Abstract
It took almost 400 years for test cricket to start off, and thereafter it just took 94, 34 and 13 years for the introduction of ODI, T20I and T10 formats, respectively. Length of the formats is shrinking over time at an alarming rate. If the trend continues, the format of five overs or less may not be far away and cricket pundits are fearing that the longest format, that is, test cricket, may lose its relevance. Unfortunately, the management part of the cricketing ecosystem has not drawn much attention from the academic world. Since market dynamics is playing a vital role in decision-making post commercialization of the cricket, this study applies stakeholder analysis and identifies three key stakeholders, namely administrators, players and spectators, and their aspirations. It suggests a shift from the ICC-led hierarchical model to the horizontal and more democratic model for sports governance during the post-commercialization stage. The results of the study indicate that even though ICC had taken a number of measures for advancement of the sport during 2015–2018, many of them are criticized like the world test championship or day-night test matches. The study scrapes through opinions of cricket-related professionals from open sources, applies sentiment analytics to classify them, uses text summarization to extract summary viewpoints and rates them on unanimity scale. A comparison is made between the actions taken by ICC and the pool of unanimous viewpoints using evidence-based assessment (EBA). Finally, it develops a framework of six research paradigms, taking into account the stakeholders’ aspirations and the EBA outcome. If these paradigms are acted upon, it can ensure convergence of stakeholders’ goals and balance in the cricket mix. Additionally, if ICC can make unanimous viewpoints from its stakeholders a part of its future plan, acceptability of its decisions will be more.
Keywords
Introduction
The game of cricket is being played from time immemorial. Over last 500 years, it has evolved from a pastime to an international sport, to a game for all genders and even for physically handicapped people, and currently it is played in four formats. Test match got its form after almost 400 years (1478 to 1877) of playing. It took another 94 years for the first one-day international (ODI; 1877 to 1971); though the concept of limited over game was seeded in 1963. In another 34 years (1971 to 2005), the first Twenty20 international (T20I) was played, whereas this shortened format was first conceived in 2003 (ICC, 2019). T Ten (T10) is still not an international format; however International Cricket Council (ICC), the game’s apex body, had approved first such league in 2018 after just one year of seeding (Bose, 2018, 7 August). With the decrease in the number of overs, the game has become more competitive and unpredictable in nature which is evident from the number of ‘upsets’ (where a lower ranked team beats a higher ranked team) in these formats. This, in turn has provided lot of entertainment and excitement to its viewers seeking only a fraction of their time commitment which is reflected by the packed galleries during IPL or similar T20 matches. More viewership has led to lucrative media rights and sponsorships. This has led to salary explosion of players and a flourishing entertainment industry around the game. However, if the trend continues, the length of the game may further diminish and a game of 5 overs or less may not be a distant format. Cricket pundits are concerned that the longest format, that is, test cricket may lose its relevance as a fallout.
Cricket had been hit by major crises in the past and each time it had shown resilience to overcome it. First real crisis struck during the eighteenth century when major matches were virtually stopped due to scarcity of players and funds during the Seven Years War (1756–1763). During the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) too, there was a stoppage of major matches. The South African policy of racial segregation and apartheid was the next major concern affecting cricket. In 1970, the scheduled South African tour of England was cancelled as South Africa had issues with the inclusion of ‘coloured’ cricketer Basil D’Oliveira in the England team (Hughes, 2009).
After such sociopolitical obstacles, came the first financial one, triggered by the Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer in 1977. After disagreement with the Australian Cricket Board over TV rights, Kerry Packer introduced privately run cricket league outside the structure of international cricket. Significantly higher salary, best talents including banned South African players, coloured attire, night games are some the hallmarks of this league which lasted till 1979 (Hughes, 2009).
Cricket was confronted with another hurdle in 2000 when the game’s biggest match-fixing scandal was unearthed, where players like Mohammad Azharuddin of India and Saleem Malik of Pakistan were implicated. South Africa’s captain Hansie Cronje was banned from cricket after he admitted receiving bribes from bookmakers in match-fixing scandal (Turbervill, 2010). Despite creation of ICC anti-corruption unit (ACU) and its surveillance, spot fixing scandal had cropped up when three leading Pakistan players were suspended in 2010 and the game is still not free from it.
Fortunately, all these crises could not deter public interest in the game; rather it had grown manifolds, especially in the Indian subcontinent. Cricket is now the most popular sport in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The craze for shorter version of the game (T20) among players and spectators seems to have dented the popularity of the longest format, that is, test cricket. Cricket pundits consider this oldest and longest format of the game to offer the real test for skill and temperament and treat this as a necessity for the game of cricket to flourish. As the game is being shortened at an alarming rate with T10 in the horizon, cricket has to ensure survival of test cricket—the newest crisis.
Somehow, this crisis has not captured the academic researchers’ imagination. This has largely remained as a problem for the regulators of the game (e.g., ICC and various boards) who may be more influenced by the market dynamics as in demand and economics. ICC’s first ever market research has confirmed a very healthy following for its three major ‘products’, that is, test, ODI and T20I out of a billion fan base (The Telegraph, 2018, 28 June). Despite strong demand for all formats, cricket pundits’ apprehension of ‘untimely death’ of test cricket is not unfounded as many players are leaving test matches to elongate their T20 career (e.g., A. B. de Villiers of South Africa, Chris Gayle of West Indies) and test matches in general has been drawing scant crowd. There are more such contradictions between ICC actions and experts’ views that are regularly being published in the print and digital media. This has triggered this study where a more holistic approach seems appropriate by including all the stakeholders of the game. The objective of the present work is to—(a) identify stakeholders and their aspirations around the game; (b) propose a suitable governance structure; and (c) create a set of research paradigms through convergence of these aspirations aimed towards more effective management of the cricketing ecosystem assuring coexistence of all existing formats.
An interpretivist’s approach has been taken towards understanding the cricketing phenomenology. This research is based on outsider’s (i.e., author) interpretation of insider’s actions (e.g., ICC and country boards) and ‘near-insider’s’ opinions (e.g., present and past professionals related to the game) (Varvasovszky & Brugha, 2000). The study uses stakeholder theory to identify the key stakeholders of the game and their aspirations. It also takes note of how the hierarchical model has yielded to horizontal and more democratic model for sports governance (Geeraert, 2013; Henry & Lee, 2004). The study reveals that even though ICC has taken a number of measures for advancement of the sport, many of them are criticized (e.g., Atherton, 2019, 21 November; Sahi, 2017, 24 September). It then extracts a set of recommendations or criticisms made by the game’s professionals in contemporary literature using text and unanimity analysis and compares the same with the actions taken by ICC using evidence-based assessment (EBA). This comparison blended with stakeholders’ aspirations finally leads to a set of research paradigms fulfilling the aim of this exploratory study.
This is a pioneering research where opinions of cricket related professionals are synthesized for formulating future direction in managing the cricketing ecosystem. Potentially, the outcome of this research should entice the academicians and practitioners to work together and blend management principles, tools and techniques to tackle real life conditions and constraints. If ICC can make unanimous demands from its stakeholders a part of its future plan, acceptability of its decisions will be more under the flat governance model—a major practical implication of this research work.
Literature Review
Literature review reveals abundant research works in the field of measuring team or players’ performance or predicting results of a cricket match (e.g., Davis et al., 2015; Duckworth & Lewis, 1998; Koulis et al., 2014; Lewis, 2005; Scarf et al., 2011; Stefani, 2011, etc.). However, there is a serious dearth of research literature in the area of balancing different formats of cricket and on survival of test cricket. Since ICC is often responsible for the entire policy making and implements all processes through its member boards, it essentially follows hierarchic governance. A review of extant literatures is carried out on organizational governance, in particular for sports organization to assess latest developments. Geeraert et al. (2012) observe that the hierarchic governance structure in sports is often undemocratic since the bottom of the pyramid is expected only to comply with rules and regulations without any role to influence them to their benefit. Henry and Lee (2004) and Geeraert (2013) prescribe the shift from the old unilateral pyramidal structure of authority towards a more horizontal and networked governance as shown in Figure 1.

Geeraert (2013) also identifies transparency and public communication, democratic process, checks and balances, and solidarity as the four dimensions of good governance in the realm of sports. Houlihan (2004) indicates that sports policies are rarely scripted in consultation or in partnership with athletes, so it does not justify the democratic process. However, the traditional self-governed networks are changing as economic drivers have transformed professional sports’ ecosystem—teams buy players; fans buy tickets, merchandizes and subscribes to sports channels; media buys telecasting rights; and big businesses buy sponsorship. Teams are now commodities which are bought and sold (Gerrard, 2004). The globalization and commercialization of sport has created many competing interests with increasing role of sports agents, media rights and commercial sponsors (Katwala, 2000). While describing maturity of a sport in its progression towards business, Beech (2004) has laid out a framework that starts at foundation phase, where change is slow and gradually rises to more uncertainty driven pinnacle namely, post-commercialization phase, where change is rapid. The interim phases of maturity are codification, stratification, professionalization, post-professionalization and commercialization. Former ICC President E. Mani (2009) has aptly summarized the progression of cricket over the last century. Some of his key points are—(a) numerically cricket is the second most popular sports in the world after football; (b) founding member Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) has ceded to formation of ICC whose office bearers will be selected democratically by its member countries; (c) in terms of spread, the game now boasts of more than 100 member countries mainly due to sustained ICC development programme; (d) selling of cricket rights to media has made this game rich by a big margin; and (e) T20 is a major innovation aimed at spreading cricket and gaining the Olympic status. He concludes that unless ICC and the national governing bodies lead from the front, private phenomena like Packer’s series and Indian Cricket League (ICL) will step in to encash the game’s popularity. Almost contemporary to this report, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has started the franchise based IPL in 2008 followed by other countries. This has put cricket in Beech’s elite post-commercialization phase, where the stakeholders’ list includes not only players, governing bodies but also the external sponsors and the broadcasters. Burger and Goslin (2005) urged that any sport’s governing body should recognize the needs of stakeholders who are likely to get affected by its decisions and actions. Wolfe and Putler (2002) has gone a step further and claimed that the stakeholder approach helps manage performance in increasingly unpredictable environments by understanding all stakeholders’ needs and aspirations; this leads the study to review literatures on stakeholder analysis.
Stakeholder analysis is an approach or a management tool to identify the actors (e.g., individuals or organizations) to understand their behaviour, interest, inter-relations and intention which, in turn decides their stakes in decision making and its implementation (Varvasovszky & Brugha, 2000). Freeman (1984) has proposed a four-step stakeholder management process, namely, (a) identify relevant stakeholders; (b) determine scope and importance of the stakeholders; (c) enumerate how effectively the expectations of each group are currently being met by the lead organization; and (d) address unmet needs of the stakeholders through modification of the lead organization’s plans, policies and activities. Merrilees et al. (2005) has identified interdependency, degree of affecting/being affected by the organization and the sense of a right in the organization as the three most salient features of stakeholder analysis. Houlihan (2013) has drawn a parallel of stakeholder analysis within the sports industry. The premise includes—(a) the organization (key stakeholders like ICC, FIFA [Fédération Internationale de Football Association], etc.) depends on many stakeholders (e.g., Players, spectators, sponsors, media, etc.) without whom the organization would face great difficulty, if not, cease to function; and (b) all the stakeholders have a legitimate interest in the organization. The philosophy is that managers should include the stakeholder concerns in management decision-making to achieve organizational objectives rather than facilitating the strongest stakeholder’s voice. Freeman and Reed (1983) has presented two different definitions for stakeholders; the first one refers to any group or individual that impacts or is impacted by the consequences of an organization’s achieving its objectives. The second one refers to groups or individuals, who make themselves essential for the organization’s survival by creating dependence. Using the first definition, three most valued stakeholder groups, namely top management, member associations and sponsors have been highlighted in the strategic decision-making process (Miragaia et al., 2014). Varvasovszky and Brugha (2000) have weighed options on who can perform the stakeholder analysis. They have inferred that analysts can be insider, outsider but a combination works the best. While the insider can be swayed by prior generalized perceptions about stakeholders from pre-existing relations, the external analyst can play the role of an ‘independent auditor’ or a ‘neutral player’ but the knowledge level may be suboptimal (Crosby, 1992).
Decoding Freeman’s (1984) proposed four-step stakeholder management process and noting Miragaia et al.’s (2014) recommendation of three most valued stakeholder groups, the present study identifies the administrators, the players and the spectators as the three most important stakeholders in this jigsaw puzzle. Media and Sponsor interest can be treated as an endogenous variable which is the consequence of the chosen stakeholders’ combined interests, the exogenous set of variables. As depicted in Figure 2, the administrators’ aim is to spread the game, promote innovation and facilitate sustainable development. The cricketers’ aspirations include skill enhancement, long and worthy career whereas the same for the fans include satisfaction and value for money that they expect by enjoying the thrill, excitement and skill at display. The Figure 2 also depicts the most important question, that is, what can be the cricket mix so as their aspirations can converge?

Methodology
The basic research design for this study is qualitative in nature adopting an interpretivist’s approach towards understanding the cricketing phenomenology. According to the phenomenologists, interpretivism lies in experiencing and appropriating the world through senses, concepts and ideas which may differ from the ‘real world’ (Hammond & Wellington, 2013). There may be a serious dearth of research literature on future of cricket (related to formats and innovations, progression of member countries, etc.), but there had been enormous volume of discussions on the same by professionals related to the sport representing the stakeholder views. Any research will become too theoretical if these opinions are ignored. The study also takes into account the steps taken by the apex body, that is, ICC which are well documented. This research, thus is going to be grounded on outsider’s (i.e., author) interpretation of insider’s actions (e.g., ICC and country boards) and ‘near-insider’s’ opinions (e.g., present and past professionals related to the game) (Varvasovszky & Brugha, 2000).
In order to extract opinions and actions from articles available in digital and print media, it is first necessary to define the sampling units. Typically, each unit represents an identifiable message that is considered for selective inclusion (or exclusion) in an analysis. Krippendorff (2004) has suggested physically separating these units on the basis of time period and keywords. The author has also proposed using—(a) existing theories or practices; (b) the experience or knowledge of experts; or (c) previous research for deriving the analytical constructs. Whereas the time period for the present research is fixed at 2015–2018, expert opinion is sought for deciding on the keywords. Since the research is to be based on opinions and actions related to future of cricket, an initial set of thirty keywords is prepared carefully including twelve country boards, five formats (i.e., test, ODI, T20I, T10, The Hundred) and viewpoints of administrators (e.g., Sponsorship, Innovation), spectators (e.g., Entertainment) and players (e.g., Workload, Retirement). This is then rated by an expert panel for appropriateness. Selection of the search criteria is done on the basis of overall ratings and the final list includes Cricket, ICC, BCCI, ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), CA (Cricket Australia), tTest, ODI, T20I, T10, The Hundred, Planning, Innovation, Sponsorship and Workload.
The sampling frame thus comprises of all contemporary articles containing one or more of these keywords published in print and digital media of all the cricket playing countries during 2015–2018. Obtaining a representative sample from such a big data set is especially challenging, given its ever-changing and ever-growing nature. In order to select a representative sample, adaptive sampling technique (Webb & Wang, 2014) is employed that includes the advantages of both probability sampling and purposive sampling. Purposive sampling allows the researcher to select incident-rich sources and probability sampling allows selection of sampling units at random. Indian and English media have been given preference. India holds a high position in the cricketing world with respect to skill, fan following and financial strength and England has shaped the game historically and is currently a major cricketing nation. Amongst Indian daily, The Telegraph, The Times of India, The Hindu and Indian Express have been chosen which are head quartered at Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and National Capital Region (NCR) respectively, so as to cover the entire geography of India. As per Wikipedia, these newspapers boast an average daily circulation of 417,298, 2,640,770, 1,404,901 and 309,252 (as on 1 March 2019) respectively. On the digital platform, the search has been restricted to The Times, London and BBC Sports (two of the major media houses in UK), Rediff.com (Indian portal offering news, information and entertainment and shopping services for nearly 25 years), and ESPNcricinfo (27 years in existence; started by a British and an Indian in the USA). Out of all, The Telegraph has been chosen the pivot for daily feed because of its Indian origin, wide cricket coverage, easy availability and it reprints many articles after sifting through the world cricketing news (e.g., from The Guardian, The Times, Wisden, etc.). Complete enumeration of all articles published in The Telegraph minimizes the chance of missing any important event especially for such a longitudinal study spanning over four years. The other sources have been randomly screened for additional articles.
Manually, the opinions and views are scraped from such sources to build a repository of total 156 articles. Later these articles are read several times in order to gain an in-depth understanding of their usefulness in the present context. This has led to the selection of a total of 41 articles. The study revealed strong opinions on test (e.g., test cricket is the ultimate test for one’s ability and character; Rediff.com, 2017, 7 September)) and T20I and IPL (e.g., T20I is the best bet for spreading the game to non-cricketing nations; Press Trust of India, 2017, 6 April) and few moderate views including ODIs. In absence of any strong opinions related to ODI, it seems the oldest and the youngest international formats are fighting for ‘space’ and the professionals are divided in their opinions. Some are genuinely concerned for the future of test, some are ecstatic about success of IPL and T20 version of cricket and others are keeping a balanced view. As per Lombard et al. (2002), two coders have been hired to categorize these articles according to the sentiment. The codes +1, −1 and 0 have been used for pro-test, pro-T20 and balanced views (that includes moderate views on ODI) respectively. Intercoder reliability is measured using per cent agreement and Cohen’s kappa measures since high levels of disagreement among coders may suggest weaknesses in research methods.
Using text summarization, each article has been annotated to key viewpoints and recommendations. Then the entire summary list has been given to the pair of coders for validation and preparation of a frequency table showing number of articles that supports or opposes the viewpoint. Again both the frequency tables are put to intercoder reliability test using per cent agreement and Cohen’s kappa measures. Later these annotations are represented on a unanimity scale ranging from 100% agreement to 50: 50 split in opinions; the more unanimous opinions should be acted upon at once while the others may need more due diligence.
While the above exercise summarizes the viewpoints of cricket related professionals, it is pertinent to take a stock of actions already taken up. ICC is proactive and has introduced a number of new steps and conducted a number of experiments. By text scanning, another 16 articles are selected from the whole repository of 156 articles which has ICC actions and also corresponding reactions from the cricket related professionals. These articles are summarized and coded into ICC’s action points in a similar manner as above.
Gambrill (2006) has described EBA as a popular decision making tool that uses professional judgement in integrating information (e.g., actions, preferences and circumstances) from various stakeholders. In social work, EBA facilitates creating a set of answerable questions based on organizational need. This needs locating the best available evidences (as actions) and judiciously using them to appraise against organizational requirements (as preferences) at a certain instance (describing the circumstances). Hence, the ploy is to judge ICC’s actions in light of the stakeholders’ preferences synthesized above at a time when ICC is spreading the game and is bringing in new reforms (e.g., world test championship, day/night test match, etc.). A comparison is made between the action points (AP) by ICC and the pool of unanimous viewpoints (VP) as collated above using EBA. Finally, the gap between the two leads to a set of research paradigms (RP) aimed towards managing the cricketing ecosystem more efficiently.
The issue of validity or generalizability of the outcome is dealt with by using face validity measure (Neuendorf, 2002). The summarized list of VPs and APs and the EBA outcome were corroborated by an external expert for checking their validity and inclusivity of salient items.
Discussion of Results
The frequency distribution of all articles across sources, countries and professions are cited in Table 1.
Frequency Distribution of Articles Across Sources, Countries and Professions
A close scrutiny of Table 1 reveals that source-wise there is a high density for The Telegraph. Data collection has been done on a continuous basis during 2015–2018 and it is not an instantaneous search result. Since The Telegraph has been chosen as the pivot for daily feed, many news items appearing in more than one place including The Telegraph are credited to The Telegraph. Other sources are searched randomly as a follow up activity based on the need. Country-wise there is a representation of all major cricketing nations with high density for India and England. Profiling by profession shows that the articles are well distributed amongst administrators, present and past cricketers and journalists. Their opinions can be considered as stakeholders’ viewpoints as most of them played and/or managed the game at the highest level. Overall, the frequency distributions provide a snapshot on the extent of coverage of this research.
Text Analytics
All the 41 articles are put to codification by a pair of coders since a close perusal has revealed that the professionals related to cricket are divided in their opinions. The per cent agreement as a measure for intercoder reliability is more than 85% (35 out of 41). Cohen’s kappa value came out to be 0.763 which is significant. As per Lombard et al. (2002), any measure exceeding 0.7 may be taken as satisfactory for exploratory studies. This sentiment analysis exercise has revealed that there are 22, 14 and 5 articles showing pro-test, pro-T20 and balanced sentiments respectively. Tables 2, 3 and 4 summarize such opinions and categorize them based on sentiment shared, that is, pro-test, pro-T20 and balanced, respectively.
Summary of ‘Pro-Test’ Sentiments (in Chronologically Reverse Order)
Summary of ‘Pro-T20’ Sentiments (in Chronologically Reverse Order)
Summary of ‘Balanced’ Sentiments (in Chronologically Reverse Order)
Next using text summarization, summary viewpoints are extracted from each of the detailed excerpts. The entire list is then shared with the pair of coders for validation and preparation of a frequency table showing number of articles that supports or opposes the viewpoint. Two frequency tables thus achieved are put to intercoder reliability test using per cent agreement and Cohen’s kappa measures. The per cent agreement as a measure for intercoder reliability is more than 78% (22 out of 28). Cohen’s kappa value has come out to be 0.727, both of which are acceptable as per Lombard et al. (2002). Later these viewpoints are annotated to VP1 to VP18 and shown on a unanimity scale as displayed in Table 5.
Unanimity Scale Post Text Summarization
Out of 18 viewpoints, 8 have been unanimous (namely VP1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 14 and 15) and 5 have been on an 87.5: 12.5 concurrence (namely, VP10, 11, 12, 16 and 18), whereas rest 5 viewpoints are more divided, for example, ODIs should make way for test and T20, innovations like day-night tests are needed to preserve this format and four-day test match can be a potential innovation. The study claims that the unanimous viewpoints should be taken into account for building any future strategy whereas more analyses are needed before working on the split decisions. However, VP5 is kept outside the purview of this study since it needs ‘insider’ analysis and VP15 is a statement that does not need any immediate action.
As it stands, ICC is a proactive body that had introduced a number of action points to make cricket one of the most dynamic games. Few of these measures taken over last few years and associated reactions, as available are summarized and coded as AP1 to AP10 in Table 6.
Table 6 shows that ICC is on constant vigil monitoring the game’s health and is implementing measures for betterment. With its actions being scrutinized (both praised and criticized) by so many stalwarts of the game, as shown in Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5, there is a fair chance of ironing out differences iteratively. Listening to the stakeholders’ views and incorporating them in future action plans will enhance their acceptability—one of the key messages of this article.
Summary of ICC Measures (in Chronologically Reverse Order)
Evidence-based Assessment
It is already seen how most of the ICC actions have met mixed responses like day-night test (Pietersen, 2018, 13 June vs Sahi, 2017, 8 October), four-day test match (Sahi, 2017, 24 September vs Dev, 2017, 22 September), 2019–2021 ICC World Test championship (WTC) (The Telegraph, 2019, 10 October vs Atherton, 2019, 21 November), and so on. On the contrary, even though professionals are unanimous about test matches being the real test for skill and temperament, there is sparse marketing effort for popularizing the same (Pietersen, 2018, 13 June). IPL is being blamed by many for batsmen’s overall deterioration in technique or test matches not lasting the distance (Sahi, 2017, 22 October). So, if ICC can act upon more unanimous viewpoints, it can hear more positive feedbacks post implementation. Table 7 provides the EBA outcome through contextual mapping between viewpoints and ICC action points leading to the gaps.
Contextual Mapping Between Viewpoints (VP) and ICC Action Points (AP)
Consolidating the EBA outcome, six research paradigms (RP1 to RP6) have been formulated. Concurrence has been obtained from an external expert on the summarized list of VPs, APs and the RPs to ascertain that they are reflecting the reality as and when they were prepared. The expert suggested conducting more in-depth analysis on each of the RPs which are cited below.
Conclusion
Worldwide, sports have become an integral part of entertainment industry. Cricket is number one sport in Asian countries (like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) and ranks very high in the countries like Australia, South Africa and England. Star India has bagged the global combined media rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at a whopping figure of ₹16,3475 million even though Sony is the highest TV bidder and Facebook is the highest digital bidder (The Telegraph, 2017, 5 September). This has made IPL comparable to lucrative leagues like National Basketball Association League (NBAL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Football League (NFL), English Premier League (EPL), and so on. If the length of the tournaments is apportioned (Kalra, 2017, 5 September). Star India has also bagged the media rights for television and digital rights for the Indian cricket team and domestic championships from 2018 to 2023 with a ₹6,1381 million bid (Bhose, 2018, 6 April). While economics will dictate the terms, it can be a fallout of—(a) what spectators want to see; (b) how cricketers are making their career out of this deluge of cricket; and above all (c) how the regulatory bodies (e.g., ICC, BCCI, ECB, CA, etc.) are bringing a balance in cricket mix and educating the spectators and players depending on the cricket maturity of the land. There is as much dearth of research work on this as there is abundance of individual opinions from professionals of the game. The current exploratory study examines such opinions and ICC actions and presents six research paradigms that demand attention from academicians and practitioners for better management of the game. Since there is ‘market’ for all three formats, strategies need to be worked out based on the maturity of each member country; presently there are 12 full members and 92 associate members of ICC (2019). The study also suggests the innovative approach for ICC to continuously ‘listen’ to what is being said in the digital and print media and make this part of its decision making. Any future strategy based on unanimous ideas will be more democratic in nature—a requirement for horizontal governance.
Limitations and Future Directions
Limitation of time, money and availability restricted the selection of document sources for the present analysis. At a larger scale, ICC can use tools like Radian6 as a social listening tool, VBPro or WordStat for content analysis and Atlas or NVivo for annotation for conducting an all-encompassing (with respect to keywords and article sources) study with probability sampling. Relying solely on automated procedures may affect the detailed comprehension. Computer-assisted coding and searching complemented by human interventions seems the best way forward.
The present work does not involve any ‘insider’ due to access constraints and treats reading their minds through open media as the next best option. There is scope for improvement as insider input will add more rigour to the whole exercise. Also the study has simplified the stakeholder model by treating media and sponsor interest as endogenous variable—a consequence of 3 chosen stakeholders’ combined interests. In order to probe the relationship network one can include actors like media, sponsor, government entities and even equipment manufacturers; since each stands with an intent and interest (Henry & Lee, 2004). For example, Majumdar and Mitra (2020, 10 January) reported that global broadcast rights may increase substantially if WTC during the next FTP mandates four-day test matches predicted by the market analysts.
Due to the commercialization of various sports (e.g., football, cricket) in the last few decades, sport is now perceived as an integral part of entertainment industry (Anagnostopoulos, 2011; Zagnoli & Radicchi, 2010). As a result, senior management in sports is under intense scrutiny and this has inescapably led to questions on management practice (Ferkins & Shilbury, 2010). Stakeholder theory enables a shift from organization-based approach where stakeholders are treated as dependent bodies and are managed solely for the organization’s own benefit, to an approach based on the relationship networks and complementary skill sets for any organization (Nguyen & Menzies, 2010). Application of stakeholder theory to the sports industry is still in a nascent stage (Russo & Vito, 2011) barring few exceptions like football (Anagnostopoulos, 2011; Michie & Oughton, 2005; Stevens & Watkins-Mathys, 2006), swimming (Breitbarth & Harris, 2008; Parent & Séguin, 2007) or on sporting events (Parent et al., 2011; Sotiriadou, 2009). The present work can be treated as a pioneering work in the field of cricket and it can be a reference point for many researches by practising managers as well as academicians.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
