There was a time when I was, if not obsessed with cricket, then I was very keen on it. I consumed all I could from the BBC’s coverage of test matches and one day games and occasionally I would go to a game, most memorably the final of the Benson and Hedges Cup in 1977, won by my team, Gloucestershire. I could name and identify every single player in their team and that extended across all the other counties, too. As the years went by, life rather got in the way, and I gradually lost interest. And in 2006, all cricket was removed from terrestrial television. The shared experience, which saw the epic Ashes series of 2005 on Channel Four, was gone. My interest faded from ‘keener’ to not really caring either way.
Fast forward to 2021 and I’m watching the Ashes series on Sky, the first hour or so in the early hours and in the morning the three minutes of ‘highlights’ shown on the BBC website. I’m more engaged by the cricket than I have been for years but oddly I no longer find myself ‘supporting’ the England players. Instead, I have enjoyed watching the brilliance of Aussie bowlers Starc, Cummins, Lyon and, in this test, the debutant Scott Boland who ripped through the English batting line-up. The England players, with the exception of Joe Root and James Anderson, among a handful of state school educated cricketers in the England squad, not so much.
That could be because of the working class chip on my shoulder. It is not the fault of the private school elite that they are more likely than ever to play cricket for England than working class state school pupils because they can only progress within the system which already exists. It’s hardly a crime to have been educated at an elite private school, is it? Anyway, it’s how Britain works in terms of people getting on in life in general, not just cricket. If you’re white, privately educated and preferably well-connected the world is more likely to be your lobster, as the TV character George Daley once said.
One of the reasons cricket at the top level is skewed towards the better off is because of one simple fact: many state schools do not play cricket. And in many so called working class areas there are fewer opportunities for young people to play the game. By the same token, given the popularity of the game in the British Asian community, how come there is only one British Asian player in the current touring squad to Australia? And that the British Asian player in this team, Haseeb Hameed, attended the elite private Bolton School in Bolton, oddly enough, tells you quite a lot. Something like 7% of the population attends a private school. In 2020, 43% of all players in the county championship went to a private school. For the second test against Pakistan that summer, nine of the players went to private schools. Slightly more than 7%, I’m sure you will agree.
Back to the working class chip on my shoulder, increasingly I felt unable to get behind the national team. It wasn’t a conscious decision: I found myself caring less as to whether they won or not. I can’t say I actively celebrated the ongoing string of losses in Australia but I wasn’t bothered as the home team ground our noses into the dust.
So, what happens next? Given the priority of the cricket authorities is to rake in as much money as possible from broadcasting rights, then not much, I suggest. And how do you restore cricket to any meaningful level in state schools given how many playing fields have been sold off? Very few ex players coach in the state school system and, given tight state school budgets, who would pay for them to coach in it? That’s without even considering why cricket is so white.
I suspect we’ll have the usual inquiry which will confirm what we already know and nothing will change. If a few more lads emerge from the private school system and they happen to be top cricketers, we’ll soon forget all the failings until they later re-emerge, as they always will.
I find it hard to relate to the posh boys who dominate our summer game, surely a failing of my own and not theirs. I do think it’s an issue, a problem, but class goes well beyond cricket and for as long as we accept the system as it is, where opportunities favour the rich, then we’ll be tinkering around the edges. In a country that hands a landslide electoral majority to the party of the upper classes, led by the ultimate Old Etonian Oxbridge posh boy, I sense there is no appetite for change.
