CMJ: Fraser has the credentials for one-man committee (18 May 1998)

Monday, May 18, 1998

Fraser has the credentials for one-man committee

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

IF you want to play for time, form a committee. Politicians do it all the time to take the heat out of awkward situations, ignoring C H Spurgeon's aphorism that a committee is a noun of multitude signifying many but not signifying much, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

The England and Wales Cricket Board have done it too. On Friday they announced the formation of a review group "to undertake a far-reaching examination of the factors governing the employment and contractual arrangements for England players".

It will be chaired by Don Trangmar, who will succeed Robin Marlar as chairman of Sussex in September. Helping him to report back to the ECB's management board in October so that recommendations can be made to the First Class Forum in December, will be two Test players, Angus Fraser and Martyn Moxon; two county chief executives, Paul Sheldon of Surrey and Peter Anderson of Somerset; and two former county cricketers, David Acfield, now chairman of Essex and of the ECB's cricket advisory committee, and Alan Fordham, the ECB's cricket operations manager. Wider experience will be provided by the former soldier Simon Pack, the international teams director, and Kate Hoey MP.

One is tempted to wonder, with no disrespect to a possible future minister for sport who spends some of her time at the Oval, if it is not all a load of hooey. Could not the whole matter be judged by simply asking Fraser what he thinks?

No England cricketer of the present time is likely to have a more balanced perspective: he knows the worth of county cricket because it quickly brought his talent for bowling to the boil and prepared him well for success in Test matches. He knows also that it was the combined workload of bowling for Middlesex and England which put him out of action for all but two matches of 1991, and that the road back was hard. A further period in the 'wilderness' of the county game - wilderness to an ex-Test cricketer, anyway - was followed by an admirable come-back last winter. It is worth noting that England's hero in Trinidad does not, and never has, rolled over county batsmen with the greatest of ease, for the simple reason that county cricket is no easy ride for anyone. Fraser has been characteristically blunt about it in his introduction to this year's Cricketers' Who's Who (Queen Anne Press, £12.99). "I would recommend a career as a professional cricketer to anyone," he says. "You may not earn a fortune out of it and it is precarious, but it is fun."

Writing before he discovered that he was some quarter of a million pounds better off for the benefit which Middlesex granted him last year, he said that there was room for improvement in players' (meaning, here, county players') wages; and that counties had kept salaries low by means of the benefit system, which dissuades players from moving and obliges them to accept what they are offered. But he warns that counties increasingly desperate for success must be careful not to follow the example of rugby union and price themselves out of business by paying higher wages than they can afford.

Fraser, in common with most county cricketers, wants promotion and relegation in the championship. In his case no doubt the main reason is that he would hope to get more time for practice and less body-straining match play. Again, however, he might look at rugby's experience before being sure he is right, and so might his fellow professionals. Laurence Dallaglio, formerly an all-rounder for Ampleforth and keen enough on cricket to take jobs as a waiter at Lord's and the Oval before his superb athleticism brought him fame and fortune on the fringe of the scrum, was at Worcester last Thursday bemoaning the absurd workload which has temporarily interrupted his international career because of his shoulder injury; and the clubs versus country dispute which has created the problem.

One of the side-issues which the review group must consider as they study "the strengths and weaknesses of the present system in the interests of Team England and the First-Class Counties" is whether promotion and relegation in county cricket might not lead, following a honeymoon period, to just the same power struggle between clubs and country which has obliged England to take an under-strength rugby team on tour.

They have been asked to take account of five other factors: the heavy demands made on international players under the present system; the desirability and effect of contracting players to the ECB; the principles on which any proposed contractual arrangement should be founded; the possible introduction of compensation for first-class counties; and the current benefit and registration provision.

"This is a most important review," says Simon Pack. "At the heart of it is the identification of where the best interests of cricket in this country lies."

Good luck to them. Perhaps this is one committee who will signify something. Everyone believes, surely, that the national interest is the priority: the question is how it is best served. The review group would be helped by the view of one experienced and knowledgable South African cricket journalist as he sat watching their game against Worcestershire. First he expressed delight at the size of the crowd - no one, sometimes almost literally, he said, goes to watch first-class cricket in South Africa these days - and then his gratitude to county cricket for refining and expanding the talents of Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and Jacques Kallis.

One of their predecessors, Vintcent Van der Bijl, wrote after playing for Middlesex in 1980: "County cricket is an incredible learning platform. The variety of the cricket, the opposition, the wickets etc have created a boundless opportunity for gaining a wealth of cricketing experience which must be unequalled."

The review group should bear that in mind as they ask why England have not won a five-match Test series since 1986-87. The conclusion might be that a separate group of centrally employed England players, supporting the measures already in train to streamline the production of future professional cricketers, would do more to stop the rot than any further radical alterations to the county system.

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