A Lewis: Old Trafford is becoming a grey area (5 Jul 1998)

5 July 1998

Old Trafford is becoming a grey area

By Tony Lewis

I CANNOT recall such a drab scene as at the start of this Test match. The Victorian red-brick pavilion gave a cold shoulder to the small crowd huddled around the ground in dark woollies and navy windcheaters. All it needed was a Russian bell tolling slowly and Boris Gudonov incanting darkly. Where was the mass of the Lancashire membership?

The questions came easily. Have Lancashire, the club of rich history, become a one-day outfit?

That is their strength. The last time they stood above every other team as county champions was in 1934. But the Manchester Test attracts support from all over the North-West. Or were there too many negatives involved in the so-called promotion of the match: no heavy alcohol and no clownish clothing?

The major deterrent, of course, is the knowledge that England do not play cricket very well and usually fail to win. The time has come when no one believes the England and Wales Cricket Board when they talk up their product. Unfortunately, it has led them to the dangerous trade of spin-doctoring. When cricket writers reported the gloomy theatre of the first morning and naturally wondered about the commercial future of Old Trafford and the professional game in general, behold a media release: it is typical that one disappointing day for English cricket prompts the cry that the game is dying. This is misleading, came the stricture from the board's corporate affairs man.

Spinning will backlash, especially when it tries to lecture Test-hard cricket writers with such speculative rot as this - of course, what happens on the pitch is paramount. But the development of a world-beating England side is an on-going process. Beware mission statements and marketing when the real substance - cricket - is lacking.

I have always believed that a precondition for improvement is honesty. The fact is that England are second-rate and Old Trafford looked third-rate: that is where we should start.

Let us accept the distractions - the poor weather, the football World Cup, Wimbledon and the golf in County Wicklow - but it is time the spinners stopped floating a filigree of hot promises before our eyes and admitted how badly we play the game.

This is nothing to do with the structure of the county championship, though it may need a rejig. It is simply that we do not learn what we used to learn at the grass roots and here I am indebted to the corporate affairs man for reminding the communicators that our future lies in catching the talented young and in establishing competitive structures to replace the cricket which used to exist in state schools. The premier leagues are important. They are for the best club teams. Unfortunately, it is taking some time to persuade clubs to form these leagues but money should talk in the end. The ECB have excellent plans for the grass roots.

And then the sun shone at Old Trafford and the white and red wine flowed from the tea flasks. It was rather like drinking red wine from a white china teapot in your Jaipur hotel on non-alcoholic Indian Sundays. (That goes back a bit!)

I love Old Trafford and usually find it inspiring. When I played there, I always tried to do a Cardus and race from the ground after play to the Free Trade Hall to listen to the Halle or the Northern School of Music.

Then it was not so bad that I had squinted at Brian Statham coming out of the sun at six o clock and had my off-stump flattened. If you missed, he hit. Maybe I had tried to outstare Ken Higgs again and lost or had a bad day fielding on Harry Pillings late cut.

It is a sturdy ground with a great history and its own ambience. Atmospheres are fascinating and hard to define. At Centurion Park, Pretoria, it is the smell of the braai; I can almost taste the pie and chips on the first deck of the Prindiville Stand in Perth - with a blob of tomato ketchup, of course; disco music and transvestites in Antigua; the heavy malt smell of the brewery at the Oval.

And in Karachi? I played a Test match which was recorded as follows: play was abandoned because of a dust storm, sundry riots and crowd incursion. Colourful spot, Karachi.

The good news for which I am grateful to the man from corporate affairs is that a new cricket centre was opened at Old Trafford last year, because if I could offer a caution to the ECB, it is this - be sure to decentralise. Your strength is in the regions, the hearts which beat for cricket and turn out to watch it are not locked in London. The future should be about bolstering the aspirations of the counties, which is why the board were formed, not in building a large corps of workers at headquarters and taking over the game from London.

In fact, the board's chairman has a vision and we should support anyone who is brave enough to lead. Sorry to be grumpy. It is just that spin-doctoring gets up my nose.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)