Rugby league-could some lessons be learned from cricket?

[Dave T]

Does anybody here frequent cricket forums? 

Are cricket fans spending all their time telling everyone that will listen that the tagline Every. Ball. Counts is not in fact true? 

[Tommygilf]

24 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Does anybody here frequent cricket forums? 

Are cricket fans spending all their time telling everyone that will listen that the tagline Every. Ball. Counts is not in fact true? 

I'm a member of a Yorkshire cricket Facebook group that is full of cricket nauses, and no they aren't!

In general on the Hundred, there's a minority of people who don't like it at all. A similar if not smaller minority who really really love it. And finally a massive majority who are open to giving it a go and have generally been impressed and happy with it so far.

[RigbyLuger]

They were talking about it on 40 20 last night, saying how a 9s may work at Magic this year with all the covid postponements. Not sure if I'd make the trip for that or not, but better for booking than having your game called off in the days before.

[Tommygilf]

Rugby Union take all their best players out of the middle of their clubs regular season for a 2 month long round robin competition with a low number of teams to give them FTA exposure. Seems to go alright for them?

[Dave T]

Just watching the Hundred.

Isn't it amazing how even Margin Meter has been rebranded and becomes a good discussion point when you don't have fans and neanderthal pundits who intentionally miss the point of it just to criticise anything RL tries. 

[Smudger06]

Learning lessons from cricket, best off learning from BCCI not ECB......

[Dave T]

The more I watch this, the more I see that they have learnt a lot from SL and had the money and conviction to do things boldly. 

[Tommygilf]

9 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Just watching the Hundred.

Isn't it amazing how even Margin Meter has been rebranded and becomes a good discussion point when you don't have fans and neanderthal pundits who intentionally miss the point of it just to criticise anything RL tries. 

Absolutely, as someone relatively late to cricket, people who grew up with the game don't get how unintelligible some of the game and particularly the language around it can be. It is a pretty big barrier to access they have looked to address here. Visually it is so much more accessible than usual.

I agree too that it is so refreshing to have positive commentary. I don't mind critiques at all, but when it is as you describe and often just sounds very ignorant, it really is rubbish. Tonight for example, its not "oh the competition is going to be poor when the England players leave after this round", its "Bairstow will want to have a really good game tonight as his last impact on the Hundred before he meets up with the England squad".

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Rugby Union take all their best players out of the middle of their clubs regular season for a 2 month long round robin competition with a low number of teams to give them FTA exposure. Seems to go alright for them?

Not good for the clubs though. It's also a closed shop. How can they expert the likes of Georgia to improve if they keep winning the second tier and aren't allowed to test themselves at a higher level. Six Nations to me represents everything I dislike about union, especially in England.

[GUBRATS]

7 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Absolutely, as someone relatively late to cricket, people who grew up with the game don't get how unintelligible some of the game and particularly the language around it can be. It is a pretty big barrier to access they have looked to address here. Visually it is so much more accessible than usual.

I agree too that it is so refreshing to have positive commentary. I don't mind critiques at all, but when it is as you describe and often just sounds very ignorant, it really is rubbish. Tonight for example, its not "oh the competition is going to be poor when the England players leave after this round", its "Bairstow will want to have a really good game tonight as his last impact on the Hundred before he meets up with the England squad".

So it's been sold with the top England players , but won't have any after in a week's time ?

[Tommygilf]

13 minutes ago, NW10LDN said:

Not good for the clubs though. It's also a closed shop. How can they expert the likes of Georgia to improve if they keep winning the second tier and aren't allowed to test themselves at a higher level. Six Nations to me represents everything I dislike about union, especially in England.

Imagine having a competition organised though...

[Tommygilf]

8 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

So it's been sold with the top England players , but won't have any after in a week's time ?

Caught and bowled.

[gingerjon]

9 hours ago, GUBRATS said:

So it's been sold with the top England players , but won't have any after in a week's time ?

This is me being moderately fair to the ECB and it won't happen very often so ...

There were two conflicting ways The Hundred was sold. Firstly, that it was an exciting new format for new audiences so they wouldn't necessarily need name recognition if, as is always likely in an England summer, internationals run at the same time as some of the competition (and Covid has meant they are now away longer). Secondly, the pay rewards would be good enough to get names from countries not playing in England to be the names that could be sold to an audience who want names (some of this has happened but less than anticipated).

The women's competition, which is being promoted as an equal partner, is not losing any players to international duty as their matches were scheduled before and after The Hundred. (It did lose Tammy Beaumont to a wedding though, which may say something about the pay rates).

[Dr Tim Whatley]

2 hours ago, gingerjon said:

 

The women's competition, which is being promoted as an equal partner, is not losing any players to international duty as their matches were scheduled before and after The Hundred. (It did lose Tammy Beaumont to a wedding though, which may say something about the pay rates).

Same prize money for the two comps, but according to this, the pay scales are vastly different https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/hundred-ecb-gender-pay-gap-24578323

It is good how the two comps are promoted as equal though. Steps in the right direction.

[sweaty craiq]

History says James Hargreaves invented the spinning Jenny, a few know otherwise.

RL has a similar story

[gingerjon]

39 minutes ago, Dr Tim Whatley said:

Same prize money for the two comps, but according to this, the pay scales are vastly different https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/hundred-ecb-gender-pay-gap-24578323

It is good how the two comps are promoted as equal though. Steps in the right direction.

Yes - the highest paid woman is on less than the lowest paid man. That might have changed if some of the Aussie women had come over because they were offered additional salary to entice them.

[phiggins]

13 hours ago, Dave T said:

Just watching the Hundred.

Isn't it amazing how even Margin Meter has been rebranded and becomes a good discussion point when you don't have fans and neanderthal pundits who intentionally miss the point of it just to criticise anything RL tries. 

I think the win predictor is a better fit for Cricket than Rugby, because there's no way of saying who is "winning" during a game of cricket.

I could see what Sky were trying with the margin meter, but it didn't really land, because they only showed updates to it after a try which kind of defeated the point. Maybe something shown persistently to give an indicator of who is on top at that point might work better.

[Dave T]

11 minutes ago, phiggins said:

I think the win predictor is a better fit for Cricket than Rugby, because there's no way of saying who is "winning" during a game of cricket.

I could see what Sky were trying with the margin meter, but it didn't really land, because they only showed updates to it after a try which kind of defeated the point. Maybe something shown persistently to give an indicator of who is on top at that point might work better.

Margin Meter worked absolutely fine as a concept, it was presented terribly by the pundits. And the fans were miserable. It did take into consideration various elements, possession, territory, current score etc. 

Even if it had been presented as a half-time discussion point - amalgamating all of the stats and saying that the predicted result is Wigan by 10 for example. I get frustrated that we see stats at half time, but then not at fulltime, it's like they do it because it has been done since the 80's or whatever, but don't take it seriously.

[Dr Tim Whatley]

20 minutes ago, phiggins said:

I think the win predictor is a better fit for Cricket than Rugby, because there's no way of saying who is "winning" during a game of cricket.

 

There really is. Winviz is often a bit wild, but the models bookmakers use for in-play betting will give a very good indicator of a team's chances at any given time.

[gingerjon]

10 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Margin Meter worked absolutely fine as a concept, it was presented terribly by the pundits. And the fans were miserable. It did take into consideration various elements, possession, territory, current score etc. 

Even if it had been presented as a half-time discussion point - amalgamating all of the stats and saying that the predicted result is Wigan by 10 for example. I get frustrated that we see stats at half time, but then not at fulltime, it's like they do it because it has been done since the 80's or whatever, but don't take it seriously.

It's because we present the game, and have done for years, as if it doesn't have any tactics.

Cricket, even in The Hundred, is the exact opposite. There is endless talk about tactics, usually backed up with stats. (Although, it is interesting, to hear some detractors claim that T20 and other short forms have no tactics too.)

The Margin Meter was really badly done. If it had been used to say, "Based on all that has happened, Wigan should be six up but, look, they're 12 down ... so what have London done so well to go against the stats?" then it would have been helpful. But no one at Sky wants to talk like that so it was presented as, "Look at Phil Clarke's latest bust gadget ..."

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

It's because we present the game, and have done for years, as if it doesn't have any tactics.

Cricket, even in The Hundred, is the exact opposite. There is endless talk about tactics, usually backed up with stats. (Although, it is interesting, to hear some detractors claim that T20 and other short forms have no tactics too.)

The Margin Meter was really badly done. If it had been used to say, "Based on all that has happened, Wigan should be six up but, look, they're 12 down ... so what have London done so well to go against the stats?" then it would have been helpful. But no one at Sky wants to talk like that so it was presented as, "Look at Phil Clarke's latest bust gadget ..."

That's exactly it, it should be a discussion point, and can absolutely add to the tactical discussion 

[hunsletgreenandgold]

Not read the whole thread but i've seen a few trying to play down the success of The Hundred been in part due to 'lots of free tickets' - does anybody actually have any evidence of that? Most prices for adults are relatively in line with RL and kids tickets been as cheap as they are is just common sense really. The first weekend back of unrestricted crowds saw RL massively beaten on attendance by a new game/format with completely new teams. This should be a worry to SL and going back to the thread title, yes RL could learn a lot from cricket! 

[gingerjon]

Just now, hunsletgreenandgold said:

Not read the whole thread but i've seen a few trying to play down the success of The Hundred been in part due to 'lots of free tickets' - does anybody actually have any evidence of that? 

It's been covered by ESPNCricinfo. For example, in the opening women's game, at least 75% of the tickets were giveaways.

Today's double-header, just checked, has higher than I've seen ticket prices ranging from £16-£30 for adults. Be interesting to see the take up of that.

[hunsletgreenandgold]

4 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

It's been covered by ESPNCricinfo. For example, in the opening women's game, at least 75% of the tickets were giveaways.

Today's double-header, just checked, has higher than I've seen ticket prices ranging from £16-£30 for adults. Be interesting to see the take up of that.

That's interesting - it would appear each stadium has it's own ticketing policy. Headingley for example didn't offer any free tickets (believe me I tried haha) to adults but the admission was for both games in full. 

[Gerrumonside ref]

Isn’t the Hundred just T20 with a few more bobs and whistles, the odd rule change to shorten the game?

Its hardly some mass of new creation other than the made up teams.

Isn’t the ‘appealing for a new audience’ merely a fig leaf for the intention of flogging this trademarked competition format to India and Australia.

Be interesting to see if they ditch the already successful IPL and Big Bash League.