First the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia came for golf, and I did not speak out, because it’s for men named Chad who want to network while supporting the manufacturers of boat shoes. Then Saudi Arabia came for Newcastle United, and I did not speak out, because frankly it was Newcastle United. Actually, Saudi Arabia already had Formula One racing, but that was a natural fit between those who produce oil and the pastime that most conspicuously torches it. By the time they came for Cristiano Ronaldo he too seemed largely made of hydrocarbon polymer, though he is biodegrading faster.
Now Saudi Arabia is coming for cricket – just another step in the grandest sportswashing campaign in history. The country is an autocratic monarchy run on the fundamentalist principles of Wahhabist Islam. Laws of ‘guardianship’ mean that women cede control of their lives to male relatives. The legal system uses prison, torture or execution against political dissent and anyone outside proscribed sexual or gender norms. The Saudi-led war in Yemen killed hundreds of thousands. The engine driving all this is Saudi Aramco, the biggest oil company in the world, the single biggest driver of our climate crisis, source of over 4% of global carbon emissions since 1965. Its only plan for the future is to increase production.
So the kingdom wants a better reputation – not by addressing its failings, but by marketing. It has deduced that the best path is through high-profile sport, with its vast international audience and its remarkable ability to generate goodwill. Fifa boss Gianni Infantino, who never met a billion dollars that he didn’t like, is already softening up the audience for his Qatar sequel with a Saudi football World Cup in 2030.
Taking over cricket was flagged when Aramco became the International Cricket Council’s naming sponsor last year, now plastered over every global event, while a Saudi tourism body is doing the same with the Indian Premier League. Cricket is an easy target. Only 12 countries play at the top level and only three are in financial health. The prize though is India, the monolith at cricket’s centre, a potential audience of 1.4 billion and rising, with a worldwide diaspora sprinkled on top.
The Saudis want the IPL, perhaps by bringing the existing circus to town, preferably by starting a new complementary competition. Administered by the Indian board but with teams owned by private wealth, the Indian league currently bans Indian players from other tournaments worldwide to protect its own primacy. With a broadcast deal worth US$6.2bn, the IPL is used to walking into a room as the big spender, buying up teams in South Africa, the Caribbean, the Emirates, the United States. Saudi Arabia is among the few entities in the world that can approach Indian cricket and slap a bigger wallet on the table.
So what? Don’t all countries have problems? Unsurprisingly the prospect of Saudi cash motivates plenty of apologists. They like to claim that criticism stems from racism, cynically using the language of equality to defend a project whose foundation is discrimination. It is true that every society has power structures that feed and benefit from inequality. It is also true that this reaches a different level when codified in law. Nations that recognised this when isolating apartheid South Africa are much less inclined to bother on gender grounds. Anyway, the whataboutery deflates against the reality of state operatives dismembering a journalist with bone saws.
Aramco is framed as a tool of consumers – like it is a benign and passive force that meets demand, rather than the biggest player in an industry that has spent a century deliberately shaping the world to create that demand. Its defenders point at critics for using power or driving cars, somehow treating this as a gotcha rather than a reinforcement of the point: that the structure created by fossil fuels is practically impossible to live outside. Wealth creates influence, influence supports wealth: our societies could already be different if the richest within them didn’t have so much more money that they intend to make.
It is that wealth, with an economy valued into the trillions, that emboldens Saudi sportswashing. Their one failure so far was sponsoring this year’s Women’s World Cup, an attempt abandoned after players and federations pushed back. This isn’t just shameless, like Aramco producing 13.6 billion barrels of oil last year while installing recycling stations for drink bottles at cricket grounds in the name of sustainability. There is something perversely aggressive about targeting events where all the competitors are women and so many are gay, as a country where their gender makes them second-class humans and their sexuality is a crime. Saudi marketers don’t care: they’re already bidding to host the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup.
As for cricket, the end of the current order was already approaching, but a Saudi league will finish it off. The IPL takes up three months each year. A Saudi equivalent would have no reason to aim smaller. Others will crowd the gaps. The ICC will acquiesce, its members hoping for crumbs from the table. Test cricket is already a luxury most of them can’t afford. India, England, and Australia might continue it as occasional exhibitions. Otherwise, like football, internationals will give way to franchises, shrinking to short and frequent T20 World Cups, with the 50-over format a white elephant in search of its graveyard.
after newsletter promotion
Aside perhaps from a few conscientious objectors, the best players will come, because spending will outdo any previous conception of pay. Bear in mind that Australian golfer Cameron Smith, winner of exactly one major, scored US$100m to join the Saudi-backed LIV tour. The IPL’s income is limited by how much advertising broadcasters can sell. For Saudi Arabia that doesn’t matter at all. In time it will reshape cricket. For now, the celebrity and skill of top players still comes from national duty. Less international cricket will reduce this pathway. Anyone who does pop up will soon be recruited to the leagues. Talent discovery will mostly come through the franchises, their feeder teams, scouts and academies. Perhaps this will open up opportunity, depending where they look.
You could spin all of this as a positive, if it wasn’t so patently part of something bigger, the most cosseted princeling in history scooping up every bauble that shines. There is not the slightest care for cricket itself, it is a vehicle. There is its audience and its reflected prestige. So the Saudi royals take the insane amounts of money made from decades of pollution, use it to lock in their feudal system that rejects all democratic principle, then spend obscene sums on sparkles and distractions so that… people will like them? Why do those so privileged, who clearly hold most people in contempt, still want to be liked?
On goes the PR campaign. For those saying the Saudi monarchs have nothing to be ashamed of, they are certainly behaving like they do. There is the tourism angle, economically diversifying in case the oil does one day stop flowing, but that’s out of scale with the spending. There is entrenchment as a legitimate government in a world where theocratic monarchy is a vicious anachronism. There is washing away the aftertaste of using one’s embassies as extrajudicial murder rooms. But beware the motivations you haven’t yet anticipated, and the fact that once you hand something over you can’t have it back. Whatever they want, this regime’s crimes say they shouldn’t get it. Money says they will. The question that matters is what’s in it for them, but most people in cricket will be too busy wondering: what’s in it for me?