Cricket’s biggest problem isn’t the format, it’s the marketers
The fireworks have faded, the John Lewis ad has landed, and the smell of gunpowder is giving way to the scent of linseed oil. It can only mean one thing: cricket’s oldest rivalry is back.
On 21 November England face Australia once again in the Ashes. As Jofra Archer (hopefully) starts his run-up or Zak Crawley takes his guard, we’ll all be reminded what makes cricket great.
Few sports do drama like this one: Edgbaston 2005; Headingley 2019; “Mind those windows, Tino”; Shane Warne being Shane Warne; and Ian Smith’s “by the barest of margins” in 2019. For a sport some call boring, it has produced some very memorable moments.
And yet, the people running it don’t seem to recognise this. The England and Wales Cricket Board appears locked in a never-ending marketing brainstorm about how to save the game. New formats, new partnerships, new audiences; it makes good business sense, but in practice they keep dropping the ball more than Monty Panesar fielding in the deep.
Cricket’s biggest problem isn’t its formats, it’s the marketers and everything but the sport itself. From T20 to The Hundred, every innovation feels like another identity crisis, rather than a considered, joined-up strategy.
You can see why it happens. With hundreds of millions of pounds tied up in new broadcast and franchise deals, the ECB is under pressure to prove growth. The Hundred was built to attract investors, sponsors, and casual fans. But has financial logic started to contradict what makes the sport so special?
Cricket storytelling
Cricket’s power lies in its storytelling, characters, and slow-burn drama, yet the game’s custodians seem determined to turn it into fast content.
There’s a sense that those running the sport have lost touch with what fans love about cricket: the personalities, the moments of brilliance that seem to come from nowhere, the fact that the drama of Test cricket unfolds over hours, not minutes.
And yet we get The Hundred: new rules, new teams, new franchises sponsored by snack brands. It’s bright, shiny, and well-intentioned. It’s certainly opened the door for new fans and done wonders for the women’s game. But did we really need to change the number of balls in an over? Did we need another format when the world already embraced T20?
The irony, of course, is that England invented T20, and then let everyone else commercialise it better.
But The Hundred has seen some serious outside investment, more than £500m in new private stakes. That influx should be good news but the ECB now faces a real test: can it make that investment work for all of cricket, not just for investors?
If the money builds something lasting such as deeper fandom, stronger grassroots, and a clear narrative for the sport, then this could be the model for sustainable growth. But if it turns cricket into a revolving door of short formats and shrinking attention spans, the brand value of the game itself will erode.
The fans who get up to watch England in Australia will always be there, loyalty like that is hard to replace. Cricket doesn’t need more reinvention. It needs smarter marketing that understands that the game’s greatest asset isn’t novelty. It’s what is already there.