“The younger generation, whether you like it or not, are just not attracted to cricket. They want something different. They want it to be more exciting. They want it shorter. They want it simpler to understand.”
Colin Graves, Chairman, English Cricket Board.
Regular readers will know of my numerous attempts to get a certain Lord Patel to front up regarding the English Cricket Board’s (ECB) recently announced South Asian Strategy. As a stakeholder in the game of cricket, I felt it reasonable to be able to challenge the man heading this.
Whilst happy to bluster away to the media, he has been less than keen to answer me. Having spent the weekend ducking for my life against a fast bowler half my age, I think he could teach me plenty about evasive action.
In frustration I went to the very top and wrote to ECB Chairman Colin Graves, perhaps somewhat hopefully. Graves is known for his plain speaking and is not everybody’s cup of Yorkshire tea. But at least he fronts up and he rang me this week so credit to him.
We had a short if open and frank conversation and, whilst we disagree on certain things, we both share the view that cricket has to change at all levels and quickly.
There is no point dreaming of what used to be; administrators from the bottom upwards have to get this before it is too late. As a consistent critic of the ECB’s abject management of the game since the epic Ashes win of 2005, I do accept Graves’ contention that this is ancient history now. He was also open about some of the many issues.
One of my arguments against Test cricket vanishing from the terrestrial channels post 2005 was the number of free to air digital channels. Surely these could have been used?
Graves countered that the cost of covering a cricket match – he put the current figure for test cricket at £180k per day – meant that neither the BBC nor the independent channels had appetite back then or now. Sky remain the only deal in town and it would be commercial suicide to risk alienating them.
Graves has many critics within the game but, given that cricket’s participation numbers have been in freefall – it is estimated less than 1% of people over the age of twelve now play the game – to have brokered a new five-year deal with Sky for 2020-24, in the process almost tripling the money, is no mean feat.
Of course there have been trade-offs to satisfy both the counties and the paymaster.
Cricket is run by the eighteen counties and getting them on side for some radical changes which will marginalise at least ten of them, has required a pragmatic and monetarised approach. Contrast the core national fan base of 90,000 largely “grey” members – season ticket holders – with football for instance. Manchester United have almost as many at one club.
County cricket, the feeder of the England test team, simply does not make money. Consequently, in recent years it has been pushed to the fringes of the summer to make way for the new kid on the block, the golden cash cow, T20. Personally I hate game show cricket but the economics are a no-brainer.
Graves and his team are pushing yet another format, contentious for a game with a declining base, as they seek to find new audiences. The 100 ball proposals for the new eight team city based team format in 2020 have caused an outcry and I am firmly in the sceptics camp.
It seems to me an attempt to make a faster version of a Big Mac, but I accept you have to try something.
Graves is seeking a different audience from the alcohol fuelled T20 crowds – a “piss up” – so typical of this format now. The reality is that this is most likely cricket’s core audience from T20 to test match; most cricketers like a beer and a party.
To find this new audience of mums and kids seems hopeful at best; as kids we fell in love with the game because we played it constantly and became obsessed with all the quirks of a unique game. We simply dragged reluctant mums along.
Somehow we have to find a way for kids to fall in love with the game again but how they do this when it has vanished from the state school sector I struggle to see. And it is a hard game, sometimes brutal; today’s kids are less conditioned to failure and give in far too easily, switching to aerobic frisbee or bouncy castle gymnastics!
Throwing millions at a hair-brained, focus-group led strategy still only targets a minority of a minority – five percent of the population – though according to the invisible “research”, the Asian population is cricket mad anyway. This is a lazy and inaccurate assumption.
The only effect of this appalling strategy will be to further marginalise Asian populations and create a handout culture where nobody ever wins. It will do nothing to better integrate communities.
Graves promised me that there are more strategies in the offing and some that will impact scruffy white kids too. Crucially, he also sees the need to instigate radical change at the grassroots but how he gets to Committee Colin & Co is anybody’s guess.
From long and painful experience I sincerely doubt those who administrate local leagues have the appetite and the vision to change. They are stuck with sepia tinted memories.
Once again, as with the counties, it may depend on the size of the carrot and the stick that the ECB can wield. I do think that Graves is the man to at least try to move the mountain but the size of the task and the urgency leave little room for error.
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