Having lost an hour of my life last night when the clocks went forward by an hour, I lost a few more when I switched on my television to see Australia win the cricket world cup. What a sensational tournament it hasn’t been, lasting at least six months (well, it feels like it, anyway), and rigged as it was to ensure the major nations qualified for the knockout stages. This explains why England were on an early flight home, despite heroic victories against Scotland and Afghanistan.
I am not sure there has ever been a more irrelevant world cup in any sport, certainly in terms of interest in this country. The early morning scheduling of matches can’t have helped in creating interest in the wider public and the fact that it was tucked away on Mr Murdoch’s pay TV channels must have been another factor.
It really is no wonder that cricket is slipping away from the British psyche given its complete lack of exposure on free to air television. That, added to the continuing decline of cricket in state schools, explains why Our Summer Game might not hold that title for much longer.
Oddly enough, I seemed to recognise far more players from the Aussie winning team than I could name in ours and it could be that many of our players are not even household names in their own households. But even if we were any good, who would be watching?
Test cricket is still regarded as being the pinnacle in English cricket, certainly by those who run the game and genuine cricket aficionados, but for an increasing number of people the one day game is more interesting. County cricket is watched by crowds of a few pensioners and their dogs and is heavily subsidised by the authorities with some of the Murdoch money. Whether county cricket is producing enough good players is almost irrelevant if no one is interested.
We can scoff at Australia’s Big Bash cricket, played in front of huge crowds including young people and families (so nothing like Test cricket then), or the lively and vibrant IPL, but we’re the exception not the rule. World cricket is moving one way and just England is going the other.
And somehow, we need to have some cricket on free to air telly. Perhaps the BBC a Sky might share a future T20 competition, played in the school summer holidays, so that people other than old men with their dogs might enjoy the fun?
I won’t my holding my breath that anything will happen. Cricket is deeply set in its ways, still committed to an outdated county system of the game, breeding mediocrity and subsidised by the England Cricket Board for no other reason than that’s what they have always done.
Of course, Test cricket must remain but there must surely be major change to make the game in general into the modern age. In the unlikely event that I was appointed to run the game, I’d introduce a franchise system for a new T20 tournament, a Bash type event, with teams based on cities and towns. It surely wouldn’t attract less support from the current system, which would still remain, albeit with the majority of players becoming part time.
Or we can wait until 2019, ploughing the same boring furrow, hoping for the best and seeing England eliminated at the hands of giants like Bangla Desh.
