I may be about to sound like the bloke you’d try hard to avoid at the party. This was the season when English cricket, even if it regained a pot, finally lost the plot.
There was a time long ago when the narrative of a season could be very easily followed – and, please bear with me, but here we have to go back to the nineteen fifties again. Then there were just two strands to the annual story. An overseas team would come to play England, arriving (by boat at first) in early May, warming up in leisurely fashion by playing a whole sequence of games against the English counties, the two universities and the M.C.C. The five Test matches would be played predictably in Birmingham, London (Lords), Leeds, Manchester or Nottingham and then London again (the Kennington Oval), the last one finishing well before the August Bank Holiday. If the visiting team were Australia, England would usually lose the series. If it was anyone else, they’d usually win. Parallel to this would be a County Championship in which each of (eventually) seventeen ‘first class’ counties would play each other at least once, often twice. A batsman could score as many as 3816 runs in a season (Denis Compton in 1947) or take as many as 304 wickets (Kent’s ‘Tich’ Freeman in 1928). Everything would be wrapped up nicely by the beginning of September at which point there’d be a nice little celebration up in Scarborough with one or two ‘festival’ matches where batsmen threw caution to the winds and bowlers went wearily through the motions. The rest of the time the bowling class (I don’t think it’s my imagination but generally they were of a lower social standing than the cravated batters) never suffered injury despite being entirely beer-fuelled while softy batsmen were sponsored by Brylcreem (Denis Compton again), drank G&T’s and were universally beautiful to watch, even though by modern standards they scored extremely slowly. No one was paid very much money. They played for the love (or the hell) of it. Indeed some of the best participants were truly ‘amateur’ (see ‘cravats’): their private income subsidised their play and the public’s enjoyment. This was truly another, though not a better age. After all, Herr Hitler and food rationing were still recent memories, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was about to tell the nation of ‘winds of change’ in Africa and encourage them that in Britain they’d ‘never had it so good’.
Then, one day cricket was invented. Cricket became professional through and through. The one-day final became a climax to the county season, even if winning the ‘Gillette’ trophy was seen as a consolation prize vis-a vis the three day county programme. Telly was still black and white.
The sixties saw a big change: if cricket was to survive as a national sport it had to renew itself and become both more commercial and more attractive to watch. Two Test series a year became an occasional practice and eventually by the nineteen eighties a permanent one. More one day competitions flourished. Cricket on a Sunday became an early sign of the social acceptance that England was now a secular nation, at least after lunch on the first day of the week. 40 overs a side was born as a pro game. With improved world transport, and better communications, more foreign cricketers sought employment in the UK, and the individual cricket authorities here welcomed them with increasingly open arms, kidding themselves that their presence would automatically ‘improve standards’, but really more concerned to boost income at the gates of the grounds or get the jump on their rivals down the road. The presence of the imports changed the attitudes of indigenous English cricketers: it arguably made them more venal and work-shy. To be fair, more travelling was now required of them, if not more cricket. Less overs were being bowled in total, less runs scored, fewer wickets taken than in days of yore. But at least they had nice sponsored cars in which to make the journeys. Latterly, as the first contribution of the twenty-first century to the game’s history, 20-20 has been added to the repertoire of cricketing entertainment and next year we’re promised two domestic competitions for this shortest form of the game. Oh good.
Because do you know what? Here I am, an interested, even fanatical punter, and I have to look up the details of what’s supposed to be happening when in the season. I’m unmoved by the ‘Friends Provident Trophy’ with its mix of leagues and knock-out. The ‘Pro-40’ league seems entirely irrelevant. I couldn’t tell you which team is in which division of the emasculated county championship, except that Northants (inevitably) are in the second division, as (amazingly) are bottom-placed Surrey for all their glitter and London swagger. Poor Mark Ramprakash. The final seal on his absence from the England team was that, despite the weight of his run-getting in recent years, none of it should count for his eligibility in the view of the press, because it had been achieved in Division Two. It didn’t matter. In which case, why are we bothering with Division Two at all?
The fixture list is a patchwork quilt. The final of the FP Trophy was separated from the rest of the competition by 20-20 matches. The county championship was suspended in mid-summer to allow one-day matches to flourish. The crowded, unrelenting international programme allows no room for the cricket-follower to pay attention to domestic matters. Only the final round of four day inter-county matches peeks out at the end of September – so let’s hope there’s still some interest in it by then. A season begun with cold hands stuffed in pockets while handfuls of spectators huddled together for warmth will end the same way shortly before October’s inevitable good weather. Professional cricket in 2009 is an animal designed by a committee and it really should be put out of its misery quickly. The administrators have done the almost impossible by creating a ‘product’ which gets worse, season by season, with every ‘innovation’ of format. The men in suits care only about numbers of ‘bums on seats’, regardless of their identity. Even there they’re losing headway. Yesterday’s eventually exciting one day match against Australia failed to sell out, and the atmosphere seemed to be tepid and distracted for most of the day. Ask yourself why that was.
Perhaps we should let professional cricket in England die. It sometimes seems as if, to echo the Gospels, we need to lose our life in order to re-gain it. I propose a moratorium. No cricket except the strictly amateur for five years. Think of it as a lengthy break for rain. Then, fresh with enthusiasm, let’s greet the sun and see the way to go.
There was a time long ago when the narrative of a season could be very easily followed – and, please bear with me, but here we have to go back to the nineteen fifties again. Then there were just two strands to the annual story. An overseas team would come to play England, arriving (by boat at first) in early May, warming up in leisurely fashion by playing a whole sequence of games against the English counties, the two universities and the M.C.C. The five Test matches would be played predictably in Birmingham, London (Lords), Leeds, Manchester or Nottingham and then London again (the Kennington Oval), the last one finishing well before the August Bank Holiday. If the visiting team were Australia, England would usually lose the series. If it was anyone else, they’d usually win. Parallel to this would be a County Championship in which each of (eventually) seventeen ‘first class’ counties would play each other at least once, often twice. A batsman could score as many as 3816 runs in a season (Denis Compton in 1947) or take as many as 304 wickets (Kent’s ‘Tich’ Freeman in 1928). Everything would be wrapped up nicely by the beginning of September at which point there’d be a nice little celebration up in Scarborough with one or two ‘festival’ matches where batsmen threw caution to the winds and bowlers went wearily through the motions. The rest of the time the bowling class (I don’t think it’s my imagination but generally they were of a lower social standing than the cravated batters) never suffered injury despite being entirely beer-fuelled while softy batsmen were sponsored by Brylcreem (Denis Compton again), drank G&T’s and were universally beautiful to watch, even though by modern standards they scored extremely slowly. No one was paid very much money. They played for the love (or the hell) of it. Indeed some of the best participants were truly ‘amateur’ (see ‘cravats’): their private income subsidised their play and the public’s enjoyment. This was truly another, though not a better age. After all, Herr Hitler and food rationing were still recent memories, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was about to tell the nation of ‘winds of change’ in Africa and encourage them that in Britain they’d ‘never had it so good’.
Then, one day cricket was invented. Cricket became professional through and through. The one-day final became a climax to the county season, even if winning the ‘Gillette’ trophy was seen as a consolation prize vis-a vis the three day county programme. Telly was still black and white.
The sixties saw a big change: if cricket was to survive as a national sport it had to renew itself and become both more commercial and more attractive to watch. Two Test series a year became an occasional practice and eventually by the nineteen eighties a permanent one. More one day competitions flourished. Cricket on a Sunday became an early sign of the social acceptance that England was now a secular nation, at least after lunch on the first day of the week. 40 overs a side was born as a pro game. With improved world transport, and better communications, more foreign cricketers sought employment in the UK, and the individual cricket authorities here welcomed them with increasingly open arms, kidding themselves that their presence would automatically ‘improve standards’, but really more concerned to boost income at the gates of the grounds or get the jump on their rivals down the road. The presence of the imports changed the attitudes of indigenous English cricketers: it arguably made them more venal and work-shy. To be fair, more travelling was now required of them, if not more cricket. Less overs were being bowled in total, less runs scored, fewer wickets taken than in days of yore. But at least they had nice sponsored cars in which to make the journeys. Latterly, as the first contribution of the twenty-first century to the game’s history, 20-20 has been added to the repertoire of cricketing entertainment and next year we’re promised two domestic competitions for this shortest form of the game. Oh good.
Because do you know what? Here I am, an interested, even fanatical punter, and I have to look up the details of what’s supposed to be happening when in the season. I’m unmoved by the ‘Friends Provident Trophy’ with its mix of leagues and knock-out. The ‘Pro-40’ league seems entirely irrelevant. I couldn’t tell you which team is in which division of the emasculated county championship, except that Northants (inevitably) are in the second division, as (amazingly) are bottom-placed Surrey for all their glitter and London swagger. Poor Mark Ramprakash. The final seal on his absence from the England team was that, despite the weight of his run-getting in recent years, none of it should count for his eligibility in the view of the press, because it had been achieved in Division Two. It didn’t matter. In which case, why are we bothering with Division Two at all?
The fixture list is a patchwork quilt. The final of the FP Trophy was separated from the rest of the competition by 20-20 matches. The county championship was suspended in mid-summer to allow one-day matches to flourish. The crowded, unrelenting international programme allows no room for the cricket-follower to pay attention to domestic matters. Only the final round of four day inter-county matches peeks out at the end of September – so let’s hope there’s still some interest in it by then. A season begun with cold hands stuffed in pockets while handfuls of spectators huddled together for warmth will end the same way shortly before October’s inevitable good weather. Professional cricket in 2009 is an animal designed by a committee and it really should be put out of its misery quickly. The administrators have done the almost impossible by creating a ‘product’ which gets worse, season by season, with every ‘innovation’ of format. The men in suits care only about numbers of ‘bums on seats’, regardless of their identity. Even there they’re losing headway. Yesterday’s eventually exciting one day match against Australia failed to sell out, and the atmosphere seemed to be tepid and distracted for most of the day. Ask yourself why that was.
Perhaps we should let professional cricket in England die. It sometimes seems as if, to echo the Gospels, we need to lose our life in order to re-gain it. I propose a moratorium. No cricket except the strictly amateur for five years. Think of it as a lengthy break for rain. Then, fresh with enthusiasm, let’s greet the sun and see the way to go.
