Cricket must adapt to the times

Cricket can not afford to stand still, and it is not. New Zealand Cricket director Martin Snedden has been employed for the past 15 months to look at all things around the game in the One Cricket project. He talks to sports editor Steve Hepburn about the future of cricket.

Martin Snedden has played the game, led the game and watched the game.

One thing he does know is the game is in changing times.

And the game must simply change to survive.

Snedden was in Dunedin yesterday to outline the way ahead for the game, as he leads the One Cricket project, an initiative driven by New Zealand Cricket to sort out what the game will look like in the future.

Snedden throws some interesting statistics around about the game.

In some ways it has never been healthier. In other ways it is dying.

But Snedden was confident in the game’s future.

"The thing about this is the game is in good heart. Overall numbers playing the game are increasing. Sure in some areas they are dropping and in other areas we are strong and going really well," he said.

"But the fact is the world is changing. New Zealand is changing massively and what the kids of today want and need is way different to what was previously wanted. That is a huge challenge for us.

"If we want to keep kids and adults playing cricket we have to change what we are offering and how we are delivering it."

Snedden said some statistics were not great. On average 32 teams were dropping out of secondary school cricket across the country every year.

"The rate of loss in secondary school is faster than in any other sport. So what we are offering is not working. So how do we get them playing? The solution is not traditional cricket, playing 11-a-side where you are waiting all day to play.

"It is short form stuff, playing in a limited time, playing and partaking in games."

Snedden said there was a real resistance in society now for all Saturday to be tied up with playing cricket, and it is more of a family day.

"More people now play cricket during the week than on Saturdays."

He pointed to twilight cricket in Dunedin which had a full 32 teams playing on a Monday night.

Junior numbers had doubled in the past 15 years and rules that had been trialled this season such as shorter pitches and everyone having a go would become mandatory next season.

An idea called dual pitches cricket, where teams made up of eight players played two games at the same time — six players fielded on one wicket while the other two batted on the other pitch as the other team did the same  — was one idea which had been launched.

Bringing more girls into the game was also vital.

"Girls do not want to play traditional cricket. When you think about it there was not a lot of thought that went into the way the girls’ game was delivered when it started off.

"For girls it is to have fun and they really enjoy it."

The women’s cricket World Cup in 2021 was a great date to aim for by which to have many females playing the game.Snedden said the game still had to have those traditional pathways for players who wanted to be Black Caps or play for the White Ferns.

"So we have to be really careful we continue to support the serious forms of the game ... we have to look really hard at the balance and that is the conversation we are having with major associations, clubs, schools. What is cricket in Dunedin going to look like?"

Cricket was one of the most popular games in the world, especially in Asia and the sub-continent.

"Short form cricket is the way of the future. We still want to preserve test cricket and the style of test cricket we want to play. But it is the attacking form of the game we want to play. The guys like Brendon McCullum and Tom Latham — that is what they are saying. They want to play attacking cricket."

The ethnic challenge was also something New Zealand Cricket had to face.

"In Auckland 43% of formal players are Indians or from the sub-continent. And that is spreading down here. An Indian is four times more likely to love cricket than a European. But we have got to learn to connect with them."

The challenge was also to connect with Maori and Pacific Island communities and again that would be through alternative forms of the game.

Pay-as-you-play grades were becoming popular, as was players just making up teams through social media during the week. Clubs had to adapt as this was the way of the future.

New Zealand Cricket was also planning to set up a coaches database to have a list of up to 1000 coaches by the end of the year and set up programmes and upskill them.

Cricket, though, is a hard game. Incredibly hard and brutal at times.

Snedden agrees and it is a blockage to many people taking it up.

"It really came home to me when I was in Christchurch and seeing the score cards of two intermediate schoolgirls teams. One team had scored 130 and of those 77 of them were wides. It just demonstrates the fundamental issues about the game ... we just have to make it more fun and enjoyable for everyone."