English fans are used to getting stuffed by the Dutch, but normally at football and not cricket. After a winter tour that the English Cricket Board (ECB) would like to forget, defeat by Holland in the World T20 was almost predictable.
The Spirit of Cricket
The Ashes of Club Cricket
I apologise in advance if you normally read this column in search of a laugh or two; this week has been somewhat numbing in the experiences it has provided, I have even had to interrupt my sun-bathing to bring you this. You may have noticed that the Ashes are coming to town next week, exclusively on Sky TV with ten back to back test matches against the old enemy and to hell with years of tradition; if the Murdoch empire gets its way, Ashes cricket will soon be on more often than Coronation Street and you will be able to tweet Joe Root as he opens the batting.
Meanwhile, equally oblivious to tradition and taking a break from counting its Sky wonga, the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has produced its national strategy document for club cricket. The reasons behind this are clear; even the ECB, drunk on Sky’s millions, has woken up to the fact that club cricket is on its uppers with falling numbers of players and those remaining in the game getting older by the year. The ECB farcically trumpet “record numbers” of young people playing the game but if that is the case then where are they on a Saturday afternoon then? Tweeting most likely.
Of course, this is a very serious issue for the recreational game but also for the ECB on high; when Lottery funding is divvied up, sports with declining participation numbers face the prospect of a reduced slice of the pie. Scooping up the Sky money may yet have a price to pay over and above those potential young players that simply have lost any sight of cricket as a game, last seen on terrestrial television in 2005. Its a classic double whammy not seen by the high and mighty.
Pad Up Now…The Taxman Cometh (www.yorkshirecricket.com 20th June 2013)
Some of you may have seen a piece – see the link below – that first appeared in Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph followed rapidly by an insertion on the front page of the Daily Rant, sorry Daily Mail, the day after. Clearly it must have been a slow news day but to those of us involved with local sport – and its not just cricket that is implicated here – the topic of illegal payments to players was of great interest.
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To See or Not to See? Sky versus Terrestrial? (www.cricketyorkshire.com)
Prior to the last home Ashes series there was a growing debate as to the merits of a return for cricket to terrestrial television with the placing of the Ashes on the Government’s “listed events” in an effort to raise the profile of the game. To date cricket is the only major sport that has no Category A listings which is hard to fathom. Despite being a Sky customer for many years – although
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Bingley Congs CC (published “Bingley matters” Dec 2012)
(I penned this piece for a new local magazine. I wanted to write about a club that I have fond memories of and that typifies many of the issues at grass roots level)
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