Over-exposed players need to develop (18 July 1999)

18 July 1999

Over-exposed players need to develop

Michael Atherton

This has been a difficult year for the nation's 400 professional cricketers: a prolonged football season, the World Cup, Wimbledon, The Open and a new football season looming has meant our exposure has been minimal and has left us feeling unwanted and ignored. It has reduced county cricket to the peeping Tom of British sport, lurking in the shadows, unseen and desperate to get a look in.

Nor are things likely to improve. From next year the cricket calendar will be dominated by international cricket, with the national team scheduled to play seven Tests and 10 one-day internationals. Moreover, the cream of England's crop may be contracted to the board and could appear for their counties infrequently. The position of county cricket within our game is undergoing fundamental change and now is probably the best time to ask what we really want from our domestic game.

It would be wonderful to say that county cricket is a great product that attracts spectators in their droves and that regardless of the fortunes of the national team it would continue to prosper. Unfortunately, that is not the case and in this post-Thatcherite world of supply, demand and self-sufficiency, county cricket could be seen as an anachronism.

Without money generated from international cricket, it would not be financially viable, attracting as it does too few sponsors and too few spectators. Its survival is inextricably linked to the national team and therefore its modus operandi has to be to prepare players for international cricket by achieving, in the words of the Raising the Standard document, "the highest possible playing standards".

At the moment it is clearly not doing so. In Test cricket, matches are largely won by pace and quality spin. In county cricket, 85 per cent of bowlers are medium-pacers, unlikely ever to affect the result of a Test match. The system is producing lots of good cricketers but not many truly outstanding ones, the type of which turn a good side into world beaters.

Next year, with the introduction of a 25-over league, we could have four one-day competitions suffocating the first-class game. We prepared our team this year for the first Test by giving them no cricket at all or a week of Super Cup cricket. And usually after a Test match you are dispatched to celebrate, or to mull over, by playing a knock-out one-day match for your county the next day.

Test cricket is intense and demands mental toughness. Too much county cricket is soft and demands not intensity but staying power. And this is in no way a criticism of the players themselves: there is as much talent in England as anywhere else in the world, except possibly Asia, because of sheer numbers. Yet the talent is spread thinly so that the standard of matches is as poor as anywhere in the world except New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

A simple solution would be to find a competition that bridged the gap between Test and county cricket. The merits of regional cricket has been argued here before. Simpler still would be to reduce the number of first-class teams. But the reintroduction of the old Benson and Hedges next year speaks volumes for who is actually running the game (the counties and not the ECB) and so it is obvious to assume that neither option is realistic.

County cricket could find its niche by becoming an indispensable link between the professional and non-professional game. At the moment there is a feeling that there is no link and that the only way to play at the highest level is to become a professional. And that once you turn full-time you immediately lose the connection with your old club.

Central contracts and increasing international cricket could pave the way for a move to semi-professional county cricket. Clearly there is a need for county cricket and clubs would still employ a number, but fewer, full-time professionals. They could employ a number of semi-professionals who, as well as playing, would either have a normal job or be allocated to one of the premier league teams to coach and run club cricket, thus improving the link between the county club and the best league teams in the area. And from these elite clubs would be the chance for the most promising to play first-class cricket as an amateur, a chance that at the moment does not exist.

Professionalism has not necessarily been a totally good thing for English cricket. It could be argued that with livelihoods at stake it has produced a low-risk, safety-first mentality while changing people's perception of the game from enjoyment to a job.

Every year county cricketers are faced with changing legislation: a new format, a different competition and a strange-looking fixture list. In essence, the changes are cosmetic and the product is constant. But it is difficult to see how with changes in the near future the game can sustain 400 professionals. In the knowledge that the counties will never vote to reduce the number of teams, a move to semi-professionalism could be the way forward: good for us and the game.

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