D Trelford: Gooch Bandwagon Needs Brakes (12 Nov 1996)

12 November 1996

Gooch bandwagon needs brakes

Donald Trelford on Tuesday

A BANDWAGON seems to be rolling for Graham Gooch to be made chairman of the England cricket selectors. The origins of this campaign are mysterious, since the selection panel to select the chairman of selectors is not even in place.

Yet the moustachioed one has already "let it be known to friends" that he would be willing to retire from the game in order to take up this challenge. He should be told, for two reasons, to get back to the winter nets.

The first is that the world of cricket is not ready to see this great batsman hang up his pads. The second is that memories are too short to forgive his selectorial failings while he was England captain.

Those of us who fought for the restoration of David Gower and Jack Russell will go on fighting, if needed, against the kind of tracksuit, fitness first, never-mind-the-flair school of cricket management advocated by Gooch and Micky Stewart.

In addition to that, those lugubrious features are hardly likely to light up an England dressing room or inspire a press conference, and I doubt Michael Atherton would welcome such close attention from a man with whom he recently opened the innings.

Gooch has also, I gather, had some involvement in a sports agency which represents cricketers, which would put him in an invidious position if he had any kind of financial stake (past, present or future) in one of his own selections.

The Gower campaigners, led by the estimable Dennis Oliver, may have lost the postal vote among armchair MCC members, who slavishly follow the committee`s advice, but we won the argument on the night and, I believe, among cricket lovers as a whole.

Furthermore, without the pressure of the Gower campaign, the Griffiths committee would never have been set up, and without the Griffiths report the game`s new governing body, the England Cricket Council, in which so much hope is now invested, would not have been created.

It would be folly to undo all this good work by appointing Gooch as selection supremo and plunging the game back into the dark ages.

The situation has become so absurd that the Prime Minister`s public pronouncements about school sport, in which I am sure he is genuine, are being systematically undermined by one of his own departments

JOHN MAJOR had cause recently to take firm issue in public with his Education Secretary, Gillian Shephard, on the subject of caning in schools.

It is time he took the lady to task about something else: the sale of school playing fields. The situation has become so absurd that the Prime Minister`s public pronouncements about school sport, in which I am sure he is genuine, are being systematically undermined by one of his own departments.

Everyone concerned about this issue knows that the root cause of the problem is the Department of Education`s circular 909 of 1981, which has positively encouraged the sale of 5,000 school playing fields. As an even greater incentive, grantmaintained schools are now allowed to keep 100 per cent, as opposed to 50 per cent, of the money.

Without the repeal of this circular nothing can be done to save the situation, no matter how many fine words are uttered from Downing Street. The DES, aware of their unpopularity, reviewed the policy this summer and invited interested bodies to comment.

Despite receiving many powerful arguments against, including the united condemnation of the world of sport, the DES quietly decided to carry on with their policy, even though it directly contradicts the aims of the Prime Minister, who has said he wants playing fields kept and he wants them used.

The man in the middle, Iain Sproat, the hapless Minister of Sport, is due to receive a delegation next week from the National Playing Fields Association. This may shortly be followed by one from the Central Council of Physical Recreation, whose new 10-point policy on playing fields supports the NPFA.

The NPFA, the CCPR and the Sports Council hammered out an admirable joint policy on playing fields in 1991, but the reconstituted Sports Council have since jumped ship.

The CCPR are calling for an accurate register of playing fields. The existing register, on which the Sports Council spent =A3600,000 of public money, has been shown to be only 83 per cent accurate in an audit by the Ordnance Survey.

Meanwhile, the CCPR propose that the provision of playing fields be assessed according to the NPFA`s six-acres rule, requiring all local areas to provide six acres of space for every 1,000 of the population. Where an area is providing less, all applications to sell should be refused.

They also point out that the need for sports fields is growing, with an expected increase in the school population after several years of decline and greater demands for playing time from the National Curriculum introduced in 1995. The number of five to 15-year-olds, having fallen sharply over the 15 years, is projected to grow from 6.4 million in 1991 to 7.5 million over the next decade.

I was about to suggest that Mr Major should call in his Education Secretary for a caning, but he doesn`t believe in it.

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