A message to the Champions League mockers

There is a certain class of English cricket enthusiast who will have barely registered that the Champions League was even taking place this past two weeks.  If you are a member of this class, you would probably snort in derision at the idea that it is set to become one of the most important competitions in cricket.

Who wants to watch the Sri Lankan T20 winners taking on the Australian runners up when you could be busy replaying the 3rd afternoon of Leicestershire vs Glamorgan in your mind and wondering what that means for next season?

Far more important to consider whether Middlesex can sign that medium-pacer-who-can-bat-a-bit they need to bolster their flaky lineup.  Or to wonder whether next season will bring another unbeaten triple-century before the third sweaters have been dispensed with.

Time for a confession: 12 months ago, I was one of you.  The idea of the Champions League was, to me, quaint yet unimportant.  It wouldn’t matter if English counties took part because it was really only going to be an IPL exhibition event, a chance for Lalit Modi to expand his empire and his fortune.  I was much happier studying Derbyshire’s averages, hopeful of getting the inside track on their young prospects (I really did do this, and yes I am aware I have no life.  FYI, the youngsters were a mixed bag this season).

Then, something important happened.  Setanta, who had originally purchased the broadcast rights for the UK, collapsed and Eurosport stepped in.  This meant that I could watch LIVE cricket on TV for the first time since 2005.  I had been forced to rely on Channel 5’s measly highlights package during the Ashes.

This was pretty much the main motivation for me to tune in.  I wasn’t expecting much more than to watch the three IPL teams put on a tour-de-force.  That was what we were told was going to happen.  It didn’t.

Instead, JP Duminy started the mutiny by smashing the Royal Challengers into next week.  Delhi fell to Victoria, and then Somerset, puny Somerset, overcame the IPL Champion Deccan Chargers.  Suddenly, there was a genuine reason to pay attention, even if it began as a chance to have a laugh at the expense of Lalit Modi.

Trinidad & Tobago have given the Champions League it's identity

But then the point of this tournament became clear, and it’s identity was found in perhaps the most unlikely of places.  The West Indies.

Here is a part of the world where cricket is being torn asunder by inept administrators and impure motives.  The national team has been virtually rendered a laughing stock after the strike that reduced it to selecting a 3rd string to play against Bangladesh and in the Champions Trophy.

From this mess came Trinidad & Tobago into the Champions League.  And they have set it alight with the most dazzling cricket, fit to take it’s place alongside the best of what the West Indies have given the game through the years.  Electric in the field, versatile with the ball and led by the best captain in the tournament by a mile, Daren Ganga.  When they bat, no target seems big enough.  Just ask Moises Henriques.

Suddenly the world was willing them on, and self-esteem was being returned to West Indian cricket.  Their semi-final victory against Cape Cobras carried more meaning than an entire series of seven ODIs between England and Australia.

What of the counties?  They have returned home early, collecting just a single victory between them in 6 matches.  But both Sussex and Somerset have done so full of talk of lessons learned and a desire to return next year better and stronger.  And this is not just the formulaic response of media-trained professional sportsmen – Somerset chairman Andy Nash spoke passionately and eloquently of the response needed by English cricket – both on and off the field – to what he had witnessed.

Whilst all this has been going on in cricket’s living room, England has been busy pottering about in the garden shed, oblivious.  Coverage in main stream media has been there, but you get the feeling that it’s only because there is no other cricket to talk about.

Twenty20 is still percieved, in England at least, as “hit and giggle”, a bit of fun that shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s referred to as a lottery, the ridiculous idea that a team’s level of skill has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not it is successful. Try telling that to Kieron Pollard.

When the BBC’s cricket correspondent posts on Twitter that the CLT20 “Is the most irrelevent, most contrived comp ever” it’s easy to recognise the general zeitgeist amongst cricket’s chattering classes.

They are missing the point.  To the people and cricketers of Trinidad & Tobago, this tournament has been anything but irrelevant.  To English cricket fans who – thanks to a combination of the ECB/Sky deal and the scandalous prices charged for England tickets – are no longer able to watch cricket, this tournament may well have been like manna from heaven.  To Sussex and Somerset, the Champions League has been an education and has given their cricketers new frontiers to try and cross.

“That’s all very well”, you might say, “but it is still contrived out of money and the desire to make it”.  And that is true, to an extent.  One of the biggest incentives for the counties to compete was the financial reward on offer.  Yet, here are two pieces of evidence for your consideration:

Exhibit A: The total prize fund for the entire tournament is $6m (about £3.6 million).  That’s less than Sunderland received for finishing 16th in the Premier League last season.  Manchester United received £15,220,000 for winning it.  In sporting terms, the Champions League Twenty20 is small beer in a world where big sport attracts the biggest of business as a matter of course.  Yes, it is more money than cricket is used to, but that’s not saying much.

Exhibit B: A lesson from history.  When football’s European Cup was introduced, the FA pressurised it’s teams into withdrawing, their attitude being that the domestic Football League was of primary importance.  It took a stubborn stand from Manchester United to begin to break that view.  Try telling any football fan that their Champions League is irrelevant and contrived now.

So to you doubters I would say this:  the Champions League Twenty20 is here to stay.  Despite, or perhaps in part because of, the relative failure of the IPL teams, the first tournament is widely acknowledged to be a resounding success.  There is talk of expanding the competition – it does not yet include teams from all of the Test nations – and of hosting it in England or South Africa next year.

If it seems contrived, that is because all of these tournaments have to begin that way.  Give it a chance to grow a history and a tradition of it’s own.  It is high time we drop the snobbery and start to take it seriously.