cricket, lovely cricket?

After the humiliating Ashes series in Australia, the ECB has just released the cricket fixtures for the coming season. Unsurprisingly, once again, the four-day County Championship games (the closest format to Test cricket) have been largely relegated to the beginning and end of the season – although the ECB is at pains to tell us that this isn’t QUITE as bad as last year. The details obviously very from team to team but, essentially, it will provide six matches in April+May, four games in June+July; and four games in August+September. Once again, the bish-bosh white ball cricket (in the form of the Vitality Blast and Royal London Cup) take pride of place in the height of the English summer – with The Hundred tournament following on from July onwards.
Following events in Australia, people have been reaffirming their belief that Test cricket is the finest form of the game and urging the powers-that-be to make changes to ensure the County Championship is given a much higher priority. Unlike the ‘old days’, the coming season will feature England Test matches against New Zealand… and India… oh, and South Africa – with fixtures being played June-September!
So, if the County Championship is the ‘feeder nursery’ servicing the England Test team with fresh, young talented players, you really do wonder how this will happen.
You really couldn’t make it up.
These days, many of the current England Test players have central contracts from the ECB (20 annual contracts covering both red and white ball cricket). This effectively takes away England’s Test players from the County Championship (eg. I think Joe Root played just the two games for Yorkshire last season). So, today’s County cricketers are getting virtually no experience of playing against/with Test cricketers… until perhaps (if they’re very ‘lucky’ and England have to seek players from outside the contracted individuals) when they’re ‘called up’ into the Test team (probably at very short notice)!
The four-day County Championship format is the closest to emulating five-day Test cricket. It’s the ONLY ‘training’ format that provides aspiring Test cricketers with the opportunity of ‘building an innings’ or ‘develop bowling techniques and tactics’ or even captaincy. I was brought up watching games played between counties and the international touring sides and these all featured the very best players the English counties could provide – watching cricket that featured ‘proper stars’ of the game. These days, county championship teams are reduced to fielding ‘non-stars’ (featuring players either at the beginning or the end of their careers).
But, as things stand, these county cricketers also have to ‘perform’ in the white-ball, bish-bosh games to justify their place at their county clubs.
You really couldn’t make it up.
As you’re probably aware (from my various cricket blogposts over the years), I am a great lover of County Cricket – I enjoy its rhythm and pace, the traditional field settings (not like the limited overs games with fielders frequently relegated to the boundary rope), the tactics and the skills. Yes, I’m definitely an old codger, but I genuinely fear for the future of the game unless drastic changes are made over the next two or three seasons. I absolutely accept that the limited overs cricket matches provide the counties with a significant proportion of their finances (other than the sums provided by the ECB from Test Match incomes) but I do believe that the game needs to be fundamentally changed to cater for two DIFFERENT formats of cricket in which counties each have TWO teams – one exclusively for red-ball matches and the other for the white-ball game. I also feel that the number of Test Matches needs to be reduced, so that England Test players (for example) are able to perform in far more County Championship games (and also allow more international cricketers to be able spend time learning the game in its traditional format).
Yes, I’m just a boring, old cricket-lover and, yes, the Australia, India and New Zealand Test cricket sides don’t seem to be suffering in the same way as their English counterparts… but SOMETHING has to be done (and quickly!).
But, hey, what do I know?!