Cricket Enshittified

GH's latest real estate sale

Which bank? Oh no, that’s the other one

Prize for the least surprising headlines of last week was provided by Cricket Australia when it was divulged that an ‘independent report’ by Boston Consulting Group had advised that it was fine to flog the Big Bash League to private investors. I mean, of course they did. This is what consulting groups do: charge exorbitant fees for sprinkling holy water on capital, when they’re not gumming up government, conning institutions and polishing corporate turds. If you wanted a different answer, you’d ask someone else - maybe someone who cared or knew something about cricket. Consultants will hold their nose, do anything, scam anyone, yet remain accountable to no-one: two years ago BCG refused to appear before the Senate inquiry into the excesses of the consulting industry, then reluctantly did, which was interesting. BCG are already backing the truck up for some of that lovely Saudi sports cash. So, honestly, what else are they going to tell Todd Greenberg and Mike Baird? It won’t be as candid as this advice about privatisation’s pitfalls from CA alumnus Andrew Jones, which I commend.

For a further example of the complaisance of cricket’s bosses when mixing it with what they perceive to be the big boys, allow me to draw your attention to the sponsorship deal that CA last week inked with Westpac, ending a thirty-seven-year relationship with Commonwealth Bank. James Eyers reported breathlessly in the Fin.

It was a devastating fast ball, delivered by Westpac chief executive Anthony Miller, that took out his rival Commonwealth Bank boss Matt Comyn’s middle stump…..

Because it’s not, as Eyers reports, a like-for-like replacement:

Unlike CBA, Westpac’s brand will appear on both the men’s and women’s national teams’ uniforms, so when the Australian men take the field for the one-day international series against India in October, and the Ashes Test series against England in November, their shirts will be adorned with Westpac’s distinctive big red W.

CA will doubtless regard this as a job well done. But the sum is paltry - Eyers values the deal at $10 million over four years - and the aesthetics are eye-gashing, executed with all the finesse and subtlety of a Year 10 project. Pieter Huveneers’s design has worn better than most. But here it will be shown to poor advantage, dated, boxy and dull, violating every tenet of graphic design in its palette, proportion and placement. Westpac comes across not as supporting cricket, but as trying to own it, and one’s visceral response is to feel that an enshittified public utility like an Australian retail bank should know its place a damn sight better. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised considering the deal’s apparent broker, and the mentality that begets reportage like this:

For Comyn, CBA’s dismissal is a rare taste of defeat. Like a Test batman [sic], the CBA boss prides himself on technique and execution and his bank normally plays off the front foot.

But this time, it was a swing and a miss. Comyn and the board were frustrated with the marketing and brand executives who had led the bid to renew the cricket rights.

I’m not agin logos per se. The best logos delight and enchant. They can be clever, even witty, and strengthen by association. But the only thing that should be red on a Test match field is the ball, to which the eye is thereby directed. If size was fundamental, the smarter course would have been to turn the W the same shade of olive green as the baggy cap - it would have signified the sponsor’s willingness to blend in and to reinforce. Instead, the parties have arrived at what’s just a crass advertisement, screaming at us from the middle of our beautiful game, signifying that everything has a price and nothing can’t be sold. No wonder BCG’s advice was received so cordially last week: the most welcome counsel is always that which we feel instinctively.