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.
Heading up club cricket at the ECB is ex-England captain (and Ashes winner) Mike Gatting, a courageous and pugnacious batsman for Middlesex and England and now in a plum job at Lords. The ECB has some £90m plus to spend on the recreational game over the next four years but its not actually clear if they really know that much about the game at this level. In almost admitting as much, they have sent out a national player’s survey because as we all know, in Britain we live or die by surveys; whether players can really be bothered to complete this we shall see.
In his foreword to the strategy report, Gatting alludes to how important club cricket is to the game. It is difficult not to believe though, that even this small contribution was not written by the same team of clearly non cricket-playing management consultants responsible for the rest of this utter tripe. Many of us have sat and stared at the document with incredulity. Go see for yourself on the ECB website.
An old risk analyst colleague of mine once remarked that if a set of audited accounts was prefaced by pages of glossy pictures and diagrams before the actual numbers, it was quite likely they would be trying to hide something or that there would be nothing worth reading once you got to the nitty-gritty. The ECB report is thus so, with large parts of repetitive waffle and management speak as the ECB attempts to “pad up” without offering a shot at the issues. In short, it demonstrates the hierarchy’s total lack of understanding of the grass roots game no matter how they plead its importance.
Meanwhile, after 15 years of voluntarily coaching kids cricket this week was possibly the nadir on a personal level, bringing with it an uncanny coincidence with events from very early in my coaching life, summing up then and now in a matter of days. Way back then, after a couple of years coaching one promising young 11 year old, who repeatedly told me what I was doing wrong as his coach, he decided to leave us for a “higher profile” club where his outstanding abilities – yet to be discovered I must add…still – would be better displayed.
Needless to say, ever since then he has bounced from club to club like much of his bowling that I witnessed once again the other night, from rooftop to rooftop, ending up in the nearby graveyard most times. I scoured Gatting’s document for a section on “How to Deal with Delusional Young Kids” without joy but when they seek answers as to why we lose so many kids from the game this has been an ever increasing factor. Kids light on actual performances but huge on self-promotion; talking the talk well before walking the walk, are simply not equipped for the transition from junior to senior cricket as soon as they think.
Coaching, especially on a volunteer basis, should be fun and rewarding; that it is far from this these days can be down to many factors. Mr Gatting implores us all to get behind club cricket and give it our best efforts which is enormously patronising and condescending given what we have to contend with these days and that most of us do it for free and not a fat ECB salary plus a new tracksuit every year. It just suggests that the bang on his nose he got all those years ago from the late legendary West Indian, Malcolm Marshall, may have done a bit more damage upstairs, especially if he thinks we will bat on regardless just to keep him in a job.
In coaching, if you start out with say a group of ten year olds, all angelic and keen to learn, you will be lucky if you have three or four of them playing senior cricket by the time they are 16 years old and, in large part have been dealing with a bunch of delinquents and their crazed mothers for several years as well. Those that have a modicum of ability will be feted like mini-Gods amongst their peers simply because most have no ability. All of a sudden, certain kids assume the self-appointed title of world beater which only stores up the shocks coming just around the corner because adult cricket is a world apart. You don’t get a medal just for turning up here.
I know I have banged on before about how crap – no, how non-existent school sport is – but its simply true and failures here store up many an issue for kids later in life. The ex-US President, Gerald Ford, was brutally lampooned as being unable to walk and chew gum at the same time; kids these days ought to take that test. Soon it will be run a hundred metres without stopping and they will be classed as Olympic hopefuls on the strength of this. And so it is that those of minimal ability start to think they really are special at a sport and the coach cannot tell them anything worthy enough to unplug their ear phones for.
This week, one lad I thought was one of the few reasons to keep coming back each season for more of this has decided to leave us and it’s probably the worst point in my coaching life and time to reassess why I do it and if I want to keep doing it. If all those years of effort and sweat count for so little and for one I really believed in, then why bother risking it ever happening again at the end of another 7/8 years? A connection worked on for years can be snapped in a breath and, honestly, I have no answers.
It proves that no matter how hard we try, we clearly just do not understand the “yoof” and that to even hope to do so is wildly optimistic; as committed as we are we are poles apart. But life is too short surely to keep wasting it trying to improve the lot of those that, in many cases, can barely be bothered to listen at all? My beetroots would never do this to me, surely?
On top of us having already had several lads poached earlier in the season, with other schoolmates following like blind, dopey sheep across a motorway – they too hardly bothering to say thanks – it is hard to make an intelligent argument to support endless hours of unpaid, unappreciated and, in recent years, so clearly unfulfilling effort.
I predict with confidence that these same kids will follow the well trodden path as the one seeking a higher plane many years ago; dim teenage heads filled with self-serving rubbish from witless, lazy adults that should know better, massaging egos of teenagers. Desperate to fill their own teams but too feckless to do it the right way, they will tell these kids that it really is okay to cross that motorway blindfold.
The crux of it is that, no matter what you do for these kids most will not give a stuff; few have any notion of right from wrong at a very early age and as coaches we cannot do much about broken homes, poor diets nor the myriad other stuff that the modern family brings. Brought up in a soft, flabby culture of non-competitiveness and “everyone’s a winner”, they believe they are world beaters long before the world will start to beat them up…which it will. As for the parents, some clearly cannot wait to dump their pride and joy at the club gates before screaming off just in case a monsoon threatens their two hours off; I wonder if they really do care what we try to do for their kids?
If this all sounds a touch bitter then that’s because it probably is. I have given it the best I could for an awful lot longer than many I know and without the driver of having a son or daughter involved. That it has counted for so little will take a while to absorb but, equally, as for those positive influences I have tried to inject into these kids, well maybe its time to use them elsewhere. I know there are far bigger issues in the world today than why kids don’t stick at a sport but its been my challenge for a long time and, in reality, I feel I have lost the battle albeit not alone. Self-serving rubbish like the ECB “strategy” just deepen the wound.
Some clubs will be in rude health, many benefitting from the demise of others temporarily, but the issues are common to all clubs, its just the relative stage on the curve that differs. What this week has proven is that the deluded are alive and well, that even the best kids will walk away to someone who tells them what they want to hear for long enough and that the ECB has not got a bloody clue about what is going on below the fluffy Murdoch paid-for clouds at Lords.
As for Mr Gatting, they used to say he was a really good player of spin, these days he’s dishing it out with as much aplomb as Tony Blair’s crony, Alistair Campbell, telling us all how rosey it is in the ECB garden. Politicians is all they really are, noses stuck firmly in the Sky funded trough, bloated on self-serving greed and ignorance, stuffing their pockets before its all too late.
Rose says
Thoughtful , insightful and well put. Wise words from a man who has seen things from the perspective of player and coach.
What a thankless job voluntary coaching is, always more grief than joy and no money paid !! No wonder you feel so disillusioned Mr Wilson ! After all , that time could have been spent drinking more beers and ‘Romancing’ more ladies! 🙂
Louis Gacquin says
I’ve heard that the Villa’s 2nd XI have got a promising young bowler making one in this weekend? Dodgy shoulder though apparently
Steve says
Anything to get out on the lash!
Paul Redwood says
Couldnt have put it better myself!
ECB so arrogant thinking they own the game!
But sadly does own its future or lack of it!
GRASS ROOTS CRICKET NEEDS TO FORM A GOVENING BODY AND QUICK,,,!
Steve says
Where are you involved with the game?