Comment: MacLaurin blueprint must be given a fair trial (11 August 1997)

Monday 11 August 1997

Comment: MacLaurin blueprint must be given a fair trial

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

IGNORE both the comments on the Test match and the brightest gems from Raising The Standard. The real quote of the week comes from Peter Stafford, of the Bolton League, speaking his mind in the League Cricket Review: "My allegiance lies with league, county and country in that order. I`d rather Lancashire win the County Championship than England win the Ashes."

A better, or more honest, expression of genuine parochialism it would be hard to find. Yet if the Midland Bank Notting- hamshire Village Cricket League, founded 25 years ago with seven teams but now boasting 95 villages in eight divisions, can publish their main objective as "to encourage member clubs to achieve standards of excellence", so can every more exalted league in the land.

Will more famous cricket clubs take their lead from the likes of Toton Sycamore, Wymeswold and Standon-by-Dale?

Herein lies the real challenge for the ECB now. It was predictable that public reaction to the blueprint would concentrate on the professional game and equally certain that the compromises proposed would satisfy almost no one.

There is no perfect structure; as Lord MacLaurin expresses it, no quick fix. As he also says, people will ultimately make the difference: the players, coaches, administrators and managers. There are only two seasons to iron out details of the divisional "County Board" tournament, in which firstclass and minor counties will compete under Australian grade cricket rules; only one year for premier leagues to be established in each county; and no time to be wasted if the success of Kwik Cricket in primary schools is to be repeated in the secondary schools with a more sophisticated but equally simple and attractive `development game`.

That, inevitably, will be `soft` cricket, probably played with a soft ball. The first priority is to keep the youngsters playing and they will not do so in schools with motheaten playing fields and no proper facilities. The talented ones will want to take on the challenge of the hard ball, however, and the premier leagues will offer a path to the top.

What is more, the cricket will be a better preparation for the one or two who, on average, will make it to county cricket from the elite clubs of the area.

Two-day `grade` cricket will offer no easy runs against defensive one-day fields; and bowlers will be required to get batsmen out. Games may often be dull to watch. Points systems vary in Australia, where it is the staple diet, but the majority remain single innings games.

For example: Team A make 320 for seven on the first day in their 100 overs. They can bat on if they want to, but if they do they will lose any points they might otherwise gain for scoring more runs in the first innings. Team B therefore bat on the second day. If they are bowled out for 280 by tea- time, play continues after, somewhat academically, and Team A get the points.

If they are out for 120, Team A can make them bat again and, if they bowl them out a second time, get a bonus of a third of the first innings points.

Almost the last important document circulated in the old TCCB was the report of a committee chaired by Mike Vockins, the Worcestershire secretary, into the second XI champi- onship. In place of the current second XI player`s average week - a three-day game, two one-day games, a match for the club on Saturday and a stint in the nets on the seventh day -it recommended a "sensible programme of cricket and training" ensuring that enthusiasm is maintained and that the young player comes to each match "fresh, fit and hungry".

Vockins is satisfied that the grade-style cricket planned for second, or County Board, teams in future will serve the purpose, and he is optimistic that somehow Worcester- shire will get a premier league going although here, as in most counties, the confusion of leagues makes it difficult. Kidderminster and Stourbridge, for example, play in the Birmingham League; Bromsgrove and Evesham in the Midland Club Championship.

Such problems pale beside those faced by Dave Edmund- son, chairman of Lancashire`s Cricket Board, who thought he had 12 clubs from three of the strongest leagues all ready for a premier league at the start of this season.

Even the prospect of a -L100,000 sponsorship from Thwaites brewery could not, finally, persuade the clubs to leave their traditional leagues.

Edmundson thinks that the central command for premier leagues will help it get off the ground at the next attempt.

There is already an ECB-employed regional development officer based in Lancashire, David Leighton; two more employed by the county club, Peter Ackerley and Rudra Singh; and they have applied to the Cricket Foundation for funding for another. But there is much more to do, here and everywhere.

It is easy to pick holes, of course, in the proposals for county cricket. They would not have been my choice. Regional teams playing their own five-match tournament, with players picked from six groups of three local counties, was the best solution for refining the best talent.

That idea foundered on the belief that there would be no affiliation to regional sides, but county members would have gone to support their own representatives in the region in much the same numbers as they watch championship games now.

The three conference format will allow a county to win, say, five games in their 12 group matches, but to finish fourth in their conference of six and subsequently lose the playoff to a county which might also have come fourth by winning only two games.

That is inequitable. It is surely essential, too, that the NatWest remains a 60-over competition, if only for variety, and it is all too plain that the 25-match national one-day league will hinder rather than help the England team.

But intelligent men have considered all the constraints, most of them concerning the needs of the national side, and the new plan must be given a fair trial.

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