Have you heard about Schrödinger’s six? When a cricket ball has spawned off the edge of the bat and flown all of 35 metres, is that really a six at all? How about when it comes in a hulking yet virtually empty 50,000-seater stadium in Canada, the ball smashed into the empty stands and kerplunking down the vast swathes of unpopulated seats to be retrieved by a clinically unbothered fielder?
You might have seen some of the footage from Canada’s “Super60” T10 tournament in Vancouver this week, particularly a delivery from the Mississauga Masters’ Ali Khan that soared over the Toronto Sixers batter Kieron Pollard’s head and away over the lilliputian straight boundaries of Vancouver’s BC Place. For once this was unquestionably not a six but a five, a wide plus four: a six can only be struck off the bat. But the pertinent question was, what even is any of this?
“It’s crazy. My goodness,” laughs Faf du Plessis when the Spin discusses the incident with him. The former South African cross-format captain is one of the most experienced and well-travelled franchise cricketers and is still in demand into his 40s. “I’d heard from a few guys that the boundary was ridiculously short, but when I saw it I thought it doesn’t look like proper cricket. In terms of the sixes being hit and some of the scores, teams chasing down over a hundred in four overs and edges flying over the boundary for six. I bet it didn’t feel like cricket either.”
“Bills to pay, brother,” was Sam Billings’ now deleted response on social media when he was asked why he was playing in the tournament. Billings’ response tells us plenty but his subsequent deletion is also indicative of a kind of franchise omertà, of not wanting to bite down too hard or too openly on the hand that feeds. Billings was happy to provide a pithy summary of the franchise free market, however.
“Man has a job,” he posted on X. “Man has a family. Man gets paid for job to provide for family. Family is happy. The end.”
I reached out to several players involved in the tournament to talk about their experience and it was telling that none wanted to go on record. How would Du Plessis have felt if he found himself playing in it? Initially he responds with a straight bat.
“The guys out there say it’s a great competition, that it’s fun because obviously Canada is a great place, Vancouver is a great city and it’s an experience playing in that stadium.”
Sounds a bit like a paid holiday with a bit of cricket on the side?
“Well the destination is important. Some guys would go: ‘Where’s great golf courses? And they’d go: ‘You know, Dubai is great. I can play golf every day. Or Europe – Ireland, there’s some great golf courses.’ I’m not a massive golfer but golf is like a disease to some of these guys at the moment. Everyone just wants to be a professional golfer.
“It depends on where you are in your career and what your priorities are,” he adds about the myriad franchise lives you can lead.
“Post stopping playing international cricket, my priorities were to play in the best competitions around the world because that was now my version of international cricket, so you had the IPL, The Hundred, The Big Bash and the SA20 … and then you’d look at the gaps and your other commitments and maybe go and play in the Bangladesh Premier League or the IL20.”
It’s never been a better time to be a professional cricketer but there is a tightrope to be danced. No one begrudges players at all stages of their career the chance to earn money and gain experiences but they also can’t be impervious to awkward questions if the cricketing product they perform in turns out to be one that can only be identified by its dental records.
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Watching the sixes rain down in the Canada T10 “highlights” I was struck by the contrast to when I last saw a stadium peppered in such a way – when Razaullah breathed much needed life into and nearly changed the outcome of the third England-Pakistan Test at Edgbaston. The latter thrilling in their rug-pulling resistance and as part of a wider narrative, the former numbing in their constructed inevitability.
“Very easily you can play so much cricket in these days of T20 cricket” says Du Plessis, pointedly. “I think there’s one thing that’s most important for players that have the luxury of choosing where they want to play – it’s the ability to say no.”
Next year’s Canadian Super60 isn’t likely to be on his hitlist then? “I’d be stoked to bat there,” he grins. “The boundaries would be so small it’d be good for me as I’m getting older. I could get a 17-ball century! Yes, that would be so good.”
We look at each other, safe in the knowledge that no, it really wouldn’t.
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.