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Culling counties would only add to the game's troubles.
Andrew Miller.
Wisden Cricket Monthly.
Thursday, 28 April 2022.
PTG 3869-19022.
It’s cards-on-the-table time. How do you fix English cricket? Someone needs to come up with a solution pretty damn quick, but first the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) must find itself a new chair, two new head coaches, in all probability a new chief executive, and God knows how many new match winners, to arrest a run of series losses that has not been equalled in England’s Test history. And when you put it like that, it’s easier to see why who is the new Test captain is actually the least of the game’s concerns.
It is, in short, an unholy mess. And that’ s before you factor in the untold reputational damage of the racism scandal – headlined by Yorkshire’s barely resolved civil war, but backed up by an array of toe-curling appearances at hearings of the UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee, all of which have proven it is not remotely an isolated problem.
Even as the 2022 season begins, however, the temptation is still to consider England’s Test struggles as a separate concern to the representational failures that have torn at the game’s soul all winter. In actual fact, the two issues have never been more closely entwined, and so it is beholden on the ECB’s proposed “high performance review” to reach beyond the elite, and commit to being the most forensic audit the game has ever undergone.
For those who know it, love it and fret constantly about its future, English cricket currently feels less relevant as a sport because it is failing to fulfil its potential – hence the well-intentioned but wrongheaded petitions for a Hundred-style ‘Premier League’ that some former players believe is the only way to restore the first-class game’s diluted standards (PTG 3855-18957, 2 April 2022).
The more awkward truth – and the one that the ECB, to give them some credit, have been clumsily ramming down our throats since the inception of The Hundred – is that cricket is failing to fulfil its potential precisely because it is less relevant as a sport. At a professional level, it has ceased to resonate beyond the narrow confines of those old fogies who learned to love it during the free-to-air era, and those youngsters who are still taught cricket at an impressionable age, more often than not at fee-paying schools.
Somewhere independent of those two dwindling demographics lies a vast untapped pool of potential players and supporters – some of whom may be seduced by the glitz of 100-ball cricket, most of whom will not. However, the one sure-fire way of ensuring they never make it past a fleeting interest in the sport is to take the fool’s route of culling counties in order to ramp up the supposed elite credentials of the top flight (PTG 3869-19022 above).
We know the system as it stands is imperfect. The counties, with few exceptions, remain self-serving members’ clubs, as fearful of change as they have traditionally been resistant to it, and with squads that reflect that white, middle-class tendency to bring up the drawbridge. But at least they exist – for the most part, centuries-old slabs of prime real estate that need to be used better if the game is to progress, but would not be used at all if they were ushered into redundancy by this current obsession that less is more.
Andrew Miller.
Wisden Cricket Monthly.
Thursday, 28 April 2022.
PTG 3869-19022.
It’s cards-on-the-table time. How do you fix English cricket? Someone needs to come up with a solution pretty damn quick, but first the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) must find itself a new chair, two new head coaches, in all probability a new chief executive, and God knows how many new match winners, to arrest a run of series losses that has not been equalled in England’s Test history. And when you put it like that, it’s easier to see why who is the new Test captain is actually the least of the game’s concerns.
It is, in short, an unholy mess. And that’ s before you factor in the untold reputational damage of the racism scandal – headlined by Yorkshire’s barely resolved civil war, but backed up by an array of toe-curling appearances at hearings of the UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee, all of which have proven it is not remotely an isolated problem.
Even as the 2022 season begins, however, the temptation is still to consider England’s Test struggles as a separate concern to the representational failures that have torn at the game’s soul all winter. In actual fact, the two issues have never been more closely entwined, and so it is beholden on the ECB’s proposed “high performance review” to reach beyond the elite, and commit to being the most forensic audit the game has ever undergone.
For those who know it, love it and fret constantly about its future, English cricket currently feels less relevant as a sport because it is failing to fulfil its potential – hence the well-intentioned but wrongheaded petitions for a Hundred-style ‘Premier League’ that some former players believe is the only way to restore the first-class game’s diluted standards (PTG 3855-18957, 2 April 2022).
The more awkward truth – and the one that the ECB, to give them some credit, have been clumsily ramming down our throats since the inception of The Hundred – is that cricket is failing to fulfil its potential precisely because it is less relevant as a sport. At a professional level, it has ceased to resonate beyond the narrow confines of those old fogies who learned to love it during the free-to-air era, and those youngsters who are still taught cricket at an impressionable age, more often than not at fee-paying schools.
Somewhere independent of those two dwindling demographics lies a vast untapped pool of potential players and supporters – some of whom may be seduced by the glitz of 100-ball cricket, most of whom will not. However, the one sure-fire way of ensuring they never make it past a fleeting interest in the sport is to take the fool’s route of culling counties in order to ramp up the supposed elite credentials of the top flight (PTG 3869-19022 above).
We know the system as it stands is imperfect. The counties, with few exceptions, remain self-serving members’ clubs, as fearful of change as they have traditionally been resistant to it, and with squads that reflect that white, middle-class tendency to bring up the drawbridge. But at least they exist – for the most part, centuries-old slabs of prime real estate that need to be used better if the game is to progress, but would not be used at all if they were ushered into redundancy by this current obsession that less is more.
Certainly, those who believe in the transformative powers of The Hundred (the men’s version at any rate) should heed the lessons from last month’s stunningly underwhelming player draft. Much like the post-Brexit lorry parks on the M20, it’s remarkable how everyone bar the zealots in charge of the competition’s creation were able to predict how fixture congestion would impact on the flow of the very best players.
Instead of luminaries such as David Warner and Babar Azam for this year’s competition, the overseas stardust will be provided by Kolpak-lite journeymen such as Rilee Rossouw and Hilton Cartwright. And while it’s encouraging from an England perspective that the likes of Liam Dawson and Tom Kohler-Cadmore are in such high demand, those players have been hiding in plain sight in the T20 Blast for years (and while you’re at it, good luck finding a sufficiently family-friendly answer to the question, “Mummy, why hasn’t Joe Clarke played for England yet?”).
The disconnect is damning, and so are the rumours that the ECB is close to locking in a new ten-year broadcast deal with Sky Sports (PTG 3857-18968, 4 April 2022). Again, those that love cricket may well welcome them back with open arms after BT Sport’s bargain-basement stewardship of the Ashes, but to repurpose the phrase that Tom Harrison, the ECB’s chief executive, has consistently used to dismiss the Hundred’s opponents, such an unambitious deal does seem to be the very epitome of “managed decline ”.
There is, however, one means by which The Hundred truly can make a difference – and perhaps it already has, given that it required the blessing not only of MCC and the 18 first-class counties, but the 20 National (formerly Minor) Counties to amend the Articles of Association and bring the competition into being in the first place. What, other than a lack of imagination, is preventing the first-class game from being reimagined as a Football League-style tier of 40-odd clubs, split into manageable divisions of six to eight teams, with meritocracy and opportunity stretching from Cornwall to Norfolk to Cumbria?
Way back in January 2019, in fact, unveiling the board’s strategy document ‘Inspiring Generations’, Harrison stressed that the sport had to make better use of its 39 existing “delivery networks” – an oxymoronic turn of phrase if ever there was one. But it was a hint nonetheless that the notion already existed somewhere within the ECB’s convoluted battle plans (PTG 2699-13490, 20 January 2019).
The likelihood, of course, is that the Test-hosting counties would round up the game’s best talents and dominate the top flight at the expense of recent standout teams such as Essex and Somerset, and there’s the obvious danger that one or two weaklings would tumble down the tables. But firstly, isn’t that rather the point of this whole exercise? And secondly, wouldn’t it be great for Leicestershire to be properly incentivised to do a Leicester City?
Instead of luminaries such as David Warner and Babar Azam for this year’s competition, the overseas stardust will be provided by Kolpak-lite journeymen such as Rilee Rossouw and Hilton Cartwright. And while it’s encouraging from an England perspective that the likes of Liam Dawson and Tom Kohler-Cadmore are in such high demand, those players have been hiding in plain sight in the T20 Blast for years (and while you’re at it, good luck finding a sufficiently family-friendly answer to the question, “Mummy, why hasn’t Joe Clarke played for England yet?”).
The disconnect is damning, and so are the rumours that the ECB is close to locking in a new ten-year broadcast deal with Sky Sports (PTG 3857-18968, 4 April 2022). Again, those that love cricket may well welcome them back with open arms after BT Sport’s bargain-basement stewardship of the Ashes, but to repurpose the phrase that Tom Harrison, the ECB’s chief executive, has consistently used to dismiss the Hundred’s opponents, such an unambitious deal does seem to be the very epitome of “managed decline ”.
There is, however, one means by which The Hundred truly can make a difference – and perhaps it already has, given that it required the blessing not only of MCC and the 18 first-class counties, but the 20 National (formerly Minor) Counties to amend the Articles of Association and bring the competition into being in the first place. What, other than a lack of imagination, is preventing the first-class game from being reimagined as a Football League-style tier of 40-odd clubs, split into manageable divisions of six to eight teams, with meritocracy and opportunity stretching from Cornwall to Norfolk to Cumbria?
Way back in January 2019, in fact, unveiling the board’s strategy document ‘Inspiring Generations’, Harrison stressed that the sport had to make better use of its 39 existing “delivery networks” – an oxymoronic turn of phrase if ever there was one. But it was a hint nonetheless that the notion already existed somewhere within the ECB’s convoluted battle plans (PTG 2699-13490, 20 January 2019).
The likelihood, of course, is that the Test-hosting counties would round up the game’s best talents and dominate the top flight at the expense of recent standout teams such as Essex and Somerset, and there’s the obvious danger that one or two weaklings would tumble down the tables. But firstly, isn’t that rather the point of this whole exercise? And secondly, wouldn’t it be great for Leicestershire to be properly incentivised to do a Leicester City?
ECB may have no permanent chairman all summer.
Elizabeth Ammon.
The Times.
Thursday, 28 April 2022.
PTG 3869-19024.
Elizabeth Ammon.
The Times.
Thursday, 28 April 2022.
PTG 3869-19024.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) could go another four months without a permanent chairman after it had to reopen the application process because nobody that applied for the role was deemed the ideal candidate. The position has been vacant since Ian Watmore resigned in October, only 13 months into the standard five-year term for a chairman (PTG 3681-18166, 8 October 2021).
Although three people were interviewed this month for the £UK250,000- a-year job ($A440,040), the ECB’s appointments committee did not believe that any of them met the criteria. After a meeting of the ECB’s board of directors on Tuesday and a further meeting of the county chairmen yesterday, it was decided that the application process should be reopened to land a candidate who fits the bill.
Ron Kalifa, who was head of the nominations committee, has stood down from the role and is now the leading candidate to become the chairman. Kalifa, who has been on the ECB board since November 2020, has the backing of a number of county chairmen and other leading figures within the game, although he will have to go through the formal application process (PTG 3867-19014, 23 April 2022).
The delay adds to the power vacuum at the top of English cricket and means that Tom Harrison may stay in his role as the ECB chief executive for at least a few more months. It was expected that, had a permanent chairman been appointed, Harrison, 50, would leave within the next few weeks. Barry O’Brien, who had been acting as interim chairman since Watmore’s resignation, is suffering from ill health and so has stepped down. Martin Darlow, the vice-chairman of the ECB’s board, will step up to act as interim chairman.
At a meeting of the county chairmen on Wednesday, some expressed concern that the ECB will struggle to attract any appropriate or high-calibre candidates for the job given that the governing body had failed to appoint anyone despite a widespread search and that Kalifa’s emergence as the favourite would dissuade others from applying.
Radical shake-up of County Cricket
So how would the idea in the "Mail" story improve the England Test team ?
ReplyDeleteNeed to work together with the counties. Members voices are starting to be heard.
ReplyDelete