3 minute read
The ECB briefly banned all players with England central contracts from speaking to the media this week. What did they think would happen? Did they honestly expect one of them to say something interesting?
The ban’s since been lifted – probably on the basis that its mere existence made the ECB look mental – but how did it come about in the first place?
The ECB is still conducting a formal review into what went wrong in the Ashes. England’s managing director of men’s cricket, Rob Key, and ECB chief executive, Richard Gould, will then report their findings to the media in a week or so. (Presumably, “We were England and we were in Australia,” or words to that effect.)
The i’s Chris Stocks reports that because they haven’t told anyone what they’ve concluded yet and Brendon McCullum’s future is still therefore theoretically in the balance, they’re nervy one of the players might say something awkward in the interim. The ECB consequently sent out a memo to counties telling them to pull all media interviews with players who were in Australia over the winter.
They didn’t want to risk anyone saying anything outlandish or headline worthy, basically. To which we’d counter: chance would be a fine thing.
Kudos to the UK cricket press corps for their impressive annual blood-wringing efforts when presented with the ECB-contracted stones that are made available to them at this time of year. It is a thankless task and our journalists do all that could be expected of them and more. The England players do not, in the main, want to be at county press days and they generally live in mortal fear of saying anything too interesting even at the best of times. Given how the main event went this winter, they’ll be doubly on their guard right now.
Is anyone seriously worried that an irate Shoaib Bashir might grab a microphone and start vomiting endless scoops? Is Josh Tongue really likely to give us a blow-by-blow account of a fun-packed night out in New Zealand when questioned about “off-field incidents”.
In the unlikely event one of them can’t bring the appropriate corporate-approved platitude to mind and accidentally responds to a given question by saying something interesting… good. At least there’s some vitality in that. Better a bit of colour than what the ECB feels comfortable with, which amounts to nothing more than the carefully curated laminated falseness of social influencer banality.
Yes, the players are representatives and role models, but we’re not talking 1970s rock band tales of depravity here. We’re talking someone maybe saying slightly the wrong thing or someone possibly somewhat disagreeing about some aspect of what took place? These kinds of things are not controversies in any meaningful sense. That’s the world; that’s life. Robust disagreements about how cricketers should and shouldn’t set about trying to win matches are topics worthy of conversation. That is almost literally everything we ever talk about as fans. ‘Does this thing help England win?’
We as a public are willing to pay the price of a few rough edges if that’s what it costs to see beyond the surface, right? A media brouhaha can be awkward to deal with as a governing body, but it’s also part of marketing the game. If everyone’s “on the same page” what is there really left to say? That they were better than us on the day? That we didn’t execute our skills? That we go again in a couple of days’ time?
Good luck getting a return on that crap in an attention economy where your audience can read about whatever they want, whenever they want.
No, be braver. Allow friction. Let team-mates become distinguishable through their differences.
At the absolute bare minimum, give your most significant employees permission to actually open their mouths.