Covid 19 Knock-on Effect

 

Left in limbo: The county cricketers facing a winter of discontent

NICK HOWSON (The Cricketer) speaks to four players without a club for the 2021 season thanks to the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and asks: where do they go next? 

The message made for grim reading. With three-and-a-half weeks of a truncated season remaining, the Professional Cricketers' Association were lamenting the possible exit of 70 players across the county scene in 2020 due to the coronavirus crisis.

Projections from the England and Wales Cricket Board estimate that £200m will be lost from the sport. The 18 first-class counties are expecting a revenue deficit totalling at least £74.5m due to matches being played behind closed doors, the conference industry being decimated and club partners trembling.

Job losses are therefore inevitable and players are among the victims, with the furlough scheme only providing temporary respite. Some have been released, denied a contract extension due to finances being unavailable. Others, who have left as scheduled, remain unattached with the transfer market yet to fully ignite. Regardless of the mechanics, many face a winter of uncertainty, awaiting answers over how next season will look and whether they will be part of it.

The Cricketer caught up with four of those affected, each at various stages of their careers but with the same cloud precariously hovering above their careers. They're each apprehensive, ambitious, realistic and hopeful about the present and the future.

What Chris Nash doesn't know about the rigours of professional sport probably isn't worth considering. Suddenly, after 504 matches across 18 years, he doesn't know where the next one is coming from. For a batsman who has seen it all, Nash is suddenly in unchartered territory.

"I'd always had three-four year contracts at Sussex and Notts so I always had that buffer," he said. "It is sad because you'd like to get to that stage where you feel it is time to go. To see Belly (Ian Bell) and Tim Ambrose play their last games in front of empty stadiums that's the bit that really hurts.

"That was the first appraisal of my career because I've never been in the final year of my contract. I said to the lads afterwards not to have one because they're rubbish. It was pretty bad. One appraisal and one sacking."

While Nash, 37, was realistic about his hopes of an extension once the pandemic hit, a collection of his peers found it a seismic shock. Ivan Thomas missed the whole of Kent's 2019 campaign after surgery to fix a torn anterior cruciate ligament of his right knee. Through months of rehab, he fought his way back and was ready to play a full part in the 2020 campaign. Though lockdown delayed the start of the season, his fate was sealed before he'd bowled a ball.

"It was pretty much stated then that we had to do something of Darren Stevens' ability to earn something," Thomas, 29, said of his June appraisal meeting with the director of cricket Paul Downton. "It was pretty brutal. I didn't expect it to come. At the time I was PCA rep and all the talk was about sustainable jobs and making sure players got another year. But to hear that I thought: 'what have I done wrong?'

"I hadn't played cricket in 24 months, what did they expect? They gave me a contract off the back of the year before and I hadn't played a game, how can you expect me to improve? I swallowed that pill. No matter how they put it they didn't want to sign me."

Harry Finch would be forgiven for not being able to recall much about life before Sussex. He first rocked up at Hove aged 10, progressed through the age groups and became a staple of the first team only to be dumped at the end of July. Of all the tales of heartache, his is one of the more emotional.

"When I first got told, the day before that first (Bob Willis Trophy) game, it was a real mix of emotions," the 25-year-old stated. "I worked really hard during the winter and got to a good place and was just trying to get back into the team. I got told I'm back in the team but went from that high to being told we're probably not signing you. It was quite strange, to be honest. 

"It took me a good week to get over it. That first game (against Hampshire, Finch made eight and 10) I wasn't quite mentally at my best. I'd been there since I was 10 years old. I've been a pro for eight years now so it was tough to take."

An academy player since 2013, Liam Banks has a similar attachment to Warwickshire. Unlike the aforementioned trio, the 21-year-old's exit was virtually sealed before Covid-19 hit. The Staffordshire-native had enjoyed an encouraging 2019 (particularly in the One-Day Cup, averaging 31.25) for the Bears and looked set to be part of the exciting batch of youngsters including Sam Hain, Dan Mousley and Henry Brookes. Instead, he'll have to watch their progress from afar.

"Obviously it was quite tough, he admitted. "With the new signings that they were making (Will Rhodes, Michael Burgess, Tim Bresnan) I would be lying if I said I wasn't expecting it. That didn't make it any easier to take. That is the way cricket is. It is very cut-throat.

"I was finding my feet a little bit in first-class cricket so for them to say that to go from featuring in almost every format to then going to the next season with a few new signings and to not play was pretty tough really."

It is a credit to the quartet that each has plans in place to help fill the void. Nash has moved into private healthcare; Thomas is doing shifts at Shotsmiths coffee shop in Beckenham; Finch is eyeing a teaching career and taking on either an English or psychology degree; Banks, meanwhile, is working for his brother Chris' landscaping company.

That the group have transitioned into new roles just weeks after the end of the season is no fluke. The PCA provide great support and advice to players over their career-options after cricket. Not only are remuneration packages more supportive, but guidance regarding life after the sport has improved exponentially.

"I didn't really know what the possibilities were until I read a PCA article about Tim Linley who opened his shop Coffee on the Crescent in Headingley in Leeds," said Thomas. "It was this eye-opening thing that, wow coffee is somewhere I can go. I really enjoyed cricket and made a career out of that, and I really like coffee! 

"It has been in the pipeline for two-three years. Hearing the news I wouldn't get a contract it has been my first port of call and every spare moment I have I am looking to get some experience and qualifications or anything to read or listen about coffee."

Nash added: "I always wanted to finish cricket on a Friday and start work on Monday, not have too much downtime or feel sad about it and move into a new challenge quite quickly. It's something I've been thinking about for a couple of years. I dipped my toe into coaching overseas last year (with Mzansi Super League side Durban Heat). With The Hundred and the game growing, I thought the game was going to expand and there would be a huge amount of jobs in cricket, whether it be general managers, coaches, consultants.

"All this hit and it became clear that the game was shrinking. It then became a really good time to have a proper assessment of where I needed to be and have proper conversations about moving into something else. In May, it was decided I'd start work (with DJW Health) in October regardless of if I had another year with Notts or another county."

While some deals have been completed, mainly among those on the fringes of England, the expectation among clubs, players and agents is that the majority of signings will have to wait until at least February if they're to go ahead at all. The challenge for those without a deal is as much mental as it is physical, keeping faith and focus against the backdrop of a partial lockdown, which makes working on cricket-specific skills a challenge, and the barren, cold winter months.

"It is about setting short-term goals," said Finch. "You have to question yourself. At the forefront of your mind, you go back to why you started playing in the first place. Everyone wants to play for England but if you can't do that everyone wants to be a successful county player. Right now the short-term goal is to get signed somewhere as soon as possible and if that ends up being next September, or earlier, then great. It is trying not to look too far ahead."

Right-handed batsman Banks said: "The technical side of cricket is tough to keep doing at the minute because there are not the facilities. The fitness side of things is easy. 

"Mine is a physically demanding job. The hours are not as long with the nights moving in but there is moving about and having that time in the evenings it has been quite easy. I don't think there has been a time when I'm struggling to go and get a run or do a bit of lifting."

For Thomas, the seamer has accepted that his desire to keep playing professional cricket has a ceiling. 

"It has been a slap in the face realising what the real world is like and what real hours are. You can't get back from a two-hour training session, twiddle your thumbs and watch Netflix for eight hours.

"Being able to juggle my coffee and trying to keep up my training and fitness is easier because I enjoy the training, I've done it for years.

"The longer it goes on, will I still love the training as much? I hope so. I'm not holding out for a contract and the opportunity would be great but the challenge is going to be high and the competition is going to be huge."

Surrey chief executive Richard Gould believes the sport will be knocked back into "the amateur days" if fans do not return in 2021. Coming from the richest first-class county around, it is a gloomy outlook and one which the cricket community up and down the country should take note of.

Full economic recovery in the UK could take years. A poll by the #ForgottenLtd Campaign of small business owners in the summer saw a prevailing 39% predict it will take five years until industry is back on its feet.

There is no guarantee that if and when the pandemic eases and clears that cricket will automatically pick up from where it left off. Players currently on the peripheral can't be assured of picking up a deal when we reach tranquillity. Indeed, the prospect of reaching the end is very real.

"I'd be lying if I said I had not thought about it," Banks, just 24 matches into his pro career and more than seven months before he turns 22, conceded. "That is why I am trying to make so many plans, business-wise, how I'm going to get an income."

"If I'm really honest about my career I never thought I'd play 10 games," added Nash. "Whether I played another season or not it's not going to dampen the career I've had. I won't get teary-eyed I'll just move forward and focus on the next bit."

"Without getting too philosophical about it I think everything happens for a reason," said Finch. "Time will tell for what reason that is. Hopefully, the reason is it will allow me to play elsewhere and show my true potential and get where I want to in the game. If it ends up doing something else, then maybe I'll become a great coach or teacher, you just never know."

"I still want to play and if that means that the next time I get a contract is when I'm 27, 28 then so be it."

Faced with such a grim, thankless situation, it would be understandable for any player to be bitter, even angry, over the hand they've been dealt. Without wanting to compare their situation to the millions who have been tangibly affected by the tentacles of the virus, an uncomfortable truth lurks beneath. But these cricketers are better than to blame this invisible enemy.

"To not get another contract with another county without playing for free you're not getting that because clubs haven't got anything to spend," Nash said. "I wouldn't say a victim but a knock-on effect of Covid-19 is I haven't got another contract in place. Any other years I'd be pretty confident that I'd have other clubs after me. That's unavoidable not to have that in your mind."

Thomas explained: "Calling myself a victim of Covid, I don't think so. I understand where the club has gone with it. I'm not going to blame Covid as a reason for being released. It's an easy way out for me."

"Compared to what is going on in the world right now it is not bad at all," a buoyant Finch added. "There are lots of people who are worse off and there are a lot of real-world issues. Sport and cricket become very small when things like this are happening. 

"If you get into that victim culture where it is Covid's fault. I don't think it stands you in good stead or gets me where I want to get to. It's an excuse. I've got to take a bit of responsibility myself."