Don't play chicken with juggernauts

When the football is coming, it's best to get out of the road © Getty Images Enlarge

There aren't many easy targets left in English sport at the moment. Okay, so our World Cup-winning rugby players are suffering from a pretty vile hangover, and Tim Henman is doing his utmost to dash his Wimbledon prospects again, but, on the whole, the country's athletes are still well in credit. Our Test cricketers are marching from strength to strength, and if all this Roo-mania is to be believed, the European football Championships are sewn up already.

And yet, if there was one tournament designed to bring an end to all this unhealthy optimism, then it would have to be the NatWest Series - England's beknighted one-day jamboree. Now forgive me if it appears that I have a hidden agenda - because it's quite possible that I do - but English sport, and cricket in particular, could do with tonight's floodlit extravaganza like a hole in the head. Or should that be, like a spur in Andrew Flintoff's ankle?

I am no great football fan, but it has not escaped my notice that, of the two England matches scheduled to finish at around half-past-nine this evening, only one is of any consequence whatsoever, and that's even allowing for the vastly over-inflated importance that modern-day football has bestowed upon itself. One false move in Lisbon, and it's the end of the dream for another two years; mess it up in Manchester on the other hand, and there's always another five games to come.

Quite frankly, the timing of tonight's match is as lousy as the weather that has been buffeting Old Trafford for the past week. Of course, there can be no legislating for rain (although anyone who has followed England's last two one-day tournaments in Sri Lanka and the West Indies might be inclined to disagree). Major, nation-halting football matches, however, are another thing entirely. Surely someone, somewhere, in the corridors of the ECB, might have foreseen the possibility of tonight's clash of priorities, and pulled the plug on Old Trafford's floodlit fripperies?

It really shouldn't have been that difficult to plan around the football. Ever since the draw for Euro 2004 was announced, there have been five dates which English cricket would have been advised to approach with caution. Tonight and tomorrow, the two quarter-finals for which England's footballers could have qualified; next Wednesday and Thursday, the corresponding semis, and Sunday July 4, the day of the final itself. And yet, of the three floodlit fixtures scheduled for this year, the first clashes with tonight's game, while the third - England v West Indies at Headingley - is strategically positioned to take out the semi-final in the other half of the draw.

That's just plain stupid, like a colony of hedgehogs occupying both lanes of a motorway to protest against a speeding juggernaut. In their wisdom, Lancashire CCC and the ECB have decided against showing tonight's match in any capacity ... except of course, if rain stops play, which strikes me as a recipe for disaster. Not only will a sizeable proportion of an 18,000 captive audience be cheering each time the players scurry from the field, they will probably start rioting if the authorities dare to resume play with England clinging to a 2-1 lead in extra time.

Two years ago against Sri Lanka, Old Trafford faced and surmounted a similar dilemma, when they erected a £10,000 giant screen in the car park to enable the fans to watch England take on Denmark in the World Cup. On that occasion, Alec Stewart, a renowned Chelsea fan, could be seen sneaking glimpses of the play between deliveries, and as the fans filed back in, he celebrated with four consecutive fours to bring up his 15th Test century. On that occasion, everyone was a winner.

But then, the variable pace of Test cricket is better suited to sharing the limelight, and that old pro Stewart could slow the game to a crawl while no-one was paying attention. One-day cricket, however, with its lights, colours and look-at-me action, is a more selfish variety of the game, which demands the fullest attention at a very specific moment - generally five or ten overs from the end of a match. But unfortunately for tonight's fans and organisers, that is precisely when the football will be at its most riveting as well.

In this era of face-painting, speed-dating and pitch-side jacuzzis, it is a crass piece of scheduling from the ECB to deny their fans the chance to witness the most popular sideshow of all, particularly seeing as the type of fan who is drawn to one-day cricket is also more likely to be drawn away again by the football - which is not to belittle their interest in the game, but merely to state a demographic fact.

It need not have been so. By accident or design (and frankly it's probably the former), the ECB have got the format precisely the right for the day of the final itself. On July 4, England take on New Zealand in a day game at Bristol, an audience that is limited to a solitary game a year, and so will turn out in droves regardless of the weather or circumstances. And then, having watched what will probably be a cracking game of cricket, those fans will decamp to the nearby bars to prepare themselves for the footie final, when maybe, just maybe, England will do the unthinkable.

Football may be a behemoth, but there is no reason why the two sports cannot cohabit peacefully and fruitfully. On Wednesday, The Times ran a leader proclaiming that "English [sport] is no longer struggling to maintain its pride, it is exporting it." This is a process that was begun by the rugby, sustained by the cricket, and could yet be crowned by the football. If success feeds success, then there is no point in swimming against the tide. Hopefully tonight, cricket will learn a valuable lesson.

Andrew Miller is assistant editor of Wisden Cricinfo.