In barely six weeks time, the Ashes will be starting. You know, the Ashes, an historical cricketing event that began when God was still wearing short trousers, actual five day test matches played out this year under a sizzling English sun. I’m looking forward to it, sort of, but not as much as I used to. Why? Several reasons, really, not least the way actual test cricket, which is to say the long, classic form of the game described above, is dying. Another is that cricket, apart from the gimmicky bish bash of The Hundred, isn’t available on terrestrial television, except to those who don’t mind shelling out a small fortune to watch it on pay TV. These things, as well as the relentless decline in playing numbers, don’t bode well for the game. Currently, a home Ashes series takes place every four years. Who’s to say that soon it will become a more regular event?
England, alone in the world of test cricket, still manages to attract large crowds for test cricket, regardless of who they are playing. An occasional glance at either Sky or BT reveals test matches being played around the world with seemingly more people on the pitch than in the stands. One day, limited over, games are far better attended. Just look at Australia’s Big Bash and especially the Indian Premier League. That’s where the crowds are.
Given that I pay for a number of sports channels, it shouldn’t affect my enjoyment, yet it does. I grew up watching the BBC’s admittedly old-fashioned coverage and it felt, at least in my little world, I was part of a shared experience, a national occasion, which we would all talk about at work next to the mythical water cooler. Taking cricket off to Sky changed little for ordinary cricket fans, but the casual viewer who might become entranced by a particular game or player and discover the game, exists no more. Cricket on TV is for hard core fans, not everyone, and when not everyone has the chance to see something like cricket, then interest wanes. It’s natural. If you don’t see something, it isn’t there.
Even the biggest cricket stars today inhabit a small pond. True greats like James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Joe Root and Ben Stokes have not transcended their sport, as the likes of Ian Botham and Freddie Flintoff did. And young people, who watch very little TV compared with our generation, are not seeing the current generation of top players at all. This situation is irretrievable. Cricket has certainly embraced great change, especially in terms of fitness, technology and so on, but it has done little to resolve the issue of schools no longer playing the game and local clubs struggling to attract players.
A significant minority will continue to ensure test matches sell out in England and that won’t change anytime soon. Elsewhere in the world, tests are played in empty stadia, and the game is propped up by the proceeds of limited over cricket. How long before some countries give up the ghost of the traditional form of the game and focus solely on one day, or even one afternoon, games? In reality, isn’t that already happening?
A sensational Ashes won’t change anything. Most people won’t be watching because of where it’s being shown. It will be played out for the benefit of existing fans. When it’s over, it’s back to one day thrashing and tours to places where no one really cares about tests.
Major change is needed in terms of enabling terrestrial TV companies to show cricket, to regain some kind of cricketing foothold in state schools and to protect the small, local clubs that are the soul and lifeblood of the game. I see no such vision.
Instead, those of us who already like cricket will enjoy the summer, always assuming we have one, and the cracks will be papered over for another summer and ever-so-slowly the greatest form of cricket of them all will slowly fade and eventually die from apathy and neglect, leaving maybe the Ashes as our only regular long form of the game. And if the Ashes was every single year, we’d soon get sick of it.
