The passing of Sir Garfield Sobers prompted a memory of seeing him in a Sunday League game at Dean Park:  1971, BA Richards b GS Sobers 69.  A decade that started the best of times for overseas players, maybe the best of decades for county cricket, when those at the very top of the game played all formats, all summer, and in an era of dominant West Indians, some of their players most, if not all of those seasons.  In the  first World Cup of 1975, 10 of their victorious side were current players at their counties. 9 of the 37 overseas players that summer  were among the first to be inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame.

2026? In the early part of the season Michael Atherton wrote a piece in The Times ‘Golden age of overseas stars is long gone – are they  still worth the hassle?, pointing to Hampshire’s three attempts at signing a second overseas player, the general problems in attracting players. To which might be added  past criticism of  county cricket’s openness to Australians not helping any with regaining the Ashes, Steve Smith’s high profile time at Sussex in 2023 one instance.

There were 327 players involved In the first eight rounds of the Championship this year, 65 of them not eligible for England. Of those born in Australia, Jake Weatherald  opened  in the Test side last winter,  Nathan McSweeney, Beau Webster and fitness permitting Jhye Richardson  are possibles for the 2027 Ashes.  A help to Australia if the ifs?  The question more the extent of it.

The counterweight, most of the Australians  play Sheffield Shield cricket, where their batting averages tend to be noticeably lower, bowling averages higher;  in line with the idea that the standard is higher than in the Championship, but also that they have more to their game, help give their counties a lift.

Spin Bowling? Simon Harmer, 25 wickets in the April-June months but England’s difficulties with this self-inflicted, scheduling, not the numbers from overseas.  In the era when the West Indians were dominant  comments of a generally similar nature to these were made then, and could also be made now about the South Africans.  Maybe  feelings in relation to Australia are just different.

The numbers of players from an ethnic minority   in  county cricket has  almost doubled in the last five years, predominantly  from a South Asian heritage, their numbers  are  now something like proportionate to the  general UK population. The rise  mainly younger players starting out, most prominently playing  in the ODC.

Players  born early in the school year, into a family with a relative who was/is a FC cricketer and then given all the advantages of a fee-paying school disproportionate among them?

In 2025 not particularly with the birth months(s), but a noticeable number with a brother or father who is or was a first class player. Aryaman Varma at Northants was the first  for a decade if not longer to have been educated at Eton College and with Jafer Chohan,   Harrow and a former player for SACA, makes for a count of  two of the three across the game to have been at one or the other. Despite the referencing at times made to it, county cricket is not ‘Eton-Harrow posh’.

But given the total numbers of  independently educated, 239 in 2025, there are high career-entry costs to a cricket career. Applying a ten-year rule of thumb that those starting out  reflect the  sport about a  decade before, the decline in the state educated since 2015 ought not surprise to anyone who remembers 2005. It has though  been a steep decline and neither is  it obviously at an end.

Players from an ethnic minority probably mean there will be some who were state educated among the under-25s in 2030, but the white majority having declined in number from 88 to 36  in the last decade maybe heading into single figures. Bearing in mind that they relate to around 75% of the general population they are very under-represented talents.

Data from Cricket Archive.

John Arlott wrote that the purpose of watching cricket is to take pleasure from it; everything else just detail. In the 2000s  Hampshire cricket moved to the  Rose Bowl, and with the like-minded Burgess Hill contingent from Dean Park times, days at the cricket often became days at Hove. Given memory of a cloudless day there in the 70s it was not a difficult decision.

Patrick Ferriday and James Mettyear’s book Field of Dreams has 24 personal accounts of how much the ground has  meant to folks: theatre director Michael Simpkins leading the Harry Baldwin Occassionals, a team now coming up for its 40th anniversary, Paul Weaver when an aspiring journalist acting as John Arlott’s telephonist, which sounds like a great job to have had. As elsewhere a place for boundary chats about stuff and nonsense: how joining the EEC in 1973 had brought with it warmer continental weather. For many a childhood happy place and the emotions return visits bring; for the most part accounts of those born in the decades after WWII.

Those doing the playing? In 1872 the first game was a game for  Victorian  Gentlemen, 11 of them as mentioned in FoD supported by two players; old Harrovians and the great-nephew of Jane Austen at play. In the world of 2025, in what Eliza Filby calls  an Inheritocracy, county cricket is  reliant on  the Bank of Mum and Dad. In short a playing history  that has gone from the moneyed classes to the moneyed classes.

The  general rise in the numbers of privately educated  cricketers  ten years or so after FTA  ending  is also apparent in Sussex teams, albeit moderated by the arrival of Danny Lamb and Jack Simpson, two players now in their 30s.  While it’s not obvious there is strategic shift from buildings to people coming, a glance at the chart and it is obvious it would be better if there were.

Do county cricketers have too many playing days? Who knows, as to the simpler  question of how much they do play:  take those who play the most…the red-ballers.. add their  number of Blast and ODC/100 games and the average in the 2024 season for English players was just under 40 days if you take away those  lost to rain, early finishes, just over if you don’t. As stats go though the 40 figure is not especially informative, about one player in four was within +/- 10 days of it.

More than 60 days in a six month season too much, one day off, one for preparation, one playing and beyond that not good?  Maybe, those doing more are not surprisingly predominantly batters, batters who bowl and all-rounders: 63 players in total, the specialist bowlers coming in at 9,10 and 11 countable on the figures of one hand. A problem then with batters feeling the mental strain? Players mental health important obviously, but if that is an or even the main  issue it sits oddly with the argument for playing less to up the  intensity.

But not to underestimate the demands on bowlers, an average of just over 50 days among those that took 20(+) wickets in 2024, those playing less than the overall average countable on one hand and two digits.  When it comes to the physical strains the lot of bowlers certainly gets mentioned at times, but also fair to add that among the  20(+)’s  takers  that a quarter of them were from overseas.

Reason not to exhale against reductions in the County Championship? Playing days are noticeably more than in Australia, but so are the days  played by England’s Test cricketers, and as an explanation for poor showings in Tests  it comes with a rather large maybe, maybe many other things  as well.  Fourth-days in the  CC: watched by folks who watch, good finishes good for playing intensity, the WTC final was a timely show for why 14 of those.

The number of county cricketers from an ethnic minority has risen sharply in recent seasons, predominantly players with a South Asian heritage. Samit Patel, whose career started in 2002,  now the game’s 2nd senior pro, Chris Jordan and Keith Barker among the players who started before 2010, though the increase above is mainly from younger players starting out rather than careers lengthening.

Ethnic minorities previously under-represented but  now no more? Going back the 1991 census gives around 10% aged 0-4   from a Black or South Asian background, a figure close to the numbers playing county cricket in 2015, although allowing for  migration  some way under that for the wider population then. In the 2021 census the 18-24’s from an ethnic minority were around 20%, county cricketers under the age of 25 last summer 29/162, 18%.

What  differences in the %s are reasonable is hard to know, with of the order of  350-400,000  (male) births in a year it’s not obvious that in every occupation the numbers  should be close.  Around  30-40 openings each year in county cricket: the numbers of recreational players  reason  for thinking the ethnic minorities might be  or should be a higher %; pushing the numbers the other way the sizeable  differences between ethnic groups going to University and the alternative career prospects that follow.

Most players in the county game  are either related to someone who played first-class cricket,  or have been educated at a fee-paying school. It’s in the family blood, or the bank accounts. This is also true of those that come froman ethnic minority,  those that have started in recent years included. A trend to lead to  increasing  numbers of state-educated, ‘working-class’ boys in the game? Going by the numbers here not by much, if at all.