Normally at this time of year professional cricket watchers have a sense of anticipation. The nights are getting lighter and it seems downhill all the way to the start of the 2019 season. However this year is different as many of us feel it is likely to be the Last of the Summer Wine with a vengeance. Cricket as we know and love it seems to be under attack from all angles, with a sense that nothing can be done about it already prevalent. It was a pleasure this week to hear George Dobell, senior cricket correspondent of ESPNcricinfo, speaking to the Northern Cricket Society at Headingley. Here at last was an articulate voice of sanity defending the traditions and status of County Championship and Test cricket as we know it.
Mr Dobell suggested that all true followers of the game should join the Cricket Supporters Association which hopes to provide a voice for the fans who are rarely, if ever, consulted about the proposed changes to the game. However he freely admitted that it is now too late in the day to avoid the arrival of 'The Hundred' in 2020. Like me he questions the motives of the county administrators and the ECB hierarchy, which is totally money orientated, with an endless flow of people being awarded top jobs on inflated salaries.
One example of this appeared on social media this week with a team picture of the England Under 19s squad, or the Young Lions as they are now apparently to be known. This showed sixteen players plus a middle row of nine support staff! What do they all do and what are they being paid I wonder?
Simon Heffer, in the Daily Telegraph, is another voice crying in the wilderness bemoaning in particular the status of Test Cricket in most overseas areas, most notably in the West Indies where many of the Caribbean Islands seem to have been dis-enfranchised completely.
Finally a message from Lord's was received this week in response to an enquiry I had made about Universities cricket for the coming season. It had come to my notice that the Leeds/Bradford MCCU fixtures were somewhat altered this season. This has now been confirmed that due to the World Cup there is no room for the traditional Universities final to be played at Lord's in 2019, something I have greatly enjoyed on several occasions.
In the past the six MCC Universities have played each other in two day games. In the coming season, partly in order to play more T20 games, which the ECB see as another form of entry for students to the first class game, each team will play only three 3 day matches. The two teams they miss out on will be played in only a 50 over and a T20 game. It appears that Leeds/Bradford will have just one home three day game, other than a pre-season game with Yorkshire. So yet another example of the status quo being chipped away at with less proper cricket available.
The same thing is being proposed for Minor Counties cricket for 2020 with less three day cricket to make way for more nonsensical T20 games, involving sides travelling long distances for one day contests that many of the players do not want to play in and would prefer playing for their club sides.
I suppose all good things come to an end and should feel grateful that I have been able to watch county cricket for a period of seventy years. I cannot help feel an element of sadness that such a great sport is apparently destroying itself with no regard whatsoever for the people who have supported it for so long.
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