CRICKET: Jon Swift
CRICKET is big business. You only have to weigh the R5- million Standard Bank are going to pour into the one- day game over the five years from the start of the 1996-97 season to gauge that.
The massive sponsorship will back the national team in all one-day internationals in this country as well as abroad, and the provincial day-night series. There is also a clause which gives first option to renew when the current contract runs out at the end of the 2000- 2001 season.
In the search for a clean and well-defined — as well as instantly recogniseable — image, the new sponsor could hardly have done better than to step in where Benson & Hedges, the originators in this country of the day-night game which has done so much to keep cricket a viable entity, have stepped down.
“One-day cricket is the top sporting product in South Africa with broad appeal to all communities,” is the way John Holloway, the bank’s general manager, communications and advertising, puts it.
In this Holloway — and the corporation he speaks for – – are right on the money. And the fact that 10 percent of local gate money and 20 percent of the takings at internationals will go towards development makes good arithmetic for the upliftment of the sport in this
“I did a little homework,” said the United Cricket Board’s Ali Bacher. “We estimate that one-day internationals in this country over the next five years will generate R50-million. That’s R10-million for
This amount would match on a rand-for-rand basis the guarantees put up by the bank for the running of the matches which will generate these huge sums of money. Big business indeed.
But that said, it is indeed fitting that the game of cricket, at the forefront of breaking down the artificial barriers this country created for itself, should have the chance to put its imprint on this
Krish Mackerdhuj, president of the UCB, was not slow in pointing this out. “Cricket has done a lot towards assisting the process of political freedom in this coutry,” he said. “This sponsorship will in turn help young people to get a chance to aid the advancement and the future of this country.”
These are high-flown sentiments, but one hesitates to say that they overstate the case. Or that the feelings Mackerdhuj expressed are at odds either with the drive to bring sport to all in this country, or the more commercial of the sponsor’s sentiments. For one must understand that the day-night series takes some very serious financing — an amount understood to be not unadjacent to R12-million this season — and that there has to be a fair return for anyone willing to bankroll an undertaking of this magnitude.
The new sponsor is also to arrange for the financing of an upgrade of the lights at Johannesburg’s Wanderers and Durban’s King’s Park “to make them as good as the Melbourne Cricket Ground”, according to Bacher.
With the World Cup scheduled for this country in the year 2003 — interestingly this is the new sponsor’s renewal period — this is a priority which probably stretches further than the two grounds initially earmarked for an improvement in candlepower.
“And hopefully,” added Bacher, “our national team will fully reflect the peoples of this country by then.” One would indeed be hopeful that his is the case.
But it all adds up to a listing of priorities — the event, the future stars and the venues they will play this event on — which is a sensible and structured one and, more to the point, admits to weaknesses in the present set-up. “Cricket is moving the right way,” said Bacher. “We’re not there yet, but our objectives are
And one would suspect that the travel between the point at which the game is now and the destination which the UCB sees as their objective will be considerably cushioned by the knowledge that they have the funds available to undertake the journey in the first place.