There was a time when I could not just identify the whole England cricket team, I could name most of the players in domestic country cricket, too. The Gloucestershire team? Easy. Kent? Yep. Sussex? Probably. Today. These days? Not so much. In fact, when it comes to country cricket, there are whole county sides where I don’t know the name of a single player. This miserable state of affairs still, I’m afraid, makes me relatively one of the more knowledgeable people when it comes to English cricket.
I’ve watched a fair bit of the first test match versus India courtesy of Sky Sports over the past five days and I marvelled at England’s all round excellence. We probably have four world class batsman in Ben Duckett, Joe Root, Harry Brook and Ben Stokes and some of the others aren’t bad, too. We have some high class, although probably not world class, bowlers, on top of the aforementioned Stokes who on his day probably is world class. We won at a canter and will now likely beat a good India sight quite comfortably in the next four test matches and what’s sad about it to me is that hardly anyone knows who our players are.
Since 2005, live TV coverage has been almost exclusively behind a paywall on Sky Sports and subsequently viewing figures for games are a small fraction of that they used to be, particularly on Channel Four in 2005. Less people are watching cricket on television and less people are playing cricket. I do not know if the fall in participation is solely down to the move to playing behind a paywall, but it can’t help.
The cricket stars I watched for most of my life often transcended the sport. Like him or loathe him, and I was always in the latter category, everyone knew who Ian Botham was. In more recent years, cricketers were household names, players like Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, Michael Vaughan and Phil Tufnell who went on to enjoy careers beyond cricket. Today’s superstars are barely household names in their own households.
James Anderson is arguably the greatest fast bowler of all time, Joe Root, who is still at the top of his game, is among the greatest batsmen. But both of them could walk through a supermarket and most pubs without being recognised by anyone other than cricket fans. They are simultaneously superstars and complete unknowns.
Of the current England team, there are numerous players I would not recognise if I passed them in the street and even the most charismatic of the current bunch, Ben Stokes, would not be recognised in the same way as a top footballer. It’s such a shame, especially if we believe that sports stars can be role models for young people, because if they are almost invisible, then someone else will assume that role.
I find it incredible that all test cricket is hidden behind a paywall. I am not saying there is anything wrong with Sky’s coverage, which is infinitely better than the old BBC model, but isn’t cricket supposed to be our summer game? And if it is, how come we are not all allowed to watch at least some of it?
Could we, the great unwashed, just be allowed to watch one test match a year on free to air TV? Shouldn’t cricket be available to everyone, not just the better off who can afford Sky, especially during times where former private school boys still dominate the national team? Currently, six of the current team were privately educated. Given that only 8% of children attend elite private schools, what does that tell you about the class-based nature of English cricket?
More than anything, I am a little sad that some of the greatest cricketers of all time are just big fish in a small pond. If I was a kid again, I’d love to be like Ben Stokes, to play like him, to laugh like him and to captain like him.
England have been superb in the first test, as several hundred thousand Sky Sports viewers will testify. Millions more will read about it it on-line, if they can be bothered. Well done to Stokesy – most cricketers have a y after their name – but badly done by the powers that be. They sold our summer game to Sky for a large amount of silver and whichever way you look at it, cricket is being played for and by the lucky and elite few. And once you lose the fans, you will likely never get them back. Still, the people who run cricket have raked in millions of pounds and that, I fear, will be all that matters to them.
