Osprey

Writes about cricket mainly and other sports. More active on the Blue Sky. @cricketosprey

See some of my articles on Caribbean Cricket News and on Substack.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

The East and Southern Africa T20 Premier League promises riches, but the owners have spent more time creating AI-generated images of partying gorillas for the website than they have on their sums.

https://t.co/71l1Z0U0fU

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@NoContextCounty Wayne Madsen will have to miss more county games for franchise deals to top up his pension.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@DeafMango Yes and a foreshadowing of what could happen at a future Olympics or another international multi-sport games too.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@livingcorpse__1 @CricketOnScreen Fairbreak is frustrating because in the grand scheme of cricket expenditure, it is low cost to run and only has upside for growing the women's game.

It could and should be an ICC event given that event management is all the ICC board is good for these days.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

13 days to go before Saudi Arabia's Dunes T20 is supposed to start and yet there's still nothing announced for it.

I think it is safe to say this competition isn't going to happen this year.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@cricinked What you say is a contradiction. If boards can't survive financially then cricket will remain an elitist sport, with only India and a few other nations playing it.

I want cricket to grow globally. Cricket can't do that if franchise leagues keep extracting money out of the sport.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@homeropines2 As much as you may not like it, it is in the IPL's interest to make sure boards are financially strong and capable of producing international players.

Otherwise who's going to replace Narine, Miller, Boult and the rest in IPL when they retire? You can't just handwave it away.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@homeropines2 I guess you missed the part where I said some of this was self-inflicted. Dave Cameron's locking CWI into a 50 year CPL deal is just one example.

The main issue though is most of the issues are external and all boards are struggling. Even Cricket Australia made a loss in 24/25.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@homeropines2 CPL payments to CWI account for less than 8% of CWI's total revenue, and as only 3/7 of the franchises are IPL owned the real figure is much less.

As for IPL supporting the region's cricket. Well how many WI players have those franchises produced? - 0. Stanford did more for CWI.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@homeropines2 CCP have done several episodes on CWI's financial state since the accounts were published in March.

Some of it is self-inflicted, most of it is not. Rising oil prices, a devaluing US dollar, the COVID pandemic and the already high travel/accom costs have all played their part.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@englishsportfan India has player development problems too as outlined here in this superb long read by @rudraaaansh

https://t.co/aiPzNZXErq

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

Overseas boards produce 31% of the IPL's players but only receive 0.26% of the IPL's total revenue in return.

Meanwhile, costs of international cricket and developing players continue to increase.

The sport is now at breaking point because those in charge are short-sighted.

[Caribbean Cricket Podcast @CaribCricket]

International Cricket is broken

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@englishsportfan I'm not convinced the IPL could do that even if it wanted to. There's only around 8K pro cricketers globally. Cutting nations out of the it (BAN/PAK) and starving the others of money isn't going to grow the player pool.

There's also a global bat shortage too which limits growth.

[Vikram Mahendra @ElRealesVikram]

The discourse around Indian sport baffles me a lot, people talking with such vehemence and surety about medal tallies at Asian Games, Olympics and CWG like they somehow know why things don't workout for India.

Winning a medal at any international competition is not easy, try organising a spelling bee with your family members and see if you win.

Judging athletes on the basis of their performances, especially when you don't watch them day in day out, or even care about the sport, is disingenuous and corrupted.

We need to love sport first, medals will follow, not the other way round.

Look at how obsessed someone like Tejaswin Shankar is with his sport and how much he puts into it. We become a sporting nation by loving sport & playing them first, not by seeking medals.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@amittalwalkar You would benefit from working on your AI prompts if you want to improve your engagement bait.

Also correlation does not equal causation.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@icelandcricket 1. Copy what your friends at the KSÍ have done and get facilities built across the country.
2. Wait for climate change to make it impossible for other cricket boards to play in their countries.
3. Charge every other board huge amounts of money to use your facilities.
4. Profit.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@CaribCricket It's a subject I wrote extensively about last year. It has only got worse since then and will only get worse from here unless something changes.

https://t.co/TladVTwK5i

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

@CaribCricket While on the other side of the coin, any revenue gets extracted away by franchise leagues and is not reinvested back into the sport.

Boards are struggling and having to make cutbacks to other domestic cricket to survive, reducing player development opportunities further.

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

It's a subject I wrote extensively about last year. It has only got worse since then and will only get worse from here unless something changes.

https://t.co/TladVTwK5i

[Osprey @CricketOsprey]

While on the other side of the coin, any revenue gets extracted away by franchise leagues and is not reinvested back into the sport.

Boards are struggling and having to make cutbacks to other domestic cricket to survive, reducing player development opportunities further.