As the rain abates finally we have a new cricket season underway. This year as I enter my fiftieth year naturally one wonders how many more seasons are in the legs and how long the eyes and reflexes will last. In broader terms though, each and every year, I muse on the long term future of grass roots cricket in this of all counties, a hotbed of tradition and cricketing folklore. Scratch beneath the surface and I will contend the game is in a slow spiral of sad and inevitable decline.
I do not make the point lightly; cricket has been my passion since around the age of ten and, unusually, I remain a one club man. I have never played for anything other than the love of the game; equally nobody has ever tried to woo my moderate skills with a few quid tucked into my back pocket and a massaged ego. The traditions and very spirit of the game are hugely important to me but times are changing with ominous consequences.
Statistics
If you asked the English Cricket Board (ECB) the games governing body, they would doubtless answer with statistics suggesting the game is in rude health awash with youngsters. In truth they have to in order to retain a seat at the table when central funding is doled out to sporting governing bodies as increased participation figures seem the diktat as far as Sport England are concerned; but you know what they say about statistics.
If that were the case then why would the game need the laudable, if restricted, Chance to Shine scheme, basically an attempt to get cricket back into state schools. As much as the ECB trumpets this they have only reached approximately 10% of schools since 2005 and the 30% target for 2015 looks ambitious and yet this tells only part of the story.
Top of the World?
The game has been kept alive by grass roots clubs, disappearing as it did with many other sports within schools dating way back to the 1980s; although my old school’s cricket facilities were hardly first class at least we had something. Very few state schools play cricket – or indeed any sport – these days and, given the public school sector accounts for only approximately 7% of children, what future for a mass participation team sport like cricket?
I stated that the ECB would have us believe all is well, after all the England team is number one in the test match rankings so my point needs explanation. Whilst many clubs continue to work hard to attract youngsters the reality is that as volunteers we have a limited time to coach and the summer is short, ever shorter as football seems perpetual. Exacerbating this is the reality that the majority of kids these days seem devoid of the basic skills my generations took almost as a birthright: to catch, to throw, to run and simple hand-eye coordination. Before we coach an off-drive we often have to work on far more basic issues.
Lost Generations
Cricket suffers more than most because not only do you also need specialist equipment – okay we were quite happy with an old bat, ball and a milk crate – it is a tough game to learn requiring technical skills, hard hours of repetitive practice and games take time to play out; in an age of instant gratification cricket struggles for attention. Also, for the majority of kids the only access they will have to learn the game will be at a local club, in other words they do not develop these skills at school or on the street anymore; this means cricket simply becomes too hard for many and the drop out rate is huge. It is the biggest single issue not even the ECB statistics can spin out of and yet it is hardly acknowledged.
For all the youngsters clubs attract how many can we say are still playing the game into their twenties and can be viewed as future custodians of their clubs and the game? I have no precise figures but intuitively I will contend that this will be a very low percentage, indeed look around the leagues and you will see teams getting older each and every year. Second teams are often a mix of the forty-somethings and teenagers and, inevitably, some youngsters are pressed into First teams before they are ready enough or good enough which damages their confidence, development and appetite for the game.
Geriatric Gerry
I canvassed several youngsters I coached as teenagers now in their early twenties who no longer play; the common threads were that senior games were too long and that opportunities to participate were limited when they made the step up. They enjoyed the game but were not prepared to commit a whole day to a match especially when, until recent times, they may not have had much of a role. Like it or not society is changing although only the professional game has reacted to this with the leagues remaining largely as we were generations ago.
Some leagues, at long last, have introduced rules limiting the number of overs a bowler can bowl so Geriatric Gerry can no longer bowl half the allotment. Mind you he can still bowl longer and uninterrupted whereas, thanks to the ECB bowling regulations, the fast young teenager scaring you witless will soon be off once his allotted few overs are up, almost barely breaking sweat. This has long been viewed at club level as a ridiculous ruling designed to protect the elite, ignore the rest and make kids wonder why bother.
Stuck in the War Years
Many youngsters view the transition from junior cricket – a twenty over two hour game – to the senior format across a whole day as, sadly, too long and so we lose them. I find this hard to understand personally as I love sport but it is a reality whether I like it or not. Leagues resist change to shorter formats with spurious arguments like lost bar income but with drink driving and the demands of the family how relevant is this? Players and spectators do not retreat to the bar for the rest of the evening now as they have many more choices.
The grass roots game needs to react and quickly so here are a few ideas accepting the solution is far from simple. I would standardise Second Team cricket to a shorter format (forty overs) so that a game would be over by late teatime. The more ambitious kids would have the longer format via First Teams to aim for and those content with a more social game would not be lost. Imaginative clubs could make far more income with family friendly early evening via barbeques or similar functions, besides what should we really be promoting anyway?
I would also harmonise junior cricket with Under 16s (not 15s as presently) as the upper age group and play this on a longer format (thirty overs) on Sunday mornings to bridge the gap from junior to senior formats at the same time scrapping Sunday fixtures for seniors; annually leagues try to cram too much cricket into a short summer. Increasingly, Under 17 cricket is also valueless as the pressure around exams means many parents simply do not allow children to play this largely mid-week evening format and so I would scrap this.
What Hope?
There are simply too many leagues though to expect a cohesive response. In Bradford alone there are clubs competing in seven different senior leagues with no pyramid system and little evidence the leagues communicate. Some clubs will continue shelling out cash at the expense of facilities to cling to players and status as a desperate last gesture. The elite will survive but will not escape the long term effects felt first by those less fortunate as the game shrinks; in less than a decade the game will be unrecognisable without radical changes and even these may not be enough.
The writing is on the wall and cricket is not alone it just has unique issues. Leagues have been painfully slow to let go of yesteryear and are in denial; consequently we have lost youngsters with years of coaching invested in them. The game has a limited timeframe to get on the front foot and address the very issues that threaten its survival.
Decades of denying kids sporting opportunity through schools and wider society with changing attitudes has dried up the numbers of youngsters that grass roots sport was founded on. Look around at other sports and see the numbers of teams competing shrinking every year; no small wonder why we are the fattest nation in Europe.
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