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When the England and Wales Cricket Board promised, in a glaze of beaming positivity, that the Hundred would bring a new audience, new energy, a shiny new online presence, it probably didn’t have in mind a barrage of hate-threats and terrorism accusations against the 34-year-old female owner of what was previously the Northern Superchargers.
But hey, it’s all energy. It’s eyeballs. Can we clip some of this up? Just blue-skying here, but what are the hate-threat merch opportunities? Is there any way, and there are no bad ideas in this room, we can leverage some really strong online nuclear war chat?
Before we get into this, a moment of housekeeping. Masters of the message as ever, the ECB has this week denied the existence of its own shadow ban, the reported directive that England players are not permitted to talk about the Ashes at the current round of county media days.
Apparently this was originally the plan. It’s not any more. Not formally anyway. But good luck getting anything out of an ashen-faced Matt Potts now. And to the ECB’s credit this is once again a thrillingly forward-thinking strategy. As in, no British sporting body has ever seriously tried to enact a blanket ban on the mention of a now completed sporting contest.
Then again, Rob Key worked in the media for a bit so he’s basically playing 6D chess here. Never question his wizardry. But just in case there is any danger of losing some details along the way, and as a favour to a busy governing body, here is a list of the things that have now been expertly managed out of – and certainly NOT back into – the spotlight by this expert sleight of hand, never to be mentioned again in the national sports media.
These include: the England captain openly lying to the public via ECB media channels over his altercation with a bouncer the night before a game in New Zealand; and Key himself squirming like a sixth-former caught smoking behind the CCF hut over talk of England players’ activities in Noosa. Safely tucked away. Job done.
There will hopefully be no baseless talk of a drinking culture. Or of England’s awful preparation. Or the unbalanced selection. Or the failure to hire specialist coaches. Can we all just stay off this please? Including, come to think of it, the scoreline. Please remember not to talk about 4-1 in the Ashes. Was it 4-1? Yes. It was. 4-1.
Frankly, there is quite enough for the ECB’s media arm to deal with as the new season edges apologetically into shot. First things first, there is a lot to celebrate in a successful, or at least very busy and confusing, first Hundred draft. Specifically, in the signing of Abrar Ahmed by Sunrisers Leeds.
Abrar is a really good bowler. He’s a Pakistani player signed by an Indian-owned franchise. This is all good, not least for the ECB executive, who will have been desperate for it to happen at least once.
A blanket exclusion would have raised genuinely uncomfortable questions about ownership and inclusion, about the domestic communities the ECB has fanfared its support for, perhaps even the distant prospect of employment law issues. In this sense Abrar to Sunrisers is a gift from the gods.
There is no evidence whatsoever of any lobbying pressure around this issue. The head coach, Daniel Vettori, has specifically denied receiving any input on the matter from Sunrisers Hyderabad, whose owner was sitting next to him during the auction. So, a huge relief there, and a rare ECB good news story. Nothing to see here. Except, of course, there is. Because these things have very deep roots.
Let us break this down. It is relatively straightforward as Abrar is the only male or female Pakistan player signed by an Indian-owned franchise. Sunrisers is owned by the media company Sun, which is based in Chennai. The online response in India has so far been heated, understandably given the politics involved.
Abrar is a divisive figure in this context. Last March he posted a picture of himself holding a cup of tea, an apparent reference to the capture of an Indian pilot by Pakistan’s military during the recent conflict. There is talk on Indian news sites of a Social Media Firestorm. India Today goes further. Social media has “exploded”. There have been calls for a boycott of Hyderabad games in the Indian Premier League and vague talk of brand damage. The X account of Sunrisers Leeds was suspended after the announcement.
So what is this fearless organisation? Who are the people behind a rare act of openness towards Pakistani cricket? Sun Media was founded by Kalanithi Maran, who, in the way of these things, is the father of Kaviya Maran, Sunrisers’ chief executive and a visible presence at the auction table. Kaviya’s grandfather, Kalanithi’s dad, was a well-known political figure, a leading light of the DMK party, who are still dominant in Tamil Nadu.
The DMK is not the Bharatiya Janata Party. These are political opponents of Narendra Modi’s brand of Hindu nationalism. The DMK is something closer to secular India. The leader of the party is one MK Stalin, a former actor, who has described himself as an atheist. Kaviya, who is taking the heat for the Abrar signing, is a distant relative of Stalin.
No one wants politics in the room, but politics is always present in this environment, and this is the broad background to the franchise that has now signed a Pakistani cricketer to play in the Hundred. Of all the Indian owners, it seems safe to say Sunrisers were always among those most open to doing so. People in India are certainly aware of this angle. Mixed in with the blizzard of voices are insulting references to the Maran family’s DMK links, accusations of treachery and anti-nationalism.
It is important to take all this with a pinch of salt. Cricket social media is a classic hothouse of weirdness, bots and generalised hysteria. The only significant point here is that it exists, fanning the flames around this thing. When the Hundred’s fawning, beaming commentariat presents this crickertainment product to the nation it will do so against this background, with these noises in its ears, the kind of baggage that comes when you sell the month of July to the backer with the biggest stick and the biggest cheque.
Who knows, perhaps the Hundred can be a hand across the boundary cushion, gathering its children to its healing bosom like Michael Jackson at the Brits. Maybe what we have here is an opening out, a crisp-strewn perestroika, and not just a group of blokes in chinos struggling to keep the lid on this Pandora’s box, faces already melting in the glare, desperate to just throw to the nearest influencer and crank up the noise from the DJ booth. At the very least there is now another topic to ask the England players about after cheese and crackers in the pavilion. Harry. Barrage of online hate-threats. Thoughts?
