Ashes 2013
Blame it on the counties?
January 13th 2014
After the 2006/07 Ashes
whitewash there was a lot of soul-searching and an investigation into the
disaster, leading to a report on how it could be avoided in the future. Part of
the investigation centred on how County cricket could be made a conveyor belt
for new talent. The introduction of so many players straight from counties to
make an immediate impact in the international game (Cook, Trott, Swann, Monty,
Root, etc.) has been held up as evidence that the system works. The failure to
find an immediate replacement for Graeme Swann and the inadequacies shown by
players such as Jonny Bairstow, who have not made the step up, is now held as
proof that the same system is broken.
One of the recommendations made
was that the number of First Class counties was too large and that too much
cricket was being played at too low an intensity. This is an old chestnut and
regional cricket has been proposed often enough.
One argument is that, in Australia,
there are just six First Class teams and that Australia has no problems
producing talent (only four months ago people were arguing just the opposite
but, whatever…) The population of Australia in the 2011 census was 21.5
million. For the United Kingdom, in the 2011 census, the population is 63.2
million. Scale the number of First Class teams to the population and, for the
UK, you would get… 18 First Class teams (17.6 if you want to be exact). In
other words, you can argue that the talent pool is exactly the same size per
head of population. It is not valid to say that the “correct” figure is the
English population, because Welsh, Scottish and even many Irish cricketers
aspire to play Test cricket for England and it is only a historical accident
that the Test side that represents the United Kingdom is called England.
A lot of people talk about how
Australia has grade cricket as a bridge to state level and that is true but, in
England there are the leagues and those are fiercely competitive. In England
the northern leagues have a tradition of attracting Test players. With
international cricket a year-round business, you do not find the likes of
Rodney Hogg and Alan Border plying their trade now, but the Leagues are still a
place where young players come from abroad to round themselves and
international stars can enjoy a final season or two after retirement, bringing
on new talent as they do so. It may not be a case of “whistling down t’pit”
when you want a new fast bowler, but Jimmy Anderson went almost straight from
playing for his club side to England back in 2002, via just three limited overs
matches for Lancashire.
Another common argument is that
no one watches and no one cares about County cricket. It is an old saw. There
are days, it is true, when the County Ground at Derby, or Wantage Road may hold
only a handful of spectators. However, it is just as true that the County
Championship is, by a distance, the most watched non-Test First Class
competition in the world and that crowds have been growing steadily. Crowds of
several thousand are not uncommon, particularly at weekends and there are
counties who can claim to attract far more supporters to the ground, day after
day, than Tests matches attract in some countries. One of the problems is that
counties only record the number of spectators paying at the gate. Members get
in free and, often, the members are a substantial fraction of the crowd.
As an exile, it is hard for me
to judge the crowds. I did attend three games in 2011, two of them Second
Division (one of the games has entered cricketing legend for its extraordinary
scores – you can see the score at one point on the first day on the scoreboard
in my background image – it was a quite remarkable game and made even better by
being able to chat to the winning captain on the balcony afterwards). That game
had a healthy, although not huge attendance for its first two days. A trip
across London to the climax of another game saw me in what was a crowd
certainly well over one thousand. A few weeks later I was at another Test ground
and saw another very healthy crowd enjoy the first day of a game between two of
the Division 1 big-hitters. Of the five days of play that I attended, just one
conformed to the “one man and his dog” image and that was because play was only
likely to last an hour or so anyway; even then there must have been a couple of
hundred spectators in total, counting the members.
Another gauge of interest in the
County game is the listening figures for county commentaries on the Internet. Radio
London, who split their potential audience by broadcasting both Surrey and
Middlesex games, have been amazed by the size of their listening figures.
Again, the figures are skewed because they do not count listeners outside the
M25 area, but they have had up to 20 000 unique listeners in a day for a single
game. That is not a bad number when you consider that the commentary is only
broadcast on the Internet and, latterly, also on digital radios.
I would thus argue that there is
interest in the county game, perhaps not what it was in the 1930s, but still
substantial. That is despite the international stars rarely turning out. While
some Division 2 cricket can be desultory, particularly near the end of the
season, more sides have more to play for, for a larger fraction of the season
than was ever the case with one division. In Division 1 almost every game has
something riding on it still in the run-in. Witness last season where, with two
games to go, Warwickshire were simultaneously watching their back because they
were being sucked into the relegation battle and pushing for top four prize
money, in the end getting the latter. In Division 2, Gloucestershire finished 6th
but, until the last two games, still harboured some hopes of promotion, setting
up increasingly suicidal chases in an attempt to muscle in on the promotion
race.
Two Division cricket has
undoubtedly concentrated the talent in the county game. Increasingly players
are prepared to move county to get Division 1 cricket. I have heard it argued –
by a fan of a promoted county – that his side would do fine in Division 1 because
the level is actually higher in
Division 2!! His side was relegated… rapidly. Division 1 cricket is harder,
more intense. A typical Division 2 side has a decent new ball attack but, when
the change bowlers come on, the pressure eases. There are usually one or two
good class batsmen, but not the five or six that the better Division 1 outfits
can boast. There is a perception, largely backed by recent precedent, that
Division 2 runs and wickets are worth far less than Division 1 wickets and runs
in Test selection: that is how it should
be if the two division system is to make sense.
What makes no sense is that the
players in the county game almost never come up against Test players. Alistair
Cook or Stuart Broad rarely turn out for their county. Last season Graeme Swann
played one match for Nottinghamshire and Stuart Broad, two. Jimmy Anderson
played two games for Lancashire and Alistair Cook two for Essex. The link
between the county game and the Test team has been broken. Even when there are
no Tests and a player is not involved in ODIs, the Test players are “rested”.
Players who are out of form used to be able to play a county match between
Tests to get some confidence back: that practice has been abolished and Test
players now only play early season games, before the Tests.
The aim should be that the
England Test specialists should play a minimum of one third of the games in the
county season and players should be encouraged to turn out for their county
when not needed by England and not in clear need of rest. Fans would love to
see Root, Ballance, Bairstow and Bresnan trying to score runs against Jimmy
Anderson in a Roses match and Stuart Broad facing off against Woakes and Rankin
in a Midlands derby, but these march-ups rarely, if ever occur. Increase the
level by making the best play against the best as often as reasonably possible,
while respecting the need of the players to rest. If that means playing only
six Tests each season, or cutting an ODI series by a match or two, so be it.
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