Wheatcroft G: Eng cricket analyzed (26Apr94)

Yes, but is it cricket? (By Geoffrey Wheatcroft)

They say that the night is always darkest before the dawn. I have never been quite sure whether this is an accurate meteorological observation, but the saying might have consoled Michael Atherton and his party after their epic humiliation in Port of Spain and what was in some ways an even more humiliating defeat in Grenada. Dawn indeed seemed to break with a historic victory in Bridgetown. It was historic not only because it was the first Test the West Indians had lost there for a very long time, but also because it was only the third Test England had won anywhere in their past 23 played, against Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Australia and the West Indies. Now that the season here has begun, can we look forward to a true revival of English cricket? Or is it another false dawn? And as a supplementary question - with the first matches of the county championship beginning on Thursday, does county cricket still have a future? Any renewed optimism about England's prospects this summer against New Zealand and South Africa is dispelled by the latest Wisden, with its grim reminder of how we performed last summer against Australia: one Test out of six won against four lost, two by more than an innings. To paraphrase Admiral Beatty, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody cricketers today. Even "our" or "English" beg a question. It is a symptom of the problem that the England team has often recently looked like an army of mercenaries. I think (this doesn't appear in Wisden's "cricketing records") that the extreme case was the Lord's Test of the summer before last, when the England XI included three middle-order batsmen born in southern Africa, and three fast bowlers born in the West Indies. In the latest tour it was the bowlers, home-born or otherwise, who looked the weaker element, provoking old-soldierly snorts of derision about slackness on parade and lack of moral fibre. But I'm not sure that the batting problem may not be deeper. In The Daily Telegraph last June, Christopher Martin-Jenkins quoted the West Indian Carl Hooper: "I think England's batsmen are lacking a little bit of self-confidence at the moment" (this masterly understatement is reproduced in "CMJ's" entertaining new anthology, The Spirit of Cricket). They do indeed lack it, notwithstanding some fine performances in the last few weeks. And it is no use blaming the traditional county championship, or the decline of school cricket, regrettable as that may be. In Antigua there is little organised school cricket, and there is only an exiguous first-class programme throughout the West Indies. And yet this island of 75,000 inhabitants now produces half the West Indian side. Another culprit advanced for England's problems was the old three-day championship, now done away with. The real reason why a four-day season is popular among professional cricketers is that it eases the pressure of playing seven days a week (including the ludicrous though lucrative pyjama game on Sundays, which is itself much more to blame for the technical and spiritual shortcomings of our players). But this reason was never avowed. Instead, it was claimed that longer matches would give our cricketers the chance to learn the art of building an innings. That missing self-confidence of which Hooper spoke would be restored. This claim has scarcely been justified. And the four-day experiment has been largely falsified in its own terms by the way so many matches fail to last the full four. To take one club at random, only nine out of Derbyshire's 17 county matches last summer lasted into the fourth day. If the object is to get results, then the logical answer must be uncovered pitches, which the cricketing establishment continues pig-headedly to oppose. This opposition seems to be connected to the deep seated distrust and dislike of spin - instance Keith Fletcher's refusal to play two spinners in Tests when all common sense tells him to. This in turn is part of the great gap which has opened up between those who rule cricket and those who watch it. It is a divide which (one might suggest to that well known recent MCC member Mr John Major) echoes that between the Government and the rank and file of Tory supporters. MOST county members wanted Gower and Salisbury to go to India last winter. Most did not want four-day matches. Most are aware that one of the delights of the county game has been blighted, the variety of places it was played. That was especially true of the larger counties. Now Yorkshire no longer play at Hull, and Somerset, to my extreme vexation, played seven out of nine home four-day matches at Taunton last summer, with just one each at Bath and Weston-super-Mare. Until a few years ago, Bath had two and Weston three, not to mention matches sometimes at Yeovil, Wells, Frome, even Downside. To write this is to risk accusations of those-were-the-days sentimental regret. The funny thing is that, in the case of cricket, the sentimental traditionalists have logic on their side. For years past, the cricketing authorities, and the players themselves, have tried to make the game something which it simply isn't, a fully professional, full time, big-money game. Everything done in the last 30 years or more, beginning with the abolition of the amateur, has been based on this false premise. That abolition itself assumed that the county game could support a roster of nearly 300 paid players (their numbers increased by the entirely preposterous addition of Durham to the championship). The absurdity of this assumption must be obvious to anyone who has ever watched a county match in the comparative privacy of Lord's on a Saturday, let alone Taunton on a Thursday. And nothing is sadder than the attempts of cricketers to emulate other high-rolling sportsmen. Robin Smith was rebuked last week by Fletcher for devoting too much of his attention to his commercial interests and too little to his cricket. What was so poignant was the figures quoted. With sponsorships and whatnot, Smith hopes to make all of @80,000 a year, a figure which must bring tears of mirth to the cheeks of those sporting multi-millionaires Nick Faldo and Nigel Mansell. The truth is that there is no money in cricket, particularly county cricket. Long may the championship survive, but if it does it will be in some attenuated form, "semi-pro" perhaps. There is no full time professional programme in the West Indies - or South Africa. And much as I should like to see England beat this summer's tourists, I shan't be betting my life's savings on it.

(Thanks : The Daily Telegraph)