Blueprint for a Brighter County Future (16 Sep 1996)

16 September 1996

Blueprint for a brighter future

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

THE game`s broader future has at last been tackled, at least to the satisfaction of those who control the strings of the public purse. We finally have a National Development Plan for cricket, introduced with such a clash of cymbals by the Test and County Cricket Board and the National Cricket Association that unless you read about it here this morning, you - like all bar a tiny majority in the administration of the game - would be blissfully ignorant of its existence.

Never mind its apologetic appearance; it is a well-meaning document, rational, and significant because it will enable cricket to attract even more from the Sports Council than has already gone to the game. In the midst of their gloom on the field, Durham CCC have just been awarded 2.32 million by the Lottery Sports Fund for the next building at Chester-le-Street, which will make it a certain venue for a World Cup match in 1999.

Seven other cricket clubs have this month alone attracted lottery funds ranging from 6,000 to Brailsford and Ednaston CC in Derbyshire for a non-turf pitch - I hope they will maintain it better than too many clubs who let these assets deteriorate quickly - to 27,000 for Blythe CC in Staffordshire to enable them to buy the freehold on the old Cookson Matthey ground.

The National Plan gives greater definition to the purposes of the England and Wales Cricket Board, confidently expected to be ratified on Sept 24 and to come into being next January under the joint command of the quietly efficient Tim Lamb and the battlehardened Ian, now Lord, MacLaurin.

The degree to which they will be able to manage the game in its best interests was as clear as mud on a first reading of the report produced by David Morgan`s working party last Friday, but painstaking work has gone into its preparation and detailed analysis is more rewarding. In its simplest terms cricket, both amateur and professional, will in future be run like a public company, though its business will continue to be cricket the game, not cricket the money-making exercise.

There will be 39 shareholders: the 38 counties plus the MCC. The direction of the company will be in the hands of a management board and the execution of policies will be the responsibility of officials at Lord`s, employed by the England and Wales Cricket Board Ltd, for which the report suggests the working acronym ECB.

The working party have left room for the new system to evolve, putting much faith in Lord MacLaurin`s proven toughness and sound judgment. The really important document is the `Proposed Memorandum of Association` which accompanies the report and in particular the section detailing the powers of the management board. Here it becomes plain that the counties will continue to exercise effective control over professional cricket in the UK through the medium of the new `first-class forum` which, along with the `recreational forum`, representing amateur cricketers, is theoretically to subordinate to the management board. This is Section Five (B) in detail:

If The Management board proposes to exercise any power in relation to (a) the competition programme or playing regulations and regulations of either international or domestic first-class cricket or domestic or international limited-overs cricket; or (b) the designation of Test match stadia and allocation of international cricket; or (c) the annual budgets including the allocation of resources to first-class county clubs, MCC and Minor Counties, then NO SUCH PROPOSAL SHALL BE IMPLEMENTED WITHOUT THE PRIOR APPROVAL OF A MAJORITY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE FIRST-CLASS FORUM.

The recreational game has a similar control over its own affairs. To this degree at any rate, nothing much will change, but it would have been foolish to deny the right of the counties to look after their own reasonable interests. The first-class forum will only meet twice a year and it is significant that only a simple majority of the 18 counties plus the MCC will in future be required to sanction changes.

The Management board, who will meet about 10 times a year, will consist of 15 people: the ECB`s chairman (MacLaurin) and chief executive (Lamb, who has no vote but is the only salaried member of the Board); four elected non-executive chairmen, representing cricket, finance, marketing and the England committee; an MCC representative; and four from each first-class forum and the recreational forum. The process of electing the 13 extra members will begin this month.

The first proof of the pudding will come, perhaps, when the structure of the professional game is analysed this winter and changes are proposed for 1999 onwards. Last week`s tour selections underlined the essential problem: an intrinsically worthy county circuit with any number of good young players who look as good as their foreign rivals as 20-year-olds but who somehow seem to become much of a muchness with one another as the years pass.

The cricket they play does not so much wear them out as iron them out, like so many shirts neatly folded, each as tidy and unexceptional as the rest.

Take Chris Silverwood, undoubtedly a young fast-medium bowler of great promise. To call him fast would be stretching a point, but he may yet add a yard and he has performed usefully and consistently for Yorkshire this season. On most Test pitches against most opponents, however, I am not convinced that he will solve England`s underlying problem of a lack of penetrative bowling. Andrew Harris, of Derbyshire, might, and he should have been the young quick bowler chosen to tour if one had to go.

As usual, mind you, one could make a good case for swapping some of the A team fast attack - Harris, Dean Headley, Glen Chapple, Mark Ealham and Craig White - for their counterparts in the senior side - Cork, Mullally, Caddick, Gough and Silverwood. More than that: one could name another five who missed selection for both teams yet might have done as well: Martin, Bicknell, McCague, Brown and Lewry for example.

It is just the same with the batsmen. James Whitaker, Mark Ramprakash, Alan Wells, Matthew Maynard or Hugh Morris might just as well have been made captain of the A tour, and Ben Smith, Darren Maddy and Chris Adams, to name only three players I have seen in the last fortnight, are batsmen of clear England potential.

Look, too, at the A team players who have been chosen in the past, but now, more or less, languish in county cricket`s mainstream: Dale, Hemp, Lathwell, the Bicknell brothers, Pooley, Ostler, Piper, Loye, Lloyd, Paul and Richard Johnson etc. Some, as Robert Croft and Warren Hegg have done this season, will come again, perhaps according to who sits on the next selection committee.

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