Someone who purports to be the England cricket captain, a guy called Joe Root (all professional crickets are guys, just like they are in rugby union), has said he supports the new 100 ball cricket match involving made up franchise clubs that is set to be launched but he England cricket board (ECB) in 2020 but adds, and I quote, “We’ve got to find ways to make sure other formats don’t suffer from this”. According to the cricket bible Wisden, “Root sees it as something which could reinvigorate cricket in this country, which is faced with problems of declining interest and participation.” A realisation that is better late than never, perhaps?
I wonder quite how much of the declining interest and participation in cricket is down to the decision of the ECB to flog its entire portfolio to Sky television? Since 2005 there has been literally no cricket on free to air television in Britain. It has turned cricketers with household names into cricketers who are barely household names in their now households. The aforementioned Joe Root is a sporting unknown, which is a startling contrast to the days when the likes of Ian Botham, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff were as well known as Premier League footballers. But if cricketers are no longer on normal telly, kids will grow up having no idea who they are and no interest in finding out. And older supporters, who are loathe to part with large subscriptions, have lost interest.
We are told by the powers-that-be that the new format is aimed not at your regular cricket fan. It is aimed at, according to the England director of cricket Andrew Strauss, “mums and kids during the summer holidays” and “people that aren’t traditional cricket fans” which suggests people who are not interested in cricket and perhaps never will be. Quite how these new 100 ball games will attract mums and kids long after the youth cricket season has ended and at the same time as a new football season begins is well beyond me. And how it will address the paucity of inner city cricket in terms of clubs and schools is not explained, either. Probably because it won’t be.
I am not against initiatives to attract people to play and watch cricket and I will certainly give the new format a chance. Whether it will work or, as I suspect, discover that people have moved on from cricket in search of other things to do, we will find out.
One thing I think is for sure: it won’t affect the other formats Root frets about because hardly anyone is watching them anyway and won’t be for as long as Sky hogs all the TV rights.
