M Parkinson: Need for change has been apparent for some time (13 Jul 1998)

13 July 1998

Need for change has been apparent for some time.

By Michael Parkinson

MAKING the draw for the next round of the NatWest Trophy, David Graveney was asked to sum up the last Test. With a straight face, he told the interviewer he thought the South Africans would be disappointed and felt like they had lost. At this point, Lord MacLaurin, who was alongside, stared hard into his velvet bag, checking, no doubt, that he had enough balls to compete with what he had just heard.

The chairman of selectors is a bigger spinner of fairy-tales than he was of a cricket ball. He was talking about a Test match in which 22 batsmen of England were required to reach a total made by five South Africans. Also the South Africans took 19 wickets, four times more than England managed.

In other words, England were completely, totally and embarrassingly outplayed by a team lacking their outstanding all-rounder Shaun Pollock and featuring a batting order in which the first six were generally supposed to be inferior to their English counterparts. If that is the case, our troubles have only just begun. Imagine what might happen in Australia, where they have the best top six in the world.

Graveney's response was typical of the rearguard action being fought by the England and Wales Cricket Board and those commentators who remain unconvinced there is anything wrong with the game.

It is as if the rest of us are imagining the public apathy, the reluctance of sponsors, the whimsical ways of our cricketers, the evidence of our own eyes. Lord MacLaurin is going to meet with the county chairman in the autumn. Oh, that's all right then.

Already, one chief executive has said that radical change such as two divisions, relegation and promotion, would not provide us straightaway with a successful Test team. True enough. But it will provide a more attractive County Championship and give welcome indication the game is not being run by men with the imagination of a tent peg.

Anything would be better than the present. A change, any change, would create some interest where at present there is little rather than none. There are 500 cricketers employed by the present system, of whom only 40 or so will ever be likely to play Test cricket, and the counties employing them are subsidised by an audience who rarely, if ever, see them play, and don't much care in any event. The players have shown themselves unafraid of change. Sadly, their masters know better. Or think they do.

We are told no matter what system we come up with, it won't produce the kind of cricketers to win Test matches, namely wrist spinners and fast bowlers. The reason, it is argued, is that history is against us. That's bunkum.

Pakistan didn't produce fast bowlers until the West Indians changed the game. Then they did. South Africa didn't produce wrist spinners, until they had to. England simply lack the sense, ambition and, most importantly, the system to provide the cricketers required for success in the modern game.

Both Tim Lamb and Lord MacLaurin have promoted the good work being done at the game's grass roots. Admirable, no doubt, but it is not what people want to hear. They want to know why the Test team are so unsuccessful, why Old Trafford was empty and what the ECB are going to do about it.

If the Hon Tim and the noble Lord went to the theatre and saw a dreadful play, would they be mollified if the director popped up after the final curtain and told the audience that in spite of the rubbish they had just witnessed, he wanted them to be reassured there were many fine young actors at RADA?

Of course they wouldn't. They would tell him to hop it and get the play sorted out. They might ask for their money back or, heaven forfend, boo the production. And they would be right to do so.

Similarly, the crowd jeering the England team at the end of the first innings were quite justified. They had been let down, not to say short-changed, by a display falling well short of what is expected of professional and international cricketers. The trouble with English cricket is that the whole debate has been too milky, too 'after you, Claude, no after you, Cecil'. Anyone suggesting radical change or voicing strong opinion is a crackpot - described by one writer as "contemptible".

In my opinion, what is lamentable and foolish about the present situation is that it has been brought about by many years of neglect. In other words, the need for change has been apparent for some time. It is 11 years since England had a decent Test team but we've had a second-rate system for much longer than that.

While other traditional sports like football, rugby and golf and new ones such as basketball and ice hockey, have been vigorous, imaginative and unafraid of adapting for modern audiences, cricket is stuck in the same rut, still being pulled by Old Dobbin. Well, they say, how can a carthorse go any faster? It doesn't occur to them to buy a four-wheel drive. Look, they say, at the mess rugby is in. But better the turmoil of change than the paralysis of complacency.

Why is cricket so suspicious of change? What is it frightened of? It has something to do with the view from Lord's and the way that cricket has always been run from headquarters as an outcrop of a private club. It's not the place for outsiders or mavericks. It is a freemasonry with its private rituals and exclusive rewards. Let me give you an example. For next year's World Cup final at Lord's, 8,500 tickets out of 30,000 will be given to MCC. Why? By what right do members of a private club for misogynists claim a quarter of the tickets for an event designed to promote the game worldwide? What sort of message does it send out to the new audience the game must attract to survive?

Terry Blake, the director of the tournament, said he wants it to be a carnival and "to take the game to the people". In that case, why not give the tickets to the people and not to members of a club who would run a mile at the thought of anyone having fun at a cricket match and who, generally speaking, are to carnivals what Yehudi Menuhin is to heavy metal.

There are people within the ECB and the counties who see the need for urgent and bold action. But they do nothing. They seem restrained at being thought 'contemptible', bound by the conventions of an old-boy network. It is not surprising. In the final analysis, they are all - flat-earthers and free-thinkers, reactionaries and radicals - paid-up members of the same club.

WHY are FIFA so concerned about penalty shoot-outs? I look forward to them, praying that the golden goal won't happen so we can skip to the anguish. Instead of replacing penalty shoot-outs, I would make them compulsory at every level of the game.

Why stop there? Now that football is seen as a metaphor for life, why not introduce the penalty shoot-out into the legal system? Libel cases are ideal. Think of the tickets to be sold at a shoot-out involving Linford Christie and John McVicar.

Imagine what might have happened had Jeffrey Archer hit the bar with Monica Coghlan in goal. Would the world have been a better place had it never heard of Carter-Ruck?

Divorce is another area of dispute where the penalty shoot-out would be a cheaper and more effective way of settling things. Instead of unseemly wrangling, why not settle matters from 12 yards at the local football club?

Pele says the penalty shoot-out is unfair. What does he who only football knows know of the real world? He misses the point. If it is true that a penalty shoot-out is a lottery, then so is life. To paraphrase John Donne: Never send to know for whom the whistle blows. It blows for thee. Football has an important part to play in the way we live our lives in the future. I can see a time when Graham Kelly will be mentioned in the same breath as other great philosophers like Friedrich Engels, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sepp Blatter and Fred Karno.

Editor's note: any correspondence should be addressed to Mr Parkinson at The Barnsley Rest Home for Distressed Sport Columnists where he was admitted last week suffering from what was diagnosed as 'acute World Cup phobia'.

Mr Parkinson broke down in Tesco's after being served by a man he thought was Jimmy Hill. He also believes he is married to Des Lynam.

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