Does cricket make money in order to exist, or does it exist in order to make money? That is the question at the heart of the documentary Death of a Gentleman.
Four years in the making, it begins by exploring the future of Test cricket in a world bedazzled by the tiddlywinks of Twenty20 and the IPL, and ends up capturing a landscape alarmingly altered by the Big Three – India, Australia, and England – taking over the sport in early 2014. It also compellingly conveys how capitalism and corporate greed have poisoned a game that, in its very rhythms, defies the fast, glitzy, money-mad ways of the modern world.
Filmmakers Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber start out as ordinary cricket lovers, with the vague aim of making a film about Test cricket. But halfway through the film they find themselves becoming investigative journalists in pursuit of cricket administrators around the globe. Collins and Kimber were lucky that the story of cricket’s takeover coincided with their journey. Otherwise, Death of a Gentleman was in danger of being a dullish film about cricket lovers out to save the game from itself.
The film’s trailer calls it the “biggest scandal in sport”. The recent FIFA scandal suggests that may be overstating the case. But Collins explains this is not just about financial misdemeanours and power-grabbing officials: it is about a global sport that is rapidly contracting. The day does not seem far away when India, Australia, and England will play only each other, and the calendar will find even more room for domestic Twenty20 tournaments.
Why is the 2019 World Cup going to feature ten teams, not 14? Is it to make the tournament more concise and competitive, as administrators claim, or to make it even more financially attractive to broadcasters, with nine guaranteed games for India? As the film reminds us time and again, if powerbrokers are reluctant to answer tough questions it seems reasonable to be suspicious of their motives.
If you’re a cricket journalist or Indian cricket fan following this story closely, you may not discover anything new: former BCCI president (now ICC chairman) N. Srinivasan’s conflicts of interest and political manoeuvres have been well documented. But the film dramatises the game’s takeover – stage-managed by Srinivasan & Co. – and ties it together in a coherent and comprehensive narrative.
The one-eyed pursuit of money and power is destroying the very premise on which sport is built: to provide a level-playing field and to grow the game. Why, for instance, are India and England so resistant to cricket becoming an Olympic sport when it would mean so much more money for the sport, particularly for affiliate nations like China who receive an annual dole of just $30,000 from the ICC? Answer:
the narrow self-interest of the BCCI, which sees no financial benefit in making cricket a global game, and the ECB, which doesn’t want its summer disrupted.
As they wade through the murky waters of cricket administration in Chennai, Dubai, London and Melbourne, Collins and Kimber reveal the true nature of the film’s dramatis personae , particularly Srinivasan and ECB president Giles Clarke.
Srinivasan, benignly smiling, and Clarke, perpetually sneering, dodge the tough questions. You wonder, inevitably, about their motivations in clinging on to unpaid positions. “Love of the game”, you suspect, does not tell the whole story.
The soul of the film – made even more evocative by Chris Roe’s poignant score – is the story of the Australian Test cricketer Ed Cowan, whose track runs parallel to all that is going on behind closed doors. Cowan embodies the boyhood dreams of millions. But as Twenty20 corrodes the game’s fabric, there is less room for the scrappy slow-scoring batsman. Just as Test cricket is being shunted out of the consciousness of fans, so Cowan is shunted out of the team.
Would he go through the experience again, the hours of practice, the anxiety of an uncertain future, the disruptions to family life, the tears, the hopes? “In a heartbeat,” he says. It’s hard not to despair at the contrast between the innocence of childhood dreams and the ruthlessness of corporate enterprise.
If you care about cricket, watch Death of a Gentleman.
(Anjali Doshi is the editor of The Nightwatchman, a London-based cricket quarterly)
