Call of an Engel - A County Revolt

Counties should revolt against The Hundred and reverse the ECB coup

Matthew Engel 17/04/19

Here is the squad representing English cricket at the Lord’s Test on Thursday. It may not be the one you expected. Delia Bushell, Martin Darlow, Alan Dickinson, Colin Graves, Tom Harrison, Barry O’Brien, Kamlesh Patel, Lucy Pearson, Scott Smith, Jane Stichbury, Brenda Trenowden, Jim Wood.

If you think that’s not so much a Who’s Who of English cricket but a Who? Who? you would not be alone. Don’t worry: they are not taking the field. But they are, quite astonishingly, the 12 most important people in the national summer game – and now the only 12 with any power worth mentioning: the directors of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Some say only one of them matters. And there is no doubt about the captain of this team. There have been dominant chairmen of the ECB before now. But the board itself have never accrued anything like the power wielded under this incumbent, the Yorkshire businessman Colin Graves.

Remember the verse by the Scottish poet Andrew Lang? “I am the batsman and the bat / I am the bowler and the ball / The umpire, the pavilion cat / The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.” The reference is to God, who may or may not also surround himself with non‑executive directors.

Graves came to prominence in cricket in 2002: he gallantly bailed out Yorkshire when they were heading for bankruptcy, and became chairman of the ECB in 2015. He made his money as the founder of Costcutter, a supply chain and unifying brand for nearly 2,000 independent retailers, a setup that bore some resemblance to the cooperative relationship between the ECB and its component counties. Not any more.

Two months ago, the ECB’s old board was reconstituted. This was partly to fulfil Sport England’s requirements, which are indeed hotter on diversity (Boxes Must Be Ticked) than democracy. Penalty for non-compliance: no government handouts. However, the ECB, under Graves’s command, went far beyond this and somehow persuaded its constituents (the counties, major and minor, plus MCC) to cut themselves out of any meaningful role in decision-making.

Specifically, the board’s new articles of association preclude the counties from any say in “the new Twenty20 competition” (now scheduled as 16.4 overs a side not 20), due to start two years hence, involving eight still non-existent teams sprawling across 38 days of prime summertime.

The new event is riddled with obvious flaws: it isn’t just mad old me saying this. However, some of us can express this view freely; others are nervy. Yet there are only two possibilities. Either the marketing money being hurled at it will buy short-term success, leading to the permanent enfeeblement of all other domestic cricket. Or it will be a very, very expensive fiasco.

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So who are these 12 people who might halt the runaway train? There are three ex officio board members: Graves, Harrison the chief executive officer and Smith the CFO. There are four “independent directors”: Patel (a peer, professor and all-purpose committee man), Bushell (former Sky executive), Trenowden (banker) and Stichbury (retired chief constable).

There are five “cricket non-executives”: Pearson played women’s Tests back in amateur days; Darlow (another ex-cop) and Wood are from Minor Counties cricket; O’Brien (reputedly a staunch Graves ally) is a former Glamorgan chairman and Dickinson (another banker) was treasurer of Surrey. They look well set up to handle riots caused by a financial crisis. But run cricket?

But these obscure figures are not to blame – not yet. The counties were bribed (as clubs, not individuals), browbeaten and bamboozled into giving away their power. This was in effect a coup d’état – the transformation of an old democracy into a top-down dictatorship – but a coup in which the counties connived.

Meanwhile, down the food chain, people who actually understand cricket are trying to work out how to schedule regular fixtures when almost half the first-team professionals in the business – the top half – will be yanked out of their counties for nearly six weeks. The whisper is that this committee is not so much struggling as writhing. The schedule is already atrocious: a bonkers number of competitions but hardly any sport; Essex and Hampshire are in the midst of 52 days with 30 hours of playing time. The players might as well take holiday jobs.

The counties could stop the extra nonsense. The articles of association bar them from interfering with a Twenty20 tournament, not a 16.4-16.4. Their own Twenty 20 is expected to attract well over a million spectators to 23 different centres this summer. If the 16.4, confined to eight cities, filled every seat at every match, it would still produce only half as many spectators. This aspect of cricket is not broke and does not need fixing. But the counties have been promised more than £1m a year to shut up.

It is up to the rest of us. More than 40 years ago, Camra stopped the breweries condemning British drinkers to fizzy keg bitter. Now we need a Campaign for Real Cricket. Not to recreate the past but to demand that the great game has a viable, sensible, sustainable, coherent future. Matthew Engel The Guardian

15/04/19
Reading Between the Lines Mr Hollins

Extracted from an article in The Cricketer by Huw Tubervill when he interviewed Gordon Hollins, MD of County Cricket at the Oval 

“Cricket has an important core of people like us who oil the wheels of the game – club, county, international – we are the base or platform upon which you can build the game [but] we need to nurture and grow that core and support,” Make the existing game more accessible, a weekends and later in the year would be a start

“What I hear most often is there are not enough people [in the core]. We need to generate and inspire more people to engage in our game than ever before. I genuinely believe The Hundred plays an important role in achieving that. If it can achieve ‘water-cooler moments’, the more of that comes back into the system. The new young audience, the masses that perhaps rely on free school meals etc, don't have water cooler moments or Sky dishes

“Younger people have more distractions than we did when we were growing up. We had cricket, rugby and football [but] the last round of Sport England funding saw awards go to 64 sports. Electronic devices don’t dominate every day, they dominate every minute of a youngster’s day. Unless we react and appeal to more people, cricket is going to suffer down the line.” Do they really tune in to BBC on their electronic devices? Get an all powerful cricket bat weapon on Fortnite, then perhaps you'll get some attention.

"The BBC like The Hundred, in fact they love it. No broadcaster will [come to a governing body] and say this is the product they want – but the BBC like it because it appeals to their agenda. You can see what they are doing around women’s football, the FA Cup and so on. They wanted something new that fitted their agenda and created a narrative.” Rumour has it that the BBC loves it so much that it will be airing games on a Thursday evening, so obviously not on their main channel and competing for the new audience against the soaps on ITV 1 and BBC1.

“A number of fans buying tickets for the World Cup will be South Asian. Events like that appeal to them. They love cricket, they have cricket DNA in their blood and want something different. Perhaps they still identify as Indian or Pakistani and that is why teams playing in the World Cup appeals Look at the city of Leicester – 52 per cent of the city’s population is South Asian, but where are they at Leicestershire games?” Leicestershire has always attracted good crowds when hosting Indian or Pakistani fixtures as does Derbyshire for the same reasons.

Whatever happened to the "Mumsnet" new audience? Was that shelved as being too patronising? So now it's the South Asians...

 “Clearly the 50-over competition [which will be played at the same time] is becoming a development model, no one is going to deny that. That is a price that has to be paid to fit all the different formats in.” England is only hosting the ODI World Cup, the premier 50 over competition, attracting South Asians etc, this year, where is the joined-up thinking?

He hopes that the new round of 50-over friendlies, which sees national counties (formerly minor counties) hosting first-class counties, will create some additional interest. Is this the real reason why counties are playing home games, this season, beyond their borders? "Friendlies" always attract big audiences, don't they?

Hollins also believes the Blast can prosper alongside The Hundred. “It attracts a specific audience, has a great county rivalry, and I don’t see that changing; in fact I can see audiences growing for that if The Hundred grows the ‘core’.” But it won't if games are elbowed out by the new competition to colder evening and work/school nights.

When Hollins was asked why the ECB has not made public the research that they cite as illustrating the need for the new, shorter format, he said: “There are sensitivities. We have been trying to take the counties with us. We have been the explaining the rationale to them more extensively than in any other time in my ECB career [12 years]. Let’s see where that goes when the design [announcement of team names and so on] is complete.” The research is that sound then...

“We want counties to come back to us with their plan to align with our ‘Inspiring Generations’ strategy. We want them to tell us where they think they can excel.” To how they can do as they are told by us [the ECB]

Hollins stated firmly that the ECB have no objective to reduce the number of first-class counties.

“It is a question I am always asked – haven’t you got too many first-class counties? And I always answer – you cannot have enough good first-class counties.” Define "good" Mr Hollins

Many fans believe their clubs should not have agreed to the creation of The Hundred; that the ECB are spending too much on it; and that it is just too big a risk; but it is clear that the ECB have been trying to take the existing domestic game with them more over the last six months or so, after a difficult birthing process this time last year.

Do you feel persuaded?