Sports

Gary Sheffield, one of baseball’s great offensive forces, is still defending his reputation

Published

6 months ago

January 20, 2024

Gary Sheffield, one of baseball’s great offensive forces, is still defending his reputation

However you perceive Gary Sheffield — icon or problem child, steroid user or public-opinion victim — one image almost certainly springs to mind. It’s that waggling bat, the pulsating motion that for 22 seasons radiated so much swagger.

Through eight teams, nine All-Star nods, steroid allegations and a list of other microcontroversies too long to count, Sheffield’s signature stance served as an active reminder of just who his opponents — and everyone else — were dealing with.

Talk with Sheffield now, in the days before Hall of Fame voting is revealed in his final year on the ballot, and there are moments when one can practically feel that bat waving through the phone.

“Trying to change your reputation, then you’re splitting hairs,” Sheffield says, responding to a question about why controversy seems to follow him. “So why bother? My thing became, why bother? I am who I say am, and I’m gonna say who I am.”

On the surface, he remains unapologetically himself in a way only Gary Sheffield can. Dig a little deeper, and dichotomies emerge. Fifteen years after his playing career ended, Sheffield’s takes on the Hall, and his exclusion from it thus far, whirl between defiant disregard and a yearning for acceptance.

“You don’t want me in the Hall of Fame, I’m not offended,” Sheffield says in one breath.

In another: “Of course it (bothers me),” he says. “No question about it. I put in the work. I’m a Hall of Famer. I was a Hall of Famer since the day I was born. OK?”

This is the crux Sheffield faces. He may say he does not care. But how could he not? The Hall of Fame is his life’s work boiled down to one yes-or-no verdict. If Sheffield seems bound by conflicting emotions on that subject, well, that’s familiar territory for a man who has always been defined by his contradictions.

This is Gary Sheffield’s 10th and final year on the Hall of Fame ballot. (Mark Cunningham / MLB Photos via Getty Images)

“Gary is actually a very shy, sensitive person,” Doc Gooden said of his nephew way back in 1996. “He might come across as a tough guy who doesn’t let anything bother him. But I know he cares what people think about him.”

Oh yeah, Sheffield cares what people think. He still catalogs every slight, real or perceived. Last year he received 55 percent of the vote from baseball writers. His total has inched upward but is still far from the 75 percent threshold needed for induction.

By the numbers, Sheffield appears to have a worthy Hall of Fame resume. There’s the 509 home runs, the 60.5 WAR, the JAWS score (a metric that measures Hall of Fame worthiness) that ranks above 13 right fielders already in Cooperstown as players. The detractions, though, have always loomed larger for the electorate — mostly, the ties to performance-enhancing drugs.

Zoom out, though, and Sheffield’s case is confounding. All these years later, one of a generation’s greatest offensive forces remains on the defensive.

You probably know the voice (loud), the personality (bold) and the play style (intimidating). But understanding Sheffield beyond the bat wag requires probing into a few of the stories not everyone knows. He chuckles through his nostrils as he tells one of these: When Sheffield was a child, he once asked his mother why he did not have siblings.

“She said I was difficult enough,” Sheffield says, “so she didn’t need no more.”

In the Belmont Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Gooden — the pitcher who would go on to stardom and then lose it all in the grip of drugs — famously served as a de facto older brother. He and Sheffield even shared a room for a while. But the truth is Sheffield’s earliest years did not involve the company of other children. Later, growing up on the edge of a tough area, his parents kept the rules tight. No staying the night at friend’s houses. No being out after dark.

“I was lonely at times,” Sheffield says.

Perhaps that is why now, 15 years into retirement, Sheffield still spends so much time alone. He cherishes his wife and children. He’s even a grandfather. But aside from family, his preferred state is solitude. Picture Sheffield, the man best known for his outspoken nature and authoritative play, burrowed in a man cave detached from his Tampa home. He watches football and basketball. Smokes his cigars.

“Being an only child,” he said, “you treasure being by yourself.”

For over two decades, he was a menace in the batter’s box. But in many ways, Sheffield is still a loner searching for a place.

And with his Hall of Fame candidacy in the hands of baseball writers for a final time, Sheffield has been making the media rounds lately. The interviews are as interesting as ever. They also lead Sheffield to a familiar paradox.

“I don’t go around just talking,” Sheffield says. “That’s the craziest thing I ever hear. ‘There go Gary again.’ Well, there go a writer calling and asking me a question. You see what I’m saying?”

Listen to him speak, and the dualities pop up everywhere. Much of his rhetoric toes a line between profound and opaque.

“You can ask me anything,” Sheffield says. “If you saw me pissing around the corner and you told the police, I would say, ‘Yeah, I was pissing around the corner.’ That’s who I am.

“So when you say, ‘Oh, well, he’s pissing around the corner, I’m gonna put it in the media and blast it everywhere,’ you think you’re embarrassing me because you said I was pissing around the corner?’ You’re not embarrassing me.

“I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I was pissing around the corner.’ You can’t embarrass me. And that’s the deal.”

Over the years, there was drama with managers. And executives. And Barry Bonds. Sheffield will gladly rehash any of it: the unfounded tale of him purposely making errors in Milwaukee, the reason he waived a no-trade clause and went from the Marlins to the Dodgers, the media kerfluffles in New York regarding playing alongside Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. “One thing about my memory,” he says, “I got photographic memory, when it comes to me.”

When in New York, Gary Sheffield was part of a series of star-studded lineups. (Al Bello / Getty Images)

It has all led to a label that too often gets attached to athletes who say exactly what is on their mind: misunderstood.

In 1991, Sheffield hired Marvet Britto as his publicist. Britto’s job was essentially to help promote the positive aspects of Sheffield’s brand. But as Britto explains it, that meant becoming “the most critical person in his life.”

“I felt that many of the writers tried to make Gary Sheffield fit into a template rather than accept who Gary Sheffield was born to be,” Britto said. “It takes a certain amount of emancipating your voice to truly deliver the authenticity of who you were born to be. Very few people have the courage to do that.”

Britto, then, says she never wanted to silence Sheffield. Her agency worked instead to amplify his voice into one of authority.

Today, Britto says, she and Sheffield remain like family. Big Sis, Sheffield called her in the acknowledgments of his book.

“When you don’t put in the work to try to understand someone, then you misunderstand them,” Britto said. “No one came from where Gary Sheffield came from who wrote about the sport. That was also part of the problem. So, therefore, the storytelling was always not reflective or written with the cultural fluency that was necessary to interpret who this player was, and why this player may have been communicating in a way in which (he was) communicating. That takes a certain level of cultural fluency, and it takes a certain level of work.”

Listen closely as Sheffield unpacks his career and the Hall of Fame conundrum, and there are breadcrumbs there, left by someone who is not shy about voicing his desire to finally be understood.

“I’m helping educate you on me,” he says. “So you understand me. If you got a question about something that you come up with later, you can say, ‘I can put two and two together,’ because I can explain him.”

He talks proudly about how he thrives under duress. “When everybody is praising me and saying, ‘Good job,’ and all that, that’s when I screw up,” he says. Attempting to put that aforementioned two and two together, perhaps this meant he conditioned himself for chaos. If being alone is his preferred state, swirling in turmoil might be a close, subconscious second. “Sheffield is not hard to approach,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote in 1998. “He’s just hard to figure out.”

Sheffield frames it differently.

“My uncle allowed the New York Mets to tell him what to say, what to think and how to go about it,” Sheffield said. “I refused to do that, because I think that’s what drove him to drugs. Because he wasn’t being his authentic self.

“When you hold things in, it eats at you. You have to look yourself in the mirror, and you have to live with yourself.”

Sheffield has talked a lot lately about the time he used “the cream.” He was training with Barry Bonds, a venture that lasted only a few weeks before their personalities clashed. Sheffield was coming off knee surgery. He had cysts, and surgeons went in through the back of the knee to remove them. He returned to the gym quickly, at Bonds’ urging. One day the stitches busted. Sheffield started bleeding. All over the gym, he says. Someone from the gym, he says, handed him some cream to help stop the bleeding.

“It was really an ointment,” he says. “It was like a thick-based ointment to stop the bleeding.”

In a recent interview with USA Today, Sheffield said he used the cream only once. But Sheffield has urged Hall of Fame voters to “do their homework,” so there is a bit more to discuss here. Sheffield purchased vitamins from BALCO, he says, but never anything he knew was steroids. After the falling out, Sheffield says his wife wrote BALCO a check for $146 to cover the vitamins. The book “Game of Shadows” — considered a seminal text on the inner workings of the steroid era — says the check was for $430. The lone chapter centered on Sheffield concludes with this line: “The cost to his reputation would be much greater.”

Next thing Sheffield knew, he was testifying before a grand jury. He was granted immunity, there not as a suspect but rather to discuss Bonds. In a 2004 Sports Illustrated article, Sheffield detailed using “the cream” on his leg every night, a way of healing the scars. The scar cream, he says now, was “something totally different” from what he was given in the gym.

“It was like you could go to a store and find something like that,” he said then. “I put it on my legs and thought nothing of it. I kept it in my locker. The trainer saw my cream.”

Gary Sheffield’s connection with Barry Bonds landed him in the Mitchell Report, with repercussions to this day. (Eliot Schechter / Getty Images)

Sheffield, it should be noted, was among the first MLB players to speak out against steroids. It was 2000 when he went on HBO’s “Real Sports” and alleged “six or seven” members of every team were juicing. He still swears he never knowingly used any performance-enhancing substance. His willingness to explain his involvement alone differentiates him from many suspected users.

“Game of Shadows” also cites a January 2002 drug calendar from trainer Greg Anderson that reflected Sheffield’s use of human growth hormone and testosterone. Sheffield says it’s not true. “That’s all fabricated,” he says. He’s still angered about the fact he was included in the Mitchell Report, a 409-page investigation released in 2007. His mentions in the report link him to Anderson and cite passages from Sheffield’s book, “Inside Power,” in which he denied steroid use. The section of the report related to Sheffield otherwise did not include any explosive revelations. Sheffield still bristles over the fact no one interviewed him for that report. Page 169 of the Mitchell Report, however, states Sheffield initially declined an interview request, then was later unable to schedule an interview because of his attorney’s health issues.

Take all that for what it’s worth — that is the extent of what we know about Sheffield and steroids. And even as we get further removed from the stain of the Steroid Era, even as other names linked to PEDs, such as David Ortiz, have been enshrined in Cooperstown, these allegations have helped keep Sheffield out of the Hall of Fame.

“Nothing has ever been proven,” Britto said. “How do you continue to just make assumptions about someone and let that become a part of their narrative? That’s why he had to defend himself.”

Sheffield’s case otherwise is compelling. He was a nine-time All-Star, a five-time Silver Slugger. He won a batting title and, in an era where so many were juicing, finished in the top six of MVP voting in four different seasons.

His WAR and subsequent HOF metrics would be even higher if not for his greatest flaw as a player: poor outfield defense. Even now, Sheffield still laments his early-career moves from shortstop to third base, from third base to outfield. Sheffield’s career WAR of 60.5 is still higher than players such as Harmon Killebrew, Vladimir Guerrero, Willie Stargell and Ortiz.

Sheffield nonetheless received only 11.7 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot.

His potent personality has long been a lightning rod, but it is also part of the Sheffield allure. Britto said she recently attended a golf tournament with Sheffield, where children far too young to have ever watched him play would approach and mimic his waving bat.

“To me,” Britto said, “that is the connective tissue that baseball should want.”

Now he is finally gaining more support. As of Jan. 18, he has appeared on 74 percent of writer’s ballots so far made public. That score tends to drop once all ballots are revealed, however, and most ballot observers seem to think he faces long odds to clear the 75 percent threshold in his final year.

Former manager Jim Leyland, who will be inducted in Cooperstown next summer, is among Sheffield’s supporters.

“This is a pretty simple one,” Leyland said of what makes Sheffield a Hall of Fame player. “I think there was quite a long period of time that Gary Sheffield was the most feared right-handed hitter in baseball.”

“It’s funny,” Sheffield says. “I’ve been retired 13, 14 years. I just started reflecting on my career.”

He is finally reminiscing, he says, because things are finally slowing down. Sheffield knows he’s talking about “rich people problems” here. But until two years ago, he had never had one residence in his adult life. Early in his career, he submerged himself in the star lifestyle — the cars and the clothes, the money and the women. He would travel around the country, smacking baseballs everywhere he went. Then he’d go skiing in Aspen. Then he’d go to his residence in the Bahamas. Then home to Tampa. Every season and offseason followed a regimented plan.

“It’s more sane,” he said of his life now. “It’s simpler.”

Once, back in 1996, his mother told Sports Illustrated women were his biggest weakness. He married Deleon Richards, a gospel singer, in 1999. He talks often about how that relationship changed his life. They’ve been together 26 years. He’s proud of it.

“When you got a spouse, you make it work and you find the good qualities in that person,” Sheffield says. “And when it’s not so good, you can still love that person. I think it’s a beautiful thing. It helps you understand how to love other people even more.”

When they were setting up their permanent home, Sheffield did not want any of his baseball memorabilia on display. Deleon encouraged him to put it all in the man cave. He has a tug-and-pull relationship with baseball like that. “I don’t miss playing at all,” he says. “Zero.” In 2021, he talked about how he struggles to watch the modern game. But one of his sons, Gary Jr., works in sports media. Another, Jaden, plays baseball at Georgetown. Garrett Sheffield spent last year playing in an independent league. Noah, a class of 2024 prospect, is committed to Florida State. Christian, a class of 2026 player, is on a similar track.

“At points in my life I hated the fact my kids wanted to entertain playing major-league baseball because of what I went through,” Sheffield says. “I didn’t want them dealing with that.”

At last, though, he is really thinking back on the good and the bad of it all. He has studied those players who have gotten into the Hall of Fame. He will not name names, but he sees others who — though they were excellent players — don’t have quite his accomplishments. He knows what people say. Consumes it all.

“There’s guys that failed tests,” Sheffield said. “There’s guys that have been accused. There’s guys that have been a lot of things. All the things they said about me, they’re already in there.

“And then they’ll talk about numbers. 500 home-run markers, 3,000-hit markers. There’s guys in there without them. So that means my numbers are better than all of it. So what do I think of it? … If I say what I think of it, it becomes, ‘Oh, he said this.’ Well, why did I say this? Because my numbers are better.”

This has become personal, too, Sheffield says, because of the way his wife and children perceive the Hall of Fame conundrum. “They want this so bad for me,” Sheffield says. “That don’t mean I don’t want it. That means they want it from a different perspective.”

From his own perspective, he earned this, and that leaves him both speaking of his desire to be enshrined in Cooperstown, and at other times dismissing the impending ballot reveal. “At the end of the day,” he said, “I come to realize it’s a popularity contest, and who (the writers) want to be in gets in.”

Those around him have watched that push-and-pull playing out, seen the conflict in him.

“The duality of that answer is he’s human, and he has a heartbeat,” Britto said. “Him not being in the Hall of Fame … his numbers warrant it, his pedigree warrants it, everything about Gary Sheffield from a data and metric and visibility and skill perspective warrants it. However, him not being in it, to him, feels deliberate.”

If Sheffield is not inducted this time, he could lean into his reputation and proudly bask in his own exclusion. That would be a fitting ending.

It just would not be the whole truth.

“I only want what’s rightfully mine, and that’s it,” Sheffield said. “And that’s the Hall of Fame.”

(Top photo of Sheffield in 2022: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

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Sports

How cricket became the next big thing for sport's wealthiest investors

Published

12 mins ago

July 28, 2024

Press Room

How cricket became the next big thing for sport's wealthiest investors

Chuck Ramkissoon, the most interesting character in Joseph O’Neill’s award-winning novel Netherland, is a Trinidadian wheeler-dealer who has come to New York to make his fortune.

So far, so normal, but it is how he intends to make his mark that sets him apart from the thousands of other characters in stories about the American Dream because Ramkissoon’s route to riches is cricket.

In a memorable section of a remarkable book, Ramkissoon tells his friend, the story’s narrator, that he wants to build a cricket “arena” in Brooklyn.

Sensing his friend’s incredulity, our hero launches into a sales pitch that starts with the huge South Asian population in New York, moves into a business plan that involves 8,000 fans paying $50 (£39) each to watch 12 exhibition matches every summer, and ends with the kicker, “global TV rights… a game between India and Pakistan… a TV and internet viewership of 70 million in India alone… we’d breakeven in three, at most four years”.

This vision is meant to sound unrealistic, bordering on absurd. Cricket in New York? Attracting paying customers? With tens of millions watching on the other side of the world?

The book was written in 2008 but is set a few years earlier, more than two decades before 34,000 people watched India play Pakistan in the T20 World Cup in New York last month, a game that proved the old adage about truth being stranger than fiction.

The top hospitality tickets at the Nassau County Stadium had a face value of $10,000 (£7,800) and ordinary tickets were changing hands for more than $1,000 on the secondary market. The game garnered 256 million hours of viewing in India, an incredible figure for a contest that finished in the small hours of the morning there.

India fans in New York watch their team’s victory in the T20 World Cup final in June (Derek French/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

I was reminded of Ramkissoon last week when the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) revealed it has sent presentations to several owners of National Football League (NFL) teams to alert them to the opportunity of buying stakes in the eight teams that play in The Hundred, one of 17 different “franchise leagues” that have popped up in recent years.

Those pitch decks, which include a video explaining The Hundred’s rules, have also been sent to the owners of teams in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the daddy of those franchise leagues, and pretty much every serious multi-sport investor on the planet.

All have been invited to games in the month-long competition, which started on Tuesday, and various media outlets have reported that high-profile owners of British football teams, such as Wrexham’s Hollywood duo Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, are interested.

“Many of them know cricket very well, know The Hundred very well and may not feel the need to come,” explained the ECB’s director of business operations Vikram Banerjee during a conference call with reporters.

“Others, some of our American friends, for example, may like the idea of what we’ve got but don’t really know cricket at all, so they’ll come along and see what English cricket’s about.”

It is a lovely idea, expressed in quintessentially English fashion, but what the ECB is really selling is something far bigger than English cricket’s latest wheeze for remaining relevant — and solvent — in a fast-changing landscape. It is selling what Ramkissoon was selling: potential.

“Cricket is perhaps the only sport that has a combination of being the most popular game in a market as big as India but is also growing fast in so many new markets, such as the United States,” says Mike Fordham, a former ECB strategist who went on to become chief executive of the IPL’s Rajasthan Royals and now advises governing bodies from the Gulf to the Caribbean on running cricket leagues.

“And if you add the fact it has been added to the Olympic programme for 2028 in Los Angeles, and there is a good chance the 2036 Games will be in India, and look at how fast the women’s game is growing, the sport’s potential is obvious.”

So, after that long preamble, let us explore how cricket became just the ticket for every serious multi-sport investor, how American cricket fits in, and where the sport is heading.

But first, how big is the Indian cricket market?

According to the United Nations, India’s population, now north of 1.4 billion, overtook China’s about a year ago. This means one in six people alive are in India.

There are also millions of Indians living in other countries, including more than four-and-a-half million in the U.S. and more than a million in the UK.

India’s gross domestic product has been rising fast for the past 20 years and its economy is now either the third, fourth or fifth largest on the planet, depending on which metric you prefer. India still has hundreds of millions of very poor people, but the proportion in poverty is falling as its well-educated, urban middle class grows.

Cricket is India’s most popular sport and it is not even close.

It is the same story elsewhere in South Asia. Add the populations of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to India’s and you clear the two-billion mark, which means one in four people live in countries where cricket is the number one sport, which does not include the sport’s fans in Australia, England, Jamaica, South Africa and everywhere else the game is loved.

Indian Premier League games are regularly played in front of packed stadiums (R Satish Babu/AFP via Getty Images)

“Obviously any conversation about cricket’s appeal has to start with India, and as India has got bigger and richer, so has cricket,” explains Gareth Balch, chief executive of global sports agency Two Circles.

“There are so many different numbers you can pluck out, from the rising value of IPL franchises to how many people consumed the broadcast of the India-Pakistan game in New York this summer.

“But a really good one is if you look at the total value of cricket’s media rights — it has risen fivefold over the past five years. That is remarkable growth and most of that is being driven by India and the rest of South Asia.”

As Balch notes, there are dozens of metrics you can choose to demonstrate the might of the Indian market, but let us pick out a few more to hammer this point home.

According to Oakwell Sports Advisory, a London-based firm, “India constitutes 90 per cent of the one billion cricket fans aged 16 to 69 globally” and “the Indian market is more than twice as large as the other 11 ICC (International Cricket Council) full member countries (the game’s most established nations) combined”.

When India played Pakistan at the 2019 Cricket World Cup in England, 800,000 fans applied for tickets and the game was watched by 229 million viewers on Star Sports, Disney’s Indian pay-TV network. India’s semi-final against New Zealand in that tournament drew an online audience of more than 25 million, a world record for concurrent live streams. That record has since been stretched to 35 million for another World Cup game between India and Pakistan last year.

When the IPL’s first eight franchises were sold in 2008, they went for more than $700m, almost double the reserve price. But when two expansion franchises were sold in 2021, they went for more than $1.2billion. Oakwell estimates the IPL’s total enterprise value to be over $15bn. Not bad for 10 teams that only play for two months a year.

These franchises are owned by the richest families and biggest conglomerates in India — the Ambani family, who recently threw a $600m wedding, co-own five-time IPL champions the Mumbai Indians — and the league officially became a “decacorn”, a start-up business that grows to a valuation beyond $10bn, in 2022.

Last year, the IPL sold its domestic media rights to Star Sports and Viacom18 in a five-year deal worth $6.2bn, three times the amount achieved in 2017. The deal means IPL games are second only to the NFL in terms of revenue per match, knocking Premier League fixtures into third place.

You get the picture.

OK, tell me more about The Hundred

Launched in 2021, it is a competition — with men’s and women’s versions — played between eight city-based franchises in England and Wales.

Its unique selling point is that it is even quicker than the Twenty20 (T20) format that has become the most popular version of the sport almost everywhere. The most notable exception to this is England, where Test cricket, which is played between international teams over five days, subsidises everything else, including the grassroots game.

Unfortunately, only cricket fans in Australia and India appear to like Test cricket as much — or in sufficient numbers — as English fans, which is why cricket chiefs have been looking for shorter versions of the game for more than 70 years.

The first was a format that could be played in a day. It is still catchily known as one-day cricket and involves each team getting 50 six-ball “overs” to score as many runs as possible. Every subsequent new format has just reduced the number of overs available, cutting the amount of time each game takes and encouraging players to score quickly.

Ironically, it was the ECB, in 2003, that came up with T20, which, you guessed it, is a 20-over-per-team game. For a time, its mix of big hits, quick wickets (or outs, in baseball parlance) and the excuse it provided for outdoor drinking on summer evenings reversed the gradual decline of the domestic game. But, like so many other English inventions, it was perfected elsewhere, particularly in India.

So, the ECB, knowing it has to diversify from Test cricket and ever conscious of the shadow thrown by football, had another go and came up with The Hundred, a format that is literally 100 balls per team, which knocks 40 balls and about half an hour off the duration of a typical T20 match.

The Hundred has proved popular with fans in the UK (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

This, it believed, would attract more families to the games and persuade free-to-air broadcasters, like the BBC, to find some space in their prime-time schedules. It also decided to give the women’s competition equal billing and prize money from the off, with most games staged as double-headers.

Guess what? It worked. Now in its fourth season, The Hundred has been a domestic hit. Thanks to relatively low ticket prices and a big marketing push, attendances have been younger and more diverse than typical cricket crowds. The audiences on the BBC and Sky, the competition’s main broadcast partner and biggest benefactor, have been solid and the highlight reel-friendly action has done well on social media.

Contrary to some of the gloomier predictions that surrounded its birth, The Hundred has not killed off the older T20 league still played by the 18 counties that constitute English cricket’s traditional professional pyramid or ruined the competitive balance of the wider domestic game, in all its formats, by giving the counties that host Hundred franchises a massive leg-up. Not yet, anyway.

You can probably sense there is a “but” coming, can’t you?

Yes, what is it?

In short, The Hundred has not resonated beyond England’s shores.

This would not be such an existential threat if it were not for the fact that T20, powered by Indian money, has continued to spread its tentacles, grabbing chunks of the calendar — by far the most valuable real estate in any global sport — and increasing the cost of talent.

For the demographic reasons discussed above, the ECB never wanted to compete pound for rupee with the IPL when it came to attracting the best players, but it did think it could still beat nascent competitions in new territories such as Canada, the United Arab Emirates and U.S. for talent.

Seeing the top Australian players go from their Big Bash League, during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, to million-dollar spells in the IPL and then lucrative stints in America’s Major Cricket League — which has attracted significant Indian investment — was one thing, but when players start pulling out of agreements to play in The Hundred because they can earn the same money in less time in Canada, the need for action is clear.

There is also pressure building within the English game, too, as those 18 counties, most of whom are member-owned, are groaning under almost £200m of debt. The Hundred was initially sold to them as a means to reset the clock.

The ECB rejected an offer of £300m for 75 per cent of the entire competition from British private equity firm Bridgepoint Group two years ago. Given the rising prices of IPL franchises and the sums being spent on teams elsewhere, that was probably a good call.

But there is a right time to cash in on every asset and now looks like that time for The Hundred.

The ECB, however, is not seeing it quite that simply. For the governing body, this sales process, which is for 49 per cent stakes in each franchise, is as much about making sure The Hundred is one of the franchise leagues still standing when the inevitable consolidation comes, as it is about finding a quick fix for the counties’ overdrafts.

So, unlike the auctions that have driven franchise values up in India, the ECB has asked both financial services giant Deloitte and Raine, the American boutique bank which has become sport’s go-to auctioneer, to run what Banerjee described as a “very strange speed-dating” process that will hopefully see The Hundred’s host venues partner up, “in a weird kind of school disco moment”, with an international investor.

On the same conference call, the ECB’s CEO Richard Gould stressed that this is as much about “skill sets” in areas such as digital engagement, event management and women’s sport as it is about massive cheques, although massive cheques would be nice, too.

If this sounds to you a bit like former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s policy on cake — “pro having it and pro eating it” — you are not the only one.

Banerjee and Gould were speaking only a few days after British newspaper The Telegraph reported unnamed IPL sources saying the ECB had no chance of raising the £200m or so it is aiming for from these sales of large minority stakes. They were actually a bit ruder than that, suggesting the process was a “car crash” and the suggested valuations “delusional”.

When asked about this, Gould drily noted the ECB has spoken to every single owner of an IPL and WPL (Women’s Premier League) team and they all seemed pretty interested in The Hundred then, which might be why they are now trying “to negotiate through the media”.

This is a fair comment, but The Athletic has spoken to several sources — who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships — who believe the financial return from all of the ECB’s matchmaking will be “underwhelming” unless some of the host venues sell some or all of the 51 per cent stakes they have been gifted.

In other words, 49 per cent stakes will not bring in those massive cheques, particularly from IPL owners who have snapped up franchises in South Africa, the U.S. and elsewhere, but 70 per cent or even 100 per cent stakes might.

“No investor will want a minority stake and just see their funds go into infrastructure and other assets related to the county game that they have zero control over,” explains Oakwell’s Andrew Umbers.

“Therefore, the valuations are all over the place. Currently, nobody is selling a majority, but that might change.”

Fordham agrees.

“The real appeal for IPL investors would be in creating a bigger platform for sponsors, multi-league annual contracts for players and coaches, and more control of the calendar,” he says.

“I actually think most of The Hundred franchises will end up with IPL investors and at least a couple of them will be wholly owned by IPL groups.”

Laurie Pinto is a British financier who has been helping wealthy people buy and sell sports teams for years. He sees it like this.

“The ECB knows it has to do something and in cricket, that usually means cosying up to India and there will definitely be some of that,” he explains.

“But they are also worried about the ‘India-fication’ of cricket, for want of a better term. They are worried about India’s economic dominance of the game. That is why they brought in Raine. They want to globalise their ownership structure.

“The dream would be to link Wrexham with (Cardiff-based Hundred franchise) the Welsh Fire, or (NFL legend) Tom Brady’s crowd at Birmingham City with the Birmingham Phoenix. They’ll be talking to everyone: Fenway Sports Group, the Kroenkes, the Glazers, Jim Ratcliffe, all of them.”

It is not an unrealistic dream, either. Avram Glazer, admittedly not the most popular sports team owner in the UK throughout his time at Manchester United, was outbid for those two IPL expansion franchises three years ago but paid $30m for the Desert Vipers in the UAE-based International League T20 competition.

It has also been reported that Austrian drinks giant and multi-sports team owner Red Bull might want a slice of The Hundred. Red Bull already sponsors several Indian cricketers and has just hooked up with Leeds United. Yes, Leeds United, the Championship football team co-owned by Paraag Marathe, the former chairman of USA Cricket.

And just to really confuse you, RedBird Capital, the New York-based investment firm that owns AC Milan and Toulouse, as well as having a stake in the Fenway Sports Group empire, bought 15 per cent of the IPL’s Rajasthan Royals in 2021.

So America’s main contribution here is money?

Yes and no. English cricket would love American money. Please send some as soon as possible.

But cricket more generally wants American attention, love, respect… and money. Some of that has already started to flow.

As already mentioned, the 2024 T20 World Cup was co-hosted by Cricket West Indies, the governing body for the game in the Caribbean, and USA Cricket, with 16 of the 55 games taking place in the U.S.

Those games were shared between venues in Florida, New York and Texas, and, while there was some grumbling about the quality of the playing surfaces (another link with O’Neill’s Netherland), the tournament could not have gone much better for American cricket, with the U.S. claiming the upset of the tournament, a win over Pakistan, and reaching the second round.

That victory over Pakistan, and the earlier one against Canada, happened at Grand Prairie Stadium, near Dallas, which is the closest thing the U.S. has to Ramkissoon’s “Bald Eagle Field” and one of the two venues used by Major League Cricket (MLC), the six-team franchise league that is just about to complete its second season.

Launched in 2023, it is owned by American Cricket Enterprises, a consortium of private investors, including some of the franchise owners, which is comprised of IPL team owners and successful Indian-Americans, such as Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella.

Their combined financial firepower has enabled the MLC teams to attract the current and former Australia captains, Pat Cummins and Steve Smith, as well as their Australian team-mates Travis Head and Glenn Maxwell, former South Africa skippers Quinton de Kock and Faf du Plessis, and ex-West Indies captain Kieron Pollard, as well as several other leading internationals. In terms of global stars, the MLC has trumped The Hundred by paying them more than the £125,000 maximum on offer in England this month.

English cricket bosses will be relatively relaxed about missing out on a few big names, particularly if it serves the greater purpose of growing cricket, especially in a new market that might, one day, provide some balance to India’s outsized influence over the game.

The T20 World Cup was one step on that journey, the MLC is another, and the first Olympic T20 competition at the Los Angeles Olympics in four years will be another.

“Cricket is full of opportunity — it’ll be one of the fastest-growing sports economically in the next decades,” says Balch.

“With this opportunity come choices: one choice would be for the cricket economy to resemble basketball’s, with the IPL potentially being the NBA. Basketball is a truly global sport with a dominant league. The U.S. ‘Dream Team’ might not win every game it plays, but every other basketball league on the planet is a few steps below the NBA.

“Cricket has to choose whether that’s the best economy for the game, especially considering the multiple formats of the game.”

Deciding whether your sport should have a league as dominant and successful as the NBA or not is a nice choice to have, though.

Ramkissoon would have loved such options. When he emailed potential backers with his great pitch for bringing back America’s “oldest team sport”, he received responses such as “Whoever, could you please stop sending me crazy junk mail?!”.

I should probably mention that the novel starts with the narrator being told that Ramkissoon’s “remains” have been found in a canal, in handcuffs, “evidently the victim of murder”.

He was a complicated man, though. Far more complicated than cricket, which is actually quite a simple bat-and-ball game. Far better than baseball. As hundreds of millions of Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Australians, New Zealanders, English, South Africans, Bajans, Jamaicans, Dutch, Irish… the list goes on, will tell you.

(Top photo: iStock; design: Eamonn Dalton)

Sports

Texas' Steve Sarkisian, wife Loreal jointly announce plan to divorce: 'We aim to remain the best of friends'

Published

40 mins ago

July 27, 2024

Press Room

Texas' Steve Sarkisian, wife Loreal jointly announce plan to divorce: 'We aim to remain the best of friends'

Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian recently shared some personal news. He and his wife, Loreal are going their separate ways.

In a joint statement, Steve and Loreal described their split as amicable. Despite making the decision to file for divorce, the soon-to-be former couple said they strive to “remain the best of friends.”

“After many heartfelt conversations, we have decided to amicably part ways and jointly file for divorce, the statement read. “We aim to remain the best of friends and are incredibly grateful for the love and support we have shared throughout our journey together.”

Head coach Steve Sarkisian of the Texas Longhorns speaks during SEC Football Media Days at Omni Dallas Hotel on July 17, 2024 in Dallas, Texas. (Tim Warner/Getty Images)

The Sarkisians also cited the demands of their respective careers. Loreal works as a professional wardrobe stylist, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“Our commitments to our respective careers made it difficult to prioritize time for each other and this step will provide us with the necessary time and space professionally while continuing to support each other personally.”

STEVE SARKISIAN: ARCH MANNING SERVING AS BACKUP QB HAS BEEN ‘PRETTY SIMPLE FOR HIM’

They closed the statement by thanking supporters and asking for understanding and privacy.

“While we appreciate all the love and encouragement we have received, we kindly ask for your understanding and privacy during this transition as we embark on this new chapter in our lives.”

Steve Sarkisian speaks with his wife Loreal Sarkisian

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian meets his wife Loreal Sarkisian after the 37-10 win over Rice at Royal-Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Sep. 2, 2023 in Austin. (Aaron E. Martinez / American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK)

Steve and Loreal tied the knot in 2020. Steve was the offensive coordinator under Nick Saban at Alabama at the time. The couple relocated to Austin in 2021 after Sarkisian was named the head coach at Texas. Loreal routinely appeared at Longhorns football games in support of Sarkisian and the team over the past few years.

Loreal attended North Carolina A&T and was a decorated track athlete. She became an assistant coach at Southern California in 2013. Sarkisian returned to USC as the Trojans head football coach ahead of the 2014 season.

Loreal Sarkisian at a Texas Longhorns game

Loreal Sarkisian, wife of Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian, holds up the sign of the horns in the endzone before the game against Alabama at Royal Memorial Stadium on Sep. 10, 2022. (Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK)

Texas finished with a 5-7 record under Sarkisian in 2021. But, the team improved in 2022 and finished with eight wins.

Sarkisian continues to prepare the Longhorns for their inaugural season in the Southeastern Conference.

The Longhorns are coming off a run to the College Football Playoff semifinal and were the No. 2 team in this year’s SEC preseason poll. The Georgia Bulldogs landed in the top spot in the conference’s preseason rankings.

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Chantz Martin is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.

Sports

Dodgers bullpen again falters in walk-off loss to the Astros

Published

1 hour ago

July 27, 2024

Press Room

Dodgers bullpen again falters in walk-off loss to the Astros

HOUSTON —

The Dodgers have yet to make a major move ahead of Tuesday’s trade deadline.

But their list of roster needs seems to keep growing by the day.

The Dodgers’ latest concern: a suddenly shaky bullpen, one that cost them dearly in a 7-6 walk-off loss to the Houston Astros on Saturday.

Once ahead 5-0 behind a strong start from rookie left-hander Justin Wrobleski, the Dodgers came unraveled with some of their most trusted relievers at Minute Maid Park.

Former closer Evan Phillips inherited a two-on, two-out jam in the sixth — and then promptly gave up four consecutive RBI singles, suffering the latest stumble in a monthlong slump that includes an 11.42 ERA in his last 11 outings.

Ahead 6-4 in the eighth inning, the Dodgers watched the lead evaporate for good against set-up man Daniel Hudson, who gave up two runs, three hits and a key two-out walk, ending his streak of nine scoreless outings this month.

The final blow came in the ninth, when Alex Bregman got an elevated sinker from Blake Treinen — who was beginning his second inning of work — and launched a walk-off home run to the train tracks high above left field.

Of all the painful losses the Dodgers have suffered this season, Saturday ranked near the top.

And for a team that already needed a front-line starter, was looking for reinforcements at the bottom of the lineup, and had yet to strike any notable deal on a market that has heated up in recent days, the bullpen emerged as one more potential issue for the team to address.