May County News: More Schedule Whining

 

Packed county calendar not new, so plough on lads.
PTG Editor.
Wednesday, 15 May 2024.
PTG 4510-21820.

When the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA) announced recently the results of its consultations with county players on the modern-day schedule, the unanimous lament was that there is too much professional cricket in England and Wales (PTG 4504-21797, 6 May 2024), wrote former England Test player Steve James in an article published in the ’London Times’ on Tuesday.  In James' view today’s cricketers are right to say they play too much, with T20 in particular meaning that games are played at a much higher intensity, but he then points out that “it has always been thus”.   

James goes back to his playing days with Glamorgan, and specifically to the month of August 1992, when he estimates he travelled well over 3,000 Km, played 26 days’ cricket and had five days off. "Blimey. Yes, there were four days rained off (and today’s cricketers do not often get that respite because of improved drainage systems and the introduction of floodlights), but that is some treadmill from which there was no escape”, writes James.

Over that 1992 season he played 22 championship matches, six of four days’ duration and 16 of three days, plus two three-day friendlies against Pakistan and Oxford University. There were also 14 Sunday League matches (40 overs), two NatWest Trophy games (60 overs) and three Benson and Hedges Cup matches (55 overs), plus two Tilcon Trophy games (55 overs) and a day-night encounter (40 overs) against the Rest of the World.  That’s 94 days over what was then a much shorter 144-day season than now, for in 1992 it began on April 25 and ended on September 15 - these days the season is more like 180 days. 

James makes the point that his article "is not some 'it was tougher in our day’" monologue, though when the PCA made its recent statement, "there were some interesting statistics popping up about how many days’ cricket are actually being played now”.  He points for example to writer Dan Kingdom who wrote on X (formerly Twitter) at the time: “The number of days of county cricket is at the lowest it’s been since 1949 (78 days). In 2010-2011 it reached a high for this century of 92-96 days (dependent on knockouts etc)”.

“No wonder I was tired”, continued James, who says that “in a game against Sussex I was leg-before, padding up to a straight ball, and when the umpire asked me later, 'What were you doing?' I just replied rather vacantly, 'No idea!’"  The recent complaint that players’ safety is at risk by driving between matches late at night immediately took James' mind to a car accident in which Glamorgan's Rodney Ontong and Steve Barwick were involved in in 1988 when travelling from a match in Essex to another in Northamptonshire. That saw Ontong’s career ended by the knee injury he sustained.

"Was the schedule right if one was seeking consistent levels of high performance?”, asks James, and answers his own question with "Of course, it wasn’t”.  Ten years later, when he was still playing, he wrote a foreword for 'The Cricketers’ Who’s Who’ that said: “Still fatigue plays too big a part in a season — the need for quantity of matches to satisfy memberships and justify budgets overrules the delicate balance required to initiate the play, rest and practice cycle”.

That book also had a comment from a very young James Anderson, who made his Lancashire first-team debut that year, in the “opinions on cricket” section at the bottom of his profile: “Too much cricket is played both at amateur and professional levels in England. The emphasis seems to be on quantity rather than quality”. He wasn’t the only one. “Too many games”. Dominic Cork, Simon Jones and many, many others said.

The observation of Darren Gough was though: “Does it matter what a player has to say? Nobody takes notice. They’ll only do what’s best financially for themselves”.  Well, the players’ voice does now have much more clout, says James. Their power has never been stronger, as county cricket is simply not the main player in the northern hemisphere summer anymore with, for example, T20 series in India, Pakistan and the United States overlapping with the season in England and Wales. 

Daryl Mitchell, the PCA’s chief operating officer, fears “pushing players to the max” will “push them away” from the county game.  The key problem, says James "is that the players want one thing, members want another, and the administrators want something else again”.  He ends his article with: "Gaps in the calendar are always filled with something or the other. There are no real solutions, just compromises. As ever. So, unfortunately, plough on, lads”.  Of course, just what the statistics are for the match referees, umpires and scorers involved in the county circuit are not available, but would they be a lot different?

10/05

Hundred privatisation moves closer after counties give ECB green light

Will Macpherson, CRICKET NEWS CORRESPONDENT

Counties have given the England and Wales Cricket Board the green light to continue on the “direction of travel” regarding private investment in the Hundred, but non-host venues have dug in over questions that remain unanswered.

A fortnight ago the ECB requested that the 18 first-class counties and MCC provide a “non-binding” position on the capital share model it has devised for private investment into the eight teams in the competition, which they hope will happen later this year.

While this was not a formal vote, 15 of the 19 were required to provide a positive response. That hurdle was cleared on Friday.

The model sees the ECB hand 51 per cent of the eight teams to the host county (or club, in the case of MCC at Lord’s). The remaining 49 per cent would be sold to private investors by the ECB, with the host county welcome to sell as much or as little of their share as they please.

The proceeds of the 49 per cent sold would be split as follows: the first 10 per cent to the recreational game, with the rest shared by the counties. The first £275 million raised would be shared 19 ways, with the next £150m shared between the 11 non-hosts. All proceeds north of £425m will be shared 19 ways once more.

The proceeds of the 51 per cent would be split as follows: the first 10 per cent goes to the recreational game, the next 80 per cent goes to the host county, with the final 10 per cent split by the other 18.

The model for sale has been built in partnership with Deloitte, but the split has unsurprisingly caused division among the hosts and non-hosts. Hosts say they are taking on all the risk because they have to manage and fund the teams in cahoots with their new partners. The non-hosts are desperate for further clarity over their position on a number of fronts.

On Monday, the 11 non-hosts wrote to the ECB outlining their concerns, saying that while “we do not wish to slow the process down”, they “unfortunately cannot agree to the direction of travel at this stage”.

That position has appeared to change this week. Sources suggested they were set to give the ECB the green light to proceed, but, as a united front, would request further detail on a number of matters and seek independent advice.

There is consensus that private investment is wanted in the tournament, but details needed to be ironed out both over the capital share, as well as other big issues such as future expansion. “Yes, but with big caveats” was how two sources described the non-hosts’ position to Telegraph Sport.

In their email on Monday, the non-hosts requested £200,000 from the ECB to engage a law firm to receive specific advice and guidance, but the ECB turned them down, on the grounds that Ernst and Young are already engaged to compile a report on the work Deloitte have done with the governing body in recent months. The 11 non-hosts are understood to be proceeding with commissioning that advice at their own cost.

In the governing body’s response, seen by Telegraph Sport, chief executive Richard Gould said: “Neither current hosts nor current non-hosts are particularly enamoured with the capital structure of the deal. Both parties want more, hence the compromise and fair model put forward by ECB. I do not sense that either party is prepared to give up more value, and both would like more.”

Some counties – 15 of whom are currently member-owned – have been gently engaging with their members on the matter, but are not looking at giving them a formal say.

The sale will be managed by Raine, the New York-based bank who have helped sell Manchester United and Chelsea in recent years. It is understood that there is interest in investing in teams from firms in India (including most IPL franchises), Pakistan, the USA and the UK.

MCC, who are different from the rest in that they do not currently have a professional team, have committed to formally engaging their members in the coming months, but were happy to proceed with the direction of travel at this stage.

09/05

Spending money before they have it?

Lord's Redevelopment Approved

08/05

‘I’ve been called a moron, cretin and old fart’: Life as a county cricket member in 2024

As the febrile debate about the future of the country’s summer sport has turned toxic, traditionalists have come to feel under attack

Tim Wigmore, DEPUTY CRICKET CORRESPONDENT Daily Telegraph

“I’ve been called a moron, a cretin, an old fart, a dinosaur,” bristles David Wright. Huddled up in his coat to protect himself from a biting spring wind, he discusses something that can feel even more tribal than politics: English domestic cricket.

While watching Surrey’s opening game at the Oval this summer, Wright, 55 and a newly retired mortgage adviser, explains how toxic the discourse within the game has become. Those like him – who support the retention of a 14-game County Championship season and have no warmth towards the Hundred – have come to feel besieged.

Fifteen of the 18 counties – all bar Durham, Hampshire and Northamptonshire – are member-controlled. Members losing this role is a growing concern, with private investment being discussed. Further reform to the domestic schedule is also being mooted again; this week, the Professional Cricketers’ Association advocated cuts to the county fixture list.

“There has been some ill-tempered stuff,” Wright reflects of the debate about county cricket, on social media and in person. “Fundamentally, that’s been aimed at me because I want to watch Surrey play cricket, which doesn’t feel like too bad a crime.”

Like several other members from across the country who share such views, Wright brings up two comments. First, in November 2022, after the reaction to the High Performance Review, which advocated cuts to the county schedule, a county source lamented members’ power, telling Telegraph Sport: “It is not the tail wagging the dog but the fleas on the tail wagging the dog.” Second, Durham chief executive Tim Bostock called members “Luddites”, as quoted in Ben Bloom’s new book about the county game, Batting for Time.

“Those are pretty appalling comments,” says Wright, whose first season as a Surrey member was 1983. “The foundations of the game, and many of its most dedicated supporters, are under attack.

“Some people want us to be utterly silent and just let the game be run by the money man. And it raises the question of what is the game for? Is it purely to make money?

“When you’re building a business, you build on the customers that you have. You don’t tell your existing customer base to get stuffed.”

The florid writing of Neville Cardus created an image of a ‘golden age’ of county cricket running from around 1895 until World War One. Yet even this period was one in which many counties suffered gravely from financial strife, as the academics Keith Sandiford and Wray Vamplew document.

Counties scrapped second elevens, cut the number of ground staff or stopped providing lunch for young players. Before World War One, financial peril led Worcestershire and Gloucestershire to call members’ meetings to discuss withdrawing from the County Championship. Essex literally flogged a dead horse – it was sold for 7s 6d – to stay afloat.
‘We want what we always had’

To many members today, the period between the 1970s and 1990s were the modern heyday for county cricket, and not only because they associate these years with their own youth. At Thatcher’s Bar, watching the final day of Gloucestershire’s Championship match against Middlesex in Bristol, John Gordon, who has been watching county cricket since 1959, recalls the “golden days” of overseas stars like Mike Procter and Zaheer Abbas. Often he saw them together at Cheltenham, one of the most-loved outgrounds.

Cheltenham is only hosting one Championship game this year, another sign of what has changed – and, to many members, been lost. “There is an element of ‘we want what we’ve always had’,” Gordon says.

David Griffin, 62 and a retired soldier and policeman, has been a Derbyshire member for exactly 50 years. Reeling off a list of names he used to watch in the shires, he observes: “The equivalent today would be to have Virat Kohli facing Jasprit Bumrah. You got that virtually every day of 1970s, ’80s and ’90s county cricket. That was the absolute golden era.”

Yet the late 20th Century was an age when the England Test team struggled. It is a microcosm of an eternal debate: should the county game exist for its own sake, or merely to satisfy the demands of the England side?

As Rob Key’s recent plea for bowlers to bowl at 85mph in domestic cricket reiterated, saying that he was more interested in speed than averages, England’s management do not believe that the county game is set up to produce a successful Test side. Members also do not think that the domestic game is anything like the best competition that it can be. If county cricket must try to please two masters, right now it is pleasing neither.


Nevil Road, Gloucestershire’s ground, brims with mementos of the great names who have represented the club in the past, which include two of English cricket’s most storied names: WG Grace and Wally Hammond. But one plaque celebrates fans, rather than players. In the Covid-ruined summer of 2020, 650 members donated their full membership fees to help to keep the club alive. All now have their names inscribed at the club, below a sign that reads ‘With grateful thanks to our members and supporters’.

“It makes me angry,” Gordon says when asked how he feels to be called a Luddite. He points to the plaque. “The members may be limited and some of the views may be out of date, but actually, your members care about cricket.”

Gordon rattles off a list of changes that he has come to welcome. Then, he pauses. “Franchises are probably the one that’s far more difficult for me to accept.”

Two years ago, Gordon was among those who walked around Nevil Road with a clipboard in hand, getting signatures opposed to cuts in the number of County Championship matches proposed by Andrew Strauss’s High Performance Review. Members made it clear to county boards that they would not countenance the cut from 14 games to 10, which followed a previous cut from 16 matches after the 2016 season. “It showed that there’s still some power with the members,” Gordon says, with a wry laugh. “It was good to flex our very few muscles.”

The episode encapsulates the debate about members’ role. As many county members concede, the group tends to be more pale, male and stale than the overall demographic of fans in the country. There are around 70,000 county members today; counting white-ball and junior members, who generally do not have voting rights, there are a total of 115,000 members. The number varies wildly between counties: Surrey have over 19,000 members. The lowest figure is believed to be Derbyshire, sneaking just into four figures.

“If Derbyshire disappeared tomorrow, you would lose an inordinate amount of people who’ve got an interest in the game,” says Griffin. “History and heritage count for something.”

Alan Higham is a member of three counties: Lancashire, his boyhood club; and Hampshire and Surrey, near where he now lives. Two years ago, Higham became one of the most influential voices in the English game: as national coordinator of the County Cricket Members Group, he led the successful grassroots campaign against the Championship cut.

“We live in a democracy and we’re used to leaders having some form of consent,” he says. “My concern would simply be about the way in which the people who run the game have the debates about the choices we need to make.”

Asked whether members have too much influence, Higham retorts: “It’s like saying that voters have too much power.”

Higham laments opaque decision-making among county clubs and the England and Wales Cricket Board alike. “You’re seeing changes pushed through that supporters haven’t consented to and that is leading to fractures and divisions within the game.”

While Bostock complained of a small number of members holding sway, Surrey member Wright says: “He seems to be OK with huge changes being made by 20 to 25 people: the ECB and county CEOs. I know which one sounds more democratic.

“If anything, cricket fans have been too apathetic. Look at the reaction of the football fans to the European Super League. If cricket fans had a 10th of that passion, maybe things could have been a bit different.”
‘A compromise where some member power is retained could work’

If the summer of 2022 was the moment of greatest feuding between county fans and English cricket’s suits, there has been a slight rapprochement since.

For now, there are no proposed Championship cuts. Several members draw a favourable contrast between the attitude of Richard Thompson and Richard Gould, who began their stints as chair and chief executive in the winter of 2022/23, and previous holders of their roles, notably Tom Harrison and Colin Graves. This year, Championship games are mostly being scheduled from Friday to Monday, based on research into fan preferences.

Yet new battles lie ahead. This summer, Alex Hales and Jason Roy will both miss Twenty20 Blast matches to play in either the United States’s Major League Cricket or the Lanka Premier League in Sri Lanka. Even English players not playing the international game now have more lucrative alternatives to the county game.

While most members begrudgingly concede that the Hundred will remain, private investment in the competition is a new concern. “Big money never says ‘we’ve had enough’,” reflects Wright, who fears that this will ultimately lead to the Hundred expanding to the further detriment of county cricket. If he did not oppose investment in the Hundred, Wright says, he could not look friends in the eye who are members of counties that are not attached to Hundred teams.

Budgetary pressures have left counties feeling newly embattled. Annual ECB payments to counties remain static over a five-year broadcasting cycle; Gloucestershire estimate that the value of their ECB income declined by £750,000 in real terms from 2020 to 2024 due to inflation and the largely fixed nature of ECB funding.

Changes in interest rates and increases in energy costs added a further £250,000 on to their bills. Since 2022, five counties have received an advance on their payments from the ECB.

Should ECB funding for smaller counties reduce, sides such as Derbyshire could be imperilled, even though they have made a profit for 16 of the past 18 years. Griffin points out that reliance upon central ECB funding is nothing new.

“Can we survive? Absolutely. But the way we wouldn’t survive is if they said, ‘we’re going to withdraw all funding from the centre’.

“I believe it should be funded from the centre because if you go for every man for himself, in 10 years’ time there’ll only be eight clubs left.

“That’s the fundamental choice. Do you allow the centre to continue to keep you going? Or do you just say ‘pull the ladder up, Jim’ and it’s every man for himself? Because then we’ll get what we’ve got in football – we’ll have clubs going to the wall.”

Derbyshire have long felt maligned. “You always go to Derbyshire when your career is on the wane; that’s the last club you go to,” the Australian Stuart Law, who played for the side in 2009, later told New Zealand’s Ross Taylor.

Griffin accepts that clubs like Derbyshire will effectively be feeder sides. “That’s what we are now – we can’t hold on to our best players,” he says. “I want us to be able to play some form of cricket against other counties. And I’m not really bothered if we never play the big boys again.”

For all the focus upon private investment in the Hundred, private investment in the county game is an increasingly salient issue.

“There’s quite a lot of that feeling members do get in the way of things,” says Annie Chave, a Somerset member who is also a columnist for The Cricket Paper. “A lot of members do feel like we’re [seen as] just getting in the way of progress.”

Asked about the suggestion that members have too much power, “I understand what he’s saying because cricket is a massive game,” she says. “Members care about the game, they’ve been there through thick and thin and they will always be there to support. I’m a real fan of cooperatives and member-owned clubs.”

To Gordon, Gloucestershire’s financial turbulence, which is leading the club to press ahead with plans to leave Nevil Road, emphasises that the financial model of county clubs might have to change. “Clubs will need some kind of big capital injection,” he reflects. “Will the model of members’ clubs survive? Probably not.”

Yet he fears what this might mean. “I would be worried. Maybe I’m looking for some kind of British compromise whereby the members retain some power.”

Injecting greater funding into the domestic game; and appeasing county members. As English cricket attempts to balance both these aims in the coming years, the fear is that the two are irreconcilable.

Worcestershire To Wear Josh Baker's Number as Tribute

Daryl Mitchell talking to ... on Youtube

07/05

Sussex Chair, we want more not less

06/05

Having Joe Root take the spotlight, the PCA  have a moan about the schedule - there's too much apparently. Read here

Joe Root won't play anything like 121 days for Yorkshire this season and the 121 is inflated by double counting with The H*ndred. Yorkshire will be lucky if Root plays 10% of those 121 days for them. Yes the schedule is a mess, but the reason it's such a mess is magnified by the additional fourth format played by eight franchises (or would-be franchises). Back to back scheduling is a mistake, but that is driven by money and greed for that money is at the root of all cricket's problems.

Today we have beautiful Bank Holiday weather for once and how many matches are still being played? 3

Perhaps a full round for all 18 counties with games starting on a Sunday (yesterday) would have been more spectator friendly scheduling?

05/05

Blair Tickner's wife's illness

2s Worcs v Lancs due to have started tomorrow (Monday) at Kidderminster - Cancelled

03/05

Jack Brooks returns to Oxfordshire

02/05

On the BBC

The Sad Announcement of the Death of Josh Baker (Worcestershire)

Worcestershire County Cricket Club is heartbroken to announce the untimely passing of Josh Baker, who was aged only 20 years old.

Josh turned professional with the Club in 2021 and quickly became a popular figure within the squad. More than his skills as a spin bowler, it was his vibrant spirit and infectious enthusiasm that endeared him to everyone he met. His warmth, kindness, and professionalism were remarkable, making him a true credit to his family and a loved member of our team.

Ashley Giles, Worcestershire’s Chief Executive Officer, shared his profound sadness, stating, “The news of Josh’s passing has left us all devastated.

“Josh was much more than a teammate; he was an integral part of our cricket family.

“We will all miss him terribly. All our love and prayers go out to Josh’s family and friends.”

During this profoundly difficult time, the Club is dedicated to supporting Josh’s family, friends, and colleagues. We are united in our grief and committed to honouring his memory in a manner befitting the remarkable person he was.

Plans to pay tribute to Josh will be made in consultation with his family and will remain private at this time. The Club, along with Josh’s family, requests the respect of privacy as we mourn this immense loss. No further comments will not be provided during this sensitive period.

At Trent Bridge last month

RIP Josh

his last wicket earlier this week for Worcs 2s here