County cricket ought to be important because it provides the players for Test cricket. You won’t find your budding Strausses, Cooks and Swanns playing on village greens or even in the estimable Lancashire and Yorkshire leagues. If they are really good they will be in a county side.
The problem, however, is that when they are spotted by England they go off to become international players, and rarely seem to be anything other than special guest stars on the rare occasions they play for their counties. That is one reason why county cricket is so tedious now, and so little watched: you only ever see the also-rans, the wannabes, the has-beens and the never-weres. The real titans of the game are with the ‘squad’, engaging in ‘preparation’ or being ‘rested’.
The absence of big names is not the only reason why county cricket — there are 18 first-class clubs, from Durham in the north-east to Somerset in the south-west — is suffering a cash crisis. Fifteen of the counties made losses last year totalling £9 million. That was despite the fact that they received substantial subsidies from the England and Wales Cricket board, the fruits of Test match receipts and the money from broadcasting rights. Kent, in the affluent south-east, has lost £1.3 million over the past two seasons, and has sold off some property to help raise money. The team has also gone without an expensive star overseas player, which at least has the merit of forcing it to use more home-grown talent.
There is, however, a conspiracy of difficulties against the county game. Some are self-inflicted; some are acts of God, or of what passes for Him. In the former category comes the four-day format of the game, which is simply boring. It was felt it would prepare players better for Test cricket. It has certainly driven away crowds, and reduced the number of matches and days cricket in a season, thereby further limiting the scope to earn gate money and attract members. Over rates are painfully slow, making the game seem a further drag. One needs to be sad indeed to spend four days watching a group of people of whom one has never heard playing a game of little relevance as slowly as possible.
The world in which I, as a child, excitedly went to cricket matches has changed too. We did not have computers, PlayStations, mobile phones, iPods, endless foreign holidays and all the other diversions that compete for a child’s time and attention these days. We also became interested in cricket because we played it at school. Now, many state schools never go near the game. To the ECB’s credit, it puts money in the game at the grass roots and encourages an interest among the young. But competition for that interest is stiff.
However, I cannot help but think that one of the problems with county cricket is that it is one of the few institutions in Britain that was bypassed by Thatcherism. A subsidy culture has for too long encouraged clubs not to seek to make money. With the ECB shelling out money from its pot of gold each season, there often hasn’t been a reason to make money. That has begun to change. Cricket grounds, which in some cases are only operational for matches on about 40 days of the year, are now having to find ways of earning a living on the other 320 or so. This sense of urgency has come because with the economic downturn of 2008/09 and its aftermath, some people have at last realised that the free lunch could soon be over.
For years clubs failed to market their main product, championship cricket. They exploited the 40- and 55-over one-day formulas until people became bored with them. Twenty20 cricket — which is not really cricket at all in the minds of some of us — has seemed a last desperate attempt to drag through the doors the most moronic, or most restless, elements of the sporting public. It, too, can be safely predicted to have a limited lifespan, before its novelty wears off. While killing time during the showers at the last Lord’s test, Geoffrey Boycott was even heard to say that test cricket was heading for the departure lounge and out of public affection. He gave it 50 years. If he is wrong, it is probably only because he has given it too long. If county cricket rolls over and dies, Test cricket cannot long survive it.
Perhaps for that reason the ECB will not allow it to die. However, their generosity, counter-productive though it be, cannot be sustained without huge television revenues. They will not be forthcoming if the home audience of potential subscribers decides it would rather watch a film of paint drying, or some other such arresting spectacle. What should not be forgotten, either, is that with every stunt used to drag people into the stands, others are repelled. Cricket is a conservative game. One only has to look at the sparse attendances in members’ enclosures for some one-day games to see that. It is also, as Mr Boycott has himself pointed out, hugely expensive to watch: the ticket prices to see India at Lord’s next week are extravagant, as, no doubt, will be the mark-ups on the food.
There may be no solution to what could be a terminal decline. We won the Ashes in Australia for the first time in 24 years only a few months ago. It may have done wonders for the morale of players, but it has done little for interest in the game. Perhaps it will take a club or two to go out of business before someone tries something radical: like cutting championship matches back to three days, playing them on sporting, uncovered wickets, and enforcing over rates that keep the game moving and spectators interested.
But who will do this? Cricket has been run, for the most part, by exceptionally thick and narrow-minded people for most of its existence. There have been glowing exceptions, but they are not visible now. The same people who bring you the present ECB brought you the association of our game with Sir Allen Stanford, who is now awaiting trial on fraud charges. Being on the verge of poverty, they are obsessed with money. I don’t know whether it really is the root of all evil, but it certainly is in cricket. If cricket is going to survive, we may soon have to bring back the amateur game, and run clubs more like registered charities than businesses.