Why? It's Just Not Cricket, You Know.

Have I gone mad? What has boring old, stuffy cricket got to do with business strategy?

The Test match cricket I grew up on in the 70s was turgid ‘absorbing’ stuff as commentators described. As the West Indies bombarded England stout fellows put their body on the line and scored at the rate of two runs per over barely. Fast forward to 2005 and ‘Ashes Fever’ gripped Britain as England duelled with the best team possibly in the history of the game, Australia, and Test match cricket had then doubled its scoring rate and pretty young girls in my gym discussed if Simon Jones would achieve ‘reverse swing’ after 22 overs the next day – I think it was the properties of the cricket ball they were talking about.

Cricket has been slow to re-invent itself and gain wider audiences and the game at its highest level has not progressed a massive amount since the days of WG Grace when the bearded giant became possibly the world’s first sporting superstar.

Phase One

It was in the 70s when the concept of a shorter game at the top level gained credence and we saw Sunday League 40 over cricket and International One Day games of around 50 overs per innings. In a single day rather than 3 or 5, a match could be concluded and it represented a pleasant and sometimes exciting day out. It was very popular amongst more than just cricket fans.

Phase Two

Then at the turn of the millennium came the major innovation, Twenty-Twenty. Avid club cricketers like I could relate to this. You leave the office at 5.30pm and get a game started by 6pm and it’s over by just after 8pm. The first class game adopted it and it became an instant success. With floodlights and razzmatazz teams could ‘biff, bang and wallop’ for a couple of hours and produce a great spectacle. It meant in a Summer’s evening, sports fan of all varieties could have an exciting night out and have great entertainment.

Phase Three

It took businessmen in the cricketing mad nation of India to really take the concept of Twenty-Twenty and revolutionise it. This is where business and sport converged. In the theory that talks of businesses swimming in the crowded, turgid Red Ocean, cricket re-invented itself and took to the warm, inviting and competitor-free Blue Ocean.

You see, the issue with all the innovations in cricket as it stood was that they generally embraced the status quo. If you shortened the game, the same teams, with often the same players participated and competed amongst themselves maybe with different shorts. It was tweaking formula to get a bit more out of the fans.

In inventing the Indian premier League (IPL), the rule book was literally torn up. Taking a leaf out of the highly successful model of the UK’s Premier Football League, businessmen packaged a league and sold its rights as a franchise to new clubs who could participate. Those new clubs were given direct access to cash from the media bonanza and they did not just pick the same-olds, they went out and attracting the best players in the world to play in their teams. With a few English exceptions, the IPL kicked off this year with the cream of world cricket. In the inaugural game, New Zealander Brendon McCullum smashed 158 not out including 13 sixes in the very first innings and we knew we had a different sport.

The first tournament was won by the Jaipur Rajasthan Royals captained by the great Shane Warne and for just 8 weeks work many of the cricketers had pocketed a cool £300k.

Blue Ocean and Your Business

The IPL is a very good example of a ‘business’ moving out its comfort zone or Red Ocean where it has limited market growth opportunities, sensitive margins, low differentiation and lots of competition and moving into a much richer Blue Ocean where competitors have not staked out a plot, customers see the value and there are profitable growth opportunities. Some people like Sir Allen Stanford, the philanthropist Texan Billionaire, believe the new Twenty-Twenty game could attract a whole new swathe of players and nations and even – now hold on a minute – even the USA. A fast moving, similar format to Baseball – OK we may have to be realistic here but I see what he’s saying. It could be a whole new world for cricket, and a whole set of new players as the new game is so very different.

As we all view the effects of the recession loom, it is a good time to reconsider your own business plans. Are there warmer, more tranquil waters full of opportunity and few competitors that you can take advantage of? If so, how do you do it?

One thing is for sure, the Red Ocean will indeed run red and turbulent in the next year. Now is the time to take a long hard look at your plans, positioning, cost base, value proposition and think long and hard how you can adapt and clear a patch in your market to not just survive but thrive.