Money Talks

I meant to blog about this once the Test matches were finished, but Christmas travel plans caused a delay.

One of the big differences between Old School cricket of the Imperial days and the modern game is that, as in all entertainment industries, capitalist calculation dominates all. Most people will think that a good thing, and who am I to argue with them?

England, as the linked article shows, is considering scrapping home tests with Bangladesh. They can't sell enough tickets to a series that is not thought likely to be competitive. (Probably, more significantly, they are under pressure from the TV companies who would be hard-pressed to sell advertising during coverage.) Some time ago, on the Old Site, I developed something called the Competitiveness Index. The index uses the number of wickets that fall in a series to make an estimate as to how competitive the two teams were.

Bangladesh is perceived as having made little progress after eight years. I've calculated the Competitiveness Index for all Bangladesh's Test series through 30 September 2008 and, apart from their victory over Zimbabwe in 2005, they haven't done all that well. Their index for their February 2008 series against South Africa comes in at 4.41 (1=evenly balanced). Their worst series ever was the 2005 visit to England, which measures a horrendous 44.06. (I wouldn't be surprised if that's the worst on record.) Their best? The first one, against India, in 2000, at 2.02.