A trawl through Cricket Archive five years ago gave a count of 126 county players qualified for England who had been  educated privately, about 40% of the total. Last summer this number had risen to  well over 50%; no great surprise given the general background, and if well over 50% was well over 60 five years from now that wouldn’t be a great surprise either.

Is there a ceiling to this and is it less than, say, 90%? The ages of those playing last summer is shown in the graphic, the 46 year-old Darren Stevens at one end,  Hamza Shaikh at the other, who at the age of 16 played in four ODC matches for Warwickshire. He is the first county cricketer born the year after the ending of the game FTA.

Overall a lot of cricket is played by those who will have  come to the sport in the early 2000s,  the dependence on public schools for players now largely set by a declining playing base years ago. Cue then the criticisms of the ECB as being about concentration at the top, exclusiveness. Pragmatically, as long as Eastbourne College and Millfield School among others are producing enough talented players days at the Test will still be around, but the fact remains a lot of playing potential will have been missed.

CricketersEducation

Do county cricketers play too much? Jos Buttler played for Lancashire in one  game last summer, Steven Croft played in them all; a count of 41 with the county’s progress in white-ball cricket, 83 scheduled days. Across the the game well over 500  players appeared for the 18 counties at some point and an idea of the amount they played is shown in the graphic.

Statistically, the  median (half playing less, half more) was 23 days, more than 260 played less including those involved in a relatively small number of Championship games, newcomers in the One-Day Cup and some playing in most of The Blast; overall, disproportionately white-ball cricketers.

Those playing more the other way of course and for what it’s worth the mean average was 30, averaging as it does across red and white ball players, those who are both. But  most of the names on the game’s team sheets play on a lot more days than this: the 100 who played the most had schedules of 56 days+, among whose number was  Alastair Cook who played in 14 County Championship fixtures.

Too much?  The numbers north of 60 days are largely a reflection of the number of  players who play in most Championship games, nearly a 100 played in 12 or more in 2022. Yet there is a justification for this, given what funds the sport is not primarily The 100 (a little over 10% of the £) or even The Blast (counties about 25% all in)  but ‘England’, ECB tv deals, which, still, is largely about Test cricket in a country that plays it more than others.

Playing  data sourced from Cricket Archive.

The Church of England, the Conservative party and county cricket: personally only one of them has been of more than just passing relevance, but if the workings of god and power have been centralised, why would play be different?

Certainly the numbers of county members since 2005 show more downs than ups: a particularly large one at Old Trafford but also at Canterbury, Hove and Worcester, the traditional heartlands of the county game. As for the smaller ones in the East Midlands, member numbers last year had fallen below  1,000 at Derby and Leicester.

But this pattern is not true everywhere:  some have been steadier, even the other way, and Surrey, the biggest, is a big exception. The chair, Richard Thompson evidently  appreciates the existence of a membership body, elections to the club’s general committee are contested. Taken together with the  MCC and Middlesex, members  of cricket clubs  in London now number 40,000, if not more. Nationally though the total  for the 15 county clubs (Durham, Hants and Northants are organised differently)  fell to 65,000 or so before Covid.

No great surprise there given a problematic fixture schedule.  So wither,  sooner or later adieu to many, if not  all, of the 18, the future is franchises?  The 100 teams to be sure are in large part managed by  county CEOs ‘centralising’, all that is needed then is enough of the 18 chairs to follow ? Maybe, but not necessarily, and after the shift from Giles Clarke (Somerset) to the years of Colin Graves (Yorkshire) as ECB chair, the direction may change again.

Watching county cricket next summer seems a long way off, just as well after Azeem Rafiq’s evidence to MPs this week about the Yorkshire dressing room.  Poor stuff, disappointing for those of us who had hoped cricket, of all sports, had players who were essentially above and beyond it.

But not to ignore the fact that Adil Rashid has made the England team, nor the positive comments reported from Ajmal Shahzad about his experiences at the club. Or to deny that Yorkshire’s management tried to prejudge the outcome of their investigations, making it harder for outsiders to appreciate the extent of the problem.

So the case for the defence of Yorkshire, the institution, such as it might be has gone unheard. It was  pointed out that something like 30% of recreational cricketers  have a south Asian heritage, the  pros at Yorkshire, in county cricket generally, much less, under 5%.

Yet fair to add that a career as a pro can be a precarious one: giving it a go, taking time out from studies and/or other careers a risk, a sacrifice if  things don’t work out and to state the obvious the better the alternatives the less appealing it be.

FWIW personal experience of mainly BAME students over the years  in London also pursuing (semi-)pro sporting careers divided largely along ethnic lines: 5th/6th/7th tier footballers, mainly black and mixed ethnicity, 2nd/3rd tier rugby players, smaller numbers, white. Potential cricketers  going for county trials…more actual Olympians in boats.

So time outs to give a football career a go; a big magnet, some general understanding of those who want to leave no regrets. Cricket, niche, more reluctance; which points to the numbers of cricket pros from an Asian background squeezed by problems in the game and also by the openings in the  world beyond.

Gordon Greenidge at the United Services Ground, Portsmouth, after making a brilliant Sunday League hundred back in the 1970s; memory fades, but he may well have been the only black man at Burnaby Road that afternoon.  When Hampshire played games in  Southampton then they had  a (one) black supporter, regarded as a socially important person by some, thanks largely to the chair of CAMRA  at the time who dispensed communism during afternoons at cricket.

The era of WI dominance that ran until the mid-90s is largely remembered now by World Cup Finals and brutal Test encounters; Fire in Babylon, WI cricketers doing wins a help to WI folks in England. But not to neglect the impact on domestic cricket and on the attitudes of those who follow(ed) it.

County Appearances of the 1975, 2019  World Cup Winners

Data sourced from Cricket Archive.

Seven of the 1975 WIs played for what were then non-TMG counties, at a point in the history of cricket when List A games were reviving it  WIs were doing a lot of the reviving. Exciting cricketers, liked by crowds at matches that were played at many local outgrounds, those at Portsmouth above for instance, saw a game between Hants and Yorks and  also a  pre-run of sorts to the 1979 WC Final.

The relaxing of the rules on overseas players  gave more WI  experience of English conditions, a lot of it by today’s standards, even allowing for the fact that the England players’ numbers are from  careers-in-progress.  At a time when first-class cricket in the Caribbean, the Shell Shield, involved a total of 10 matches a season, the experience a help in establishing their dominance in Tests against England, if not elsewhere; so an exchange of sorts at work as well. Much the same point could be made about limited-overs cricket: the Gillette Cup in the WI started in 1975/6.

WSC, rebel tours altered the financial incentives but it is very striking how loyal the 1975 team were to their  counties.  Most of the  players who went on to play for the WI in the years between 76-95 also played county cricket,  including all of the quartets of fast bowlers, of whom no-one with a  longer span than Courtney Walsh and no-one with more appearances than Malcolm Marshall.

In 1975 black people in the eyeline of this one spectator were some of the game’s greats, in 2019, at the Oval, they were gate staff.  The game has the support it does in England because of WI cricket past, no question, so what then to make of the sentiment that something is missing now?  In Cricket:The Game of Life  Scyld Berry comments that  ‘We should not wonder at West Indian cricket becoming so moderate, but at it once having been so magnificent’.

It’s  an understandable point view to take, particularly given its setting in an historical context. As to the involvement of black folks in cricket in England now, playing football was a comment heard more than once last year; it is, after all, where the money and the glory is, the game a lingua franca.  But it leaves an awkward question for cricket, as to whether its relative decline among those with a Caribbean heritage is, socially, a problem, or just a sign of progress?