouTube, where you think you’re watching sport but really you’re just a sitting duck for those compelling cat videos.
For men’s cricket on Australian soil, this World Cup is not only about getting people watching again. It’s about getting them caring.
Watch the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup live and free on Channel 9 and 9Now
