I am not sure that the new franchise 20/20 tournament scheduled for 2020 (get it?) will be the answer to the many problems facing English cricket, but be sure that it’s coming in. And can be even more sure as to the reason it’s coming in: money and lots of it.
No one is in any doubt that cricket is in decline in our country. It is barely played in state schools and the vast majority of players who make the national team attended private schools. This is hardly the fault of the private school educated cricketers who are living within the existing system, more the consequence of factors that have conspired to push cricket where the middle and upper classes live. Not everywhere, of course, but generally this is the direction of travel.
With state schools out of the picture, this has effectively killed cricket in many big cities. With any sport, you need to catch them young and if you miss them you are hardly likely to pick them up later. With cricket almost exclusive to the suburbs and small towns and villages, you are inevitably going to see the game becoming the province of the middle classes and that’s how it is. Many of these areas have clubs which regularly put out numerous teams. For example, my local club has had to go down to one team because of the lack of numbers but the two nearest clubs put out nine teams between them. As the years go by, based on current trends, local cricket will consist of gigantic clubs playing other gigantic clubs and no one else.
As cricket has moved out of the big cities, it has also moved from free to air television to the extent that there is now no live cricket on terrestrial channels. This matters too because less people will watch the game and less people will grow to love it. Actually, that’s already happened. In 2005 when England won the Ashes, the stars like Flintoff, Pietersen and Vaughan transcended their sport and were known by the whole country. Now we have a new captain, the superbly talented Joe Root, who is only a household name in his own household. No matter how much Sky money the cricket authorities throw at local cricket, is the sport does not get sufficient exposure, people will lose interest. They already have.
Oh yes, you say. Look at Test cricket which remains hugely popular in this country with virtually every match sold out regardless of the opposition. It does, but I suspect that a specific and sizeable relatively affluent group of people. Not many working class people will attend Test matches and probably don’t want to anyway, to be fair.
The new franchise tournament will feature eight made up teams. As well as two London teams, we can expect to see Cardiff, Leeds, Birmingham, Southampton, Durham and Nottingham taking part but nothing from a line west from London to Bristol and the south west. The players will be signed on the same basis as the American Football draft system so in all likelihood they will have no connections whatsoever with the teams they play for and the motivation will be money and nothing else. It is hoped that as many as eight games a year will be shown on free to air TV, but we don’t know that yet for sure. Is that any guarantee that they will suddenly bring back the missing thousands to the cricket terraces? I don’t think so and there are good reasons why: statistics.
A recent poll concluded that only 2% of children aged seven to 15 rate cricket as their favourite sport and only 7% have cricket in their top two. These are figures that cannot easily discounted and who is to say that if things are left as they are that figure might decline still further? That surely explains the desperation of the English Cricket Board to consider drastic action.
In my usual sacrilegious style, I have long felt it was time for cricket teams to more accurately represent the places in which they played rather than the old county names. Why have Gloucestershire instead of Bristol for example, for reasons other than history? History, I accept, is important for the traditionalists and they have more right to be protective of the identity of their club than I do for seeking to change it but for all that I fail to understand how cricket benefits from being based on county lines that ceased to exist many years ago. But is the franchise system the way forward? Only time will tell.
My guess is that the new Big Bash, or whatever it’s called, with sustain the game in the places where it doesn’t really need sustaining, because state schools still won’t be playing cricket and the inner cities are cricketing wastelands. A lot of change for not very much. I suppose cricket bosses will say they had to do something to try and reverse the decline of our summer game. I am not convinced that this is that something.
