English Cricket Demise

[jim boy]

Given the performance of the Poms, the folllowing article from The Observer seemed to me to be quite interesting.

Will England ever win the Ashes again?

English cricket is not only in decline, it is in danger of becoming anonymous, says Jon Henderson

Sunday November 17, 2002
The Observer

Oh for the anonymity of old. Nasser Hussain and his team must wish that the debacle in Brisbane last weekend had received the same sort of attention as the first Test match ever played, a contest between Australia and England in Melbourne 125 years ago. None at all.
In fact, that match in March 1877, which Australia won by 45 runs, wasn't even recognised as a Test straightaway and the following year's Wisden merely listed the names of James Lillywhite's touring party with the note: 'This team played 23 matches; won 11; lost 4; and 8 were drawn.' Underneath there was an item about an Australian team coming to England later that year with Wisden wishing them 'a pleasant passage... lots of good cricket and close matches when they are here, and a safe return home.'

Compare and contrast with the reaction to last Sunday's capitulation, the Poms derided in the Australian press and castigated here. And yet, chastened though they must have been by it, England were spared the really biting criticism they must have feared, particularly from the Aussies, who tend to be as good at invective as they are at cricket. There was one notable exception, a list of 12 ways to help the Poms - allow them 10 Australian fielders when they bowl, that kind of thing - otherwise it was all a bit tired.

'English resistance was a candle whose flame was too easily extinguished,' said the Melbourne paper The Age , which was hardly coruscating. 'Even by the lowly standards of England's humiliating Ashes history, yesterday's capitulation was remarkable,' observed The Australian , which was even less so.

And when Australian journalists lose the appetite for phrase-making roasted on the spit of deeply felt animosity towards the Mother Country, the game may be up. The Ashes are losing their traditional status as a focal point for Anglo-Australian antipathy, which is just one indication of the possibly unbridgeable gap that has now opened up between the teams.

England may have been the birthplace of cricket, but it is Australians who have now reared the game to a point of excellence that is putting them beyond our reach. This forging ahead has taken place in the past decade, which is the same period that cricket in this country finally surrendered equal billing with football as our two national games. Football, once our winter sport, is now our autumn-winter-spring sport, plus a little bit of summer, too, for which our climate - so inimical to cricket, unlike conditions in Australia - must share some of the blame. One of the effects has been to bring through our second winter sport, rugby, so that it is on at least a par with cricket. As many people now are likely to know the name of England's rugby-union captain as they are who leads the cricket team, which would never have been the case 20 years ago.

Another effect has been to make youngsters choose between football and cricket, which is a bit like making them choose between the guitar and the violin.

Not so long ago, playing professional football and cricket was a perfectly feasible option. Not any more given football's colonisation of so much of the year. Since World War Two, five professional footballers who collected FA Cup winners' medals also played first-class cricket, including 1966 World Cup hero Geoff Hurst. All right, Hurst, a wicketkeeper, played only one match for Essex against Lancashire in 1962, but imagine Michael Owen having the time or being given permission to appear in a county championship match. Another of the five, Denis Compton, a forward with Arsenal, might not have made any thrilling contributions to England's cricketing cause, had he been obliged to forsake either football or cricket. The last of the five to do the double was the West Ham goalkeeper Jim Standen, who appeared in the 1964 FA Cup final and played cricket for Worcestershire. No one has done it in the intervening 38 years or is likely to do it again.

It has been suggested that, had Ian Botham been making a choice now, the man who turned out on the odd occasion for S****horpe United would have chosen the far more lucrative world of football. When he did make the decision to play cricket in the early 1970s, football's lure was perfectly resistible. It seems reasonable to assume that a number of young men who have selected the football option in the past two decades would have made outstanding first-class cricketers. Gary Lineker and Phil Neville to name but two.

Perhaps a more crucial factor in the decline of professional cricket in this country is the extent to which it is played in schools and the facilities that exist there. No doubt this will have them harrumphing at Lord's and protesting that the stats show the game is in a perfectly healthy state at grass-roots level. Grass roots, though, are part of the problem. How many well-tended playing fields are there compared to 20 or 30 years ago? How much of the cricket that takes place in schools is in fact so-called kwik cricket that is played on a hard surface with a soft ball and is supervised by a teacher with only a rudimentary knowledge of cricketing technique? Its usefulness as a conduit to proper cricket is, at best, dubious. And how many of those who statistics show are playing cricket in schools are girls (which is all very laudable but is unlikely to bolster our Ashes prospects)?

Private schools which a tiny percentage of our children are educated, are the only place where good facilities for young cricketers are guaranteed any more. One of these schools, Radley College in Oxfordshire, has produced three players who are on the books of Middlesex, who have just gained promotion to the first division of the county championship. Good for Radley, but shouldn't Middlesex be brimming with talented players from London state schools?

It is all very different from Australia where the country's modern cities have abundant facilities both at schools and clubs, and the long summer months and hard grounds create the perfect environment for cricket. In England, cricket is still a wonderful recreational sport to be played in high summer, but it is no longer a young Englishman's fantasy that one day he will play in a Test match at Lord's. It's hardly hip to have an Andy Caddick poster adorning your bedroom wall.

Will we ever win the Ashes again? I'm starting to doubt it - and I'm not ruling out the possibility that the England team may yet rediscover the anonymity once enjoyed by James Lillywhite's nineteenth-century tourists.

source: http://www.observer.co.uk/sport/story/0,6903,841660,00.html

 

[fabulousphil]

Some fair points, but cricket still has the same problems here with far more talented footballers/cricketers turning to football as in this era of professionalism you can only choose one.

IMHO ....... and not really knowing the English system/only on hearsay and conversations is that cricket is really only a private school sport in England and really the English are only interested in soccer. ( probably because they manage to win a couple of soccer games. )

 

[DaveW]

It has been suggested that, had Ian Botham been making a choice now, the man who turned out on the odd occasion for S****horpe United would have chosen the far more lucrative world of football. When he did make the decision to play cricket in the early 1970s, football's lure was perfectly resistible. It seems reasonable to assume that a number of young men who have selected the football option in the past two decades would have made outstanding first-class cricketers. Gary Lineker and Phil Neville to name but two.

Well that would explain why the search for the next Ian Botham has been largely futile.

 

[London Dave]

Originally posted by fabulousphil
Some fair points, but cricket still has the same problems here with far more talented footballers/cricketers turning to football as in this era of professionalism you can only choose one.

IMHO ....... and not really knowing the English system/only on hearsay and conversations is that cricket is really only a private school sport in England and really the English are only interested in soccer. ( probably because they manage to win a couple of soccer games. )

I'd have to agree that football is number one here by a long long way....though when the cricket team is winning/doing OK, their profile is a bit higher...but having access to the game here is harder...there are cricket nets and clubs in pretty much every park in Oz, number of public cricket nets in my London borough? ZERO! Football is easier to play, is over in 2 hrs etc etc... will England win the Ashes again???...of course, and it still may even be this series!!!!

 

[Dipper]

In regards to Phil Neville.

He remains the youngest player to score a century for Lancashire 2nd II, the then coach described him as the best young batsmen he'd ever seen with the exception of David Boon.

He chooses football where as a journeyman fullback for Man U he probably earns about £30k per week, if he'd fullfilled his potentail at cricket & become a good Test match player he would maybe pull in £200k a year tops.

My understanding is that top footie players in Australia wouldn't earn that much more than their cricket equivalents.


LD is right about facilities as well, there's bugger all over here.

The weather doesn't help for playing, learning or watching cricket.We're after all the only major cricket playing country in the world that has a generally cool climate.

 

[knuckles]

Well I wrote about it first here along the same lines:
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=51922&pagenumber=1

But was poo-pooed by a bunsen burner. England will not win the Ashes as long as Australia is fair dinkum. Maybe a Kim calamity might be Engs hope.....no, no hope.