Our Survey Says
The English Cricket Board’s (ECB) National Player Survey was released last week showing another alarming drop in people playing cricket. The numbers were down 7% year on year.
With typical ECB spin the survey counter-claimed that 53% wanted to play more but less than 5% of players actually responded; so what can you really deduce from a turnout lower than that to elect a dodgy Police Commissioner?
Chief Operating Officer, Gordon Hollins said: “Thanks to an excellent response ECB now has a much clearer picture than ever before of who plays recreational cricket.” It must be lovely on Planet La La.
The ECB’s response was four-fold and predictably the same-old hopeless stuff from the suits with heads in the sand.
1 – throw a load of cash at the problem largely courtesy of Mr Murdoch.
2 – reach out to minorities…again…box ticked!
3 – reach out to women…again…box ticked!
4 – 20/20 competitions for Under 19s despite the fact that most kids leave the game around the age of 15…box ticked!
A cynic might point out that all of the above is designed more to preserve the allocation of Sport England cash the game receives every four years, rather than a serious attempt to address the game’s real issues.
The over-riding theme from the survey was that the game is now too long but leagues remain hopelessly oblivious to this modern day reality. In addition, surveys like the above are hugely limited in scope because they don’t reach those that have left the game.
As someone who has played senior cricket since the 1970s little has changed in that time. Using a technological analogy, today’s recreational game is as outdated as a two-bar electric fire.
“Talent” Money
Money is being touted as part of the solution but throwing more cash at clubs to simply hand over to players will solve nothing.
An excellent piece in the Daily Telegraph by Nick Hoult – see below – outlines the dire financial position of some clubs in the Lancashire League.
As clubs spend the off-season trying to recruit new players, increasingly many do so offering cash as the primary inducement regardless of standard. Who needs junior development; in reality most clubs simply use their junior sections as cash cows.
Clubs send out people incapable of being entrusted with the weekly shop with wads of cash to throw at over-rated players creating two-tier dressing rooms. Those that run junior sections see young lads picked off with the illegal filthy lucre.
The New Middle Class Reality
The game is also increasingly reflecting society as one of the “haves” and the “have-nots”. Take the following two examples.
In the same week, founder members Great Horton resigned from the Bradford League after an association lasting 111 years becoming the second inner-city club to leave in successive years, following Manningham Mills.
Both clubs are also in Asian dominated areas and Mills benefited many years ago from a seven-figure cash injection to the facilities that was clearly piss-poor value.
The ECB initiative to focus on five Asian areas including Bradford is naive and ill-conceived. All this will do is marginalise further clubs outside of this focus that are already working hard too keep the game alive as the ECB tinker with social engineering.
The good players will still be picked off by the bigger cheque books. My point; throwing cash at the problem will not help one bit long-term.
On the other side of the tracks a club in the league I play in – can’t mention names as sanctions include me being banished to the tea-room for a season on dish drying duties – received a grant in excess of £50k to improve their ground despite being serial payers to players.
Presumably they played the poor tale and did it very well; so much so they are at it again paying stupid money out this winter once more. My point; a lot of money is distributed by idiots.
Guidance From Above?
Sky Sports did feature an interview with Paul Taylor of Surrey CCC who are trying to work with local leagues to address the structural problems within the recreational game. This seems like a laudable initiative.
Yorkshire, county champions and the biggest cricket playing county, need to take a lead here. How?
They could start by grading leagues if efforts to establish a workable pyramid structure used in other counties are seemingly impossible.
By categorising leagues into regions you could then establish a top league where only here would unrestricted payments be allowed.
Additionally, beneath here other leagues could be structured as follows:
Category 1 – each club allowed one overseas and one nominated paid professional.
Category 2 – each club allowed one or the other
Category 3 – fully amateur
Pie in the sky and impossible to manage? Rubbish. Any club found to be flouting the rules would simply be stripped of it’s status either by relegation or expulsion. Draconian maybe but look at how the US NFL draft system works to protect all its members.
The big clubs need the smaller clubs to prosper as does the game in general. However, the game has been growing more elitist for decades now with only the tiny minority of privately educated kids having access to competitive school cricket.
Structural problems aside, money is killing the recreational game as those who are supposed to be its custodians simply wring their hands and look the other way.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/11247932/No-money-dwindling-interest-and-a-bleak-future-how-English-club-cricket-found-itself-in-a-battle-for-survival.html
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