I attended a special meeting of my local cricket club tonight. I no longer play the game, but both my sons do. The club is at the heart of our village, but it’s struggling. Struggling to attract and retain players, struggling to fulfil fixtures, all at a time when it will cost additional 20% rent just to play games, right after a 40% hike in player subscriptions. But we are not alone.
I heard sorry stories tonight about clubs all over the local area. Some folding, others merging, many struggling to survive. Apart from at the mega clubs running four or five teams, the smaller clubs are going to the wall and once they do, you know they will never come back. Funding follows the big clubs too, who boast better facilities, better wickets and better players who are attracted by both those things. The pattern is seemingly irresistible. Eventually, only the strongest and the wealthiest will survive.
Our club fields two teams. The first team is of a decent standard, competing well, finishing high up the league. The seconds, less so, 11 divisions below the firsts, and with a mixture of youngsters and their dads, with some good players giving substance to the team. The trouble is, cricket is such a commitment these days and many players also play football, so we lose them often before August even starts, these days a lot of lads can’t be arsed in playing a game that starts at lunchtime and can end in the early evening. These are changing times, the traditions are not being carried down to the lower levels of the game.
Many teams we play, like ours in fact, have their numbers bolstered by players in their fifties and sixties, others are comprised solely of men whose younger days were some time ago. All the best kids go to the giant clubs, local cricket is turning into a microcosm of the FA Premier League.
The game still flourishes in the rural areas, as well as the clubs that have access to the boys from private schools. In working class areas, the game is almost dead in some places, with no cricket clubs or even pitches for miles around.
People tell me that there are a number of reasons for the decline of cricket in many areas. As we said, the giant clubs still prosper, attracting players from well beyond their localities but the smaller ones who are struggling charge higher subscriptions to their players. Cricket’s absence from terrestrial television is becoming a factor too, with many youngsters growing up without seeing cricket on the box and so they have no heroes. Fewer schools are playing the game at all. And in these rushed times, cricket is very time-consuming when there are so many other things kids can do.
I did not really appreciate our summer game until our sons joined the village team and now I value it almost beyond words. To me, it is still an integral part of our social life, it retains aspects of community, something that is gradually disappearing with every new concrete estate on the fields of South Gloucestershire.
There was a sense of despair and inevitability about the future of our cricket club tonight. It is a constant struggle with a club run by volunteers for volunteers who pay substantial sums of money to play a game they love. I so hope the club doesn’t fold because if it does it will never come back and another part of local history will be gone forever. But clubs all over the area are folding and we are not exempt from the slump the game is going through in all but the select, elite and larger clubs.
