It could be that “Our Summer Game” (cricket) is beginning to descend into irrelevance in our national psyche. I say this with no pleasure and I do not confine its decline simply to lack of exposure on free to air television (although this is plainly significant.) It’s dying everywhere except among the affluent middle classes in the Burbs and I am not sure the decline can be reversed.
I grew up when the only cricket you would see was on the BBC, with the odd typically shambolic presentation on ITV. With there being no competition, millions watched the game. Everyone knew who Ian Botham was, half the nation watched when Bob Willis skittled out the Australians in 1981. Now the game is not on the BBC and I reckon that even the England captain Alastair Cook would not be recognised in most pubs in the land, unless he had subsequently appeared on Strictly Come Dancing. World class players like James Anderson and Joe Root are simply unknowns, plying their trade in front of a few hundred thousand viewers on a good day, a lot less on a bad one. It is not the done thing for youngsters to come home from school and switch on the test match. In some ways it is just as well.
Never has the test team been more unrepresentative of the country. Yes, we have a glut of Asian players breaking through, but not all of them are from state school backgrounds. Hardly any of the “white” players come from state schools either. The statistics suggest you are 10 times more likely to play cricket for England if you went to a private school than you were 20 years ago. But then, state schools barely play cricket anymore. Many sold their playing fields but the change in society has mattered too. Children no longer want to play cricket matches that last for hours on end. Interest is at an all-time low, with participation levels going through the floor.
Inner city cricket is creaking too with most of the big clubs being in the wealthier suburbs and small towns and villages. And all the money that comes from the top in cricket ends up with the already big clubs who can run countless teams and build luxurious pavilions whilst the smaller clubs struggle to and sometimes fail to survive. These are sad times.
With cricket available to those who subscribe to pay TV and to those who attend private schools, who can be surprised at the falling interest everywhere else? T20 games attract good crowds in this country, as do test matches, but hardly anyone knows or cares who wins the country championship.
It is a matter of time until many types of football move to summer. Children’s football is a shambles because there are so few artificial pitches and in many areas games throughout the winter are postponed for months on end. When that happens, the drift away from cricket will accelerate still further. As things stand, many cricket clubs lose players from the beginning of August onwards when the football season at all levels, leaving countless games cancelled and the leagues turning into a mess.
The big winners in all this are the elite players who trouser huge wages from the Sky money and the elite clubs in county cricket and in the clubs. Cricket is heading back to the private schools and disappearing from view to the rest. And the worse thing is hardly anyone cares.
