There is no doubt in my mind that the absence of cricket on terrestrial television is playing a part in the decline of Our Summer Game. Today, England stuffed the Australians, seen only by an enthusiastic crowd of cricket fans and a TV peak audience that in all probability would not have exceeded a million. Messrs Root and co should be national heroes, but the truth is that their success will be confined to cricket fans only.
Contrast this with local cricket where the game continues to decline. It is true that the powers-that-be throw money at certain clubs, almost solely those in the affluent burbs, because they are regarded as the future. Smaller clubs, struggling to run two sides and in some instances just the one, are left to their own devices.
Today I watched what was essentially a game between a bunch of kids, with just one senior player, versus a team of forty and fifty somethings. The club I support tries to operate two teams, but sometimes it just can’t. And it has to forego games it cannot fulfil due to lack of numbers. Sometimes the team is enhanced by people who can’t really play, just to make sure the kids get a game, but at other times, they can’t raise a side. That’s very sad. And what’s the league reaction? They warn the team that they will be thrown out if this continues to happen. Well, thanks for that. The team struggles desperately to recruit players – it is not a cheap game to play, believe me – and when it occasionally fails, the stuffed suits threaten to take cricket away from the community altogether. Where has all the Sky money gone, the money that would resurrect cricket at the grassroots? Why, it’s going to the haves, not the have nots. Makes sense.
There is a huge class divide in cricket. No one doubts that watching Test cricket is a middle class pursuit, with even the cheapest seat costing probably costing eight or nine hours pay based on the national minimum wage. £60 or £70 might not seem a great deal to some people, but to me, even after a lifetime’s full time work, it’s a small fortune, especially when you add the cost of getting to the game and – god forbid – eating and drinking something. And the same thing applies at a more local level. The major private schools in Bristol have wonderful sports facilities and it is no coincidence that its pupils are far more likely to succeed. Go to a state school and the odds are, overwhelmingly, that your exposure to cricket will be minimal, perhaps non existent. And it’s getting far, far worse.
I would love for cricket to genuinely be the people’s game, in the way that football used to be, pre Sky. There is no reason why the game should be the exclusive preserve of the better off, except of course that it is. At an elite level, cricket appears to be strong. The national team thumped the Australians today so things can’t be that bad. It is such a shame that hardly anyone saw it.
The political situation of the country is bound to affect sports like cricket. We live in a society that has decided, consensually, that it is okay to have different types of education. We accept that some people are rich and can afford to educate their children by paying extra for it. As part of the deal, the children of the better off enjoy better sporting facilities. Those who are not so well off, do what they can, and their children rarely play at school, playing what cricket they can at local cash-starved clubs. It’s a shame really because the kids of today do not have heroes who transcend cricket. Joe Root appears to be a world class batsman but who, apart from the cricket aficionado knows who he is? If Ian Botham had emerged in an era when cricket was not on terrestrial TV, people would have heard about his achievements but he would not still be the household name he remains today.
A superb result today against the cocky Aussies, but it will barely register with anyone outside the cricket bubble. I think that’s a shame, but with Rupert Murdoch gradually buying up a monopoly of sports on his Sky network, many other sports will be going the same way. And with a new government that hates the very idea of the BBC with a passion, things can only get worse.
