The performance of the England team this winter has again led some to suggest that the talent pool for the professional game is in general too reliant on players from overseas and on those who were educated at fee-paying schools. It is not too difficult to point to particular occasions when this might be thought so, the Hampshire team below at the Oval last summer, for example, according to the details on Cricket Archive consisted entirely of players who were one or the other.
Yet the home team in that match, with its base in the global city, put out a side with 10 England qualified players, from a mix of state and independent schools, together with the South African, Conor Mckerr. As might be expected the backgrounds of the playing squads do vary a fair bit from county to county and numbers on all the counties are in a file on the stats page above.
What the totals show is that in 2018 76% of the more than 440 players are England-qualified, of whom in turn some 37% were privately educated in this country. There is therefore still a sizeable number who were at a state school, although many who were have also come from a family of cricket players.
The educational backgrounds of the players now do of course reflect the state of the game in schools a decade and more ago. When Chance to Shine was established in 2005 a commonly quoted stat was that the game had declined over the decades to the point where it was played in perhaps 10% of state schools; to which could be added the simple observation that participation had also declined, but less quickly maybe, in independent schools as well. Whether this decline was bottoming out then or still had, or still has, further to go is central to the likely future direction of the numbers here, but getting anything like a clear picture on this really requires figures over several years.
For what it is worth the % numbers of England qualified players is slightly up this year on last. There are however the not especially comforting stats that 20% of the game’s English players now were educated in just 1% of the schools in the independent sector, and that while the ECB has operated a policy of financially rewarding the counties with age-related payments for those who are England- qualified, in 2018 proportionately greater numbers of those under the age of 26 are the products of independent schools.
To this there is a something like common sense observation that the relative numbers playing the game in state and fee-paying schools, while important, are secondary to the total numbers playing. The ECB’s efforts to promote the game in schools and at the grassroots certainly deserve to be a high priority, although whether the same can be said for a city-based t20 league as the way to produce a generational shift in interest is another question again.
In the game’s past, before the county structure became established, W.G. Grace played for a United South of England Eleven, in effect a team of travelling salesmen for the game that took it to many places around the country and across the Irish Sea, showing the best of it to people who had not seen it before. A United North of England and All-England teams led by others did something similar for varying periods at much the same time historically. A hundred years later, when interest in the long form of the game was dwindling in the decades after WWII, the counties took a shortened (t40) version, played by teams that included the world’s best players, to the round number of 100 cricket grounds on Sunday afternoons.
In 2020, the ECB seemingly expect a new audience to do the travelling to a competition to be played at just 8 grounds. What the 2018 stats on the backgrounds of professional players show is the small numbers who have been educated in Cardiff, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton; one indicator of the interest levels in the game in those cities in the relatively recent past. If, as must be quite likely, it is correlated with the potential number of new spectators coming along after them, then a message for the prospects for 2020 t20 getting much traction and being a success.
Data summary county by county on the Stats page, extracted from Cricket Archive.
it (http://cricketingview.blogspot.co.uk). The subject of over rates was again prominent this week in English cricket with the Championship standings for 2017 finally settled; Middlesex’s appeal against a penalty of two points for slow rates, in the game when an arrow landed on the Oval, rejected.
This time round it appears that the ECB have dealt with a problem by sitting on it. It would be a very good thing for spectators if the safety-related issues raised that day were not sat on, the need for ground authorities to communicate and co-ordinate operationally in particular. A comment on the blogger’s experience that afternoon is here
In 2017 many Championship fixtures were drawn, so credit to the players who continued to work hard, even when the games were going nowhere and spectators in attendance were sparse.
The T20 Blast drew crowds of 20,000 plus to the Home of Cricket on more than one occasion and when Middlesex took a game to Old Deer Park, a record number turned up there as well. It would be fair to add there were some obvious limits to the interest of a cosmopolitan crowd in the capital on a night out, large numbers were not turned away from ODP (gate 4,000 that evening) and a very noticeably smaller number attended Surrey’s quarter-final against Warwickshire, the Friday evening before a bank holiday. 14,000 tickets were pre-sold said the Sky commentator rather anxiously as the cameras panned 
the empty seats. As for the wisdom of two t20 domestic competitions from 2020, this seemed a bit bonkers at the beginning of the season and still seemed that way at the end of it.
A first for the blogger was an afternoon watching a WCSL fixture, Surrey Stars versus Western Storm, £5 a bargain. Plenty of free hitting and a highly competitive match. In the afterglow of winning the World Cup the 
women’s game looks like it could grow and grow; spectators who were new to the game of cricket came as did those who have been before, touches of colour appeared in parts where, so far, in the men’s game it hasn’t.
Not good was the day when a nut with a bow let go of an arrow. It landed on the Oval, the players took cover and the pigeons moved over. It could be said that all is well that ends well although, security wise, some things can always go better and hopefully they will, if one day they be needed.
It having been a good week for red ball cricket, to the Oval to see the final afternoon of the London derby. A Middlesex rear guard action and a game heading for a draw after tea, when the 
players suddenly and unexpectedly left the field. No announcement was forthcoming although after a few moments some sort of security alert seemed very probable.
From a distance of about two feet the arrow certainly looked like it would have done a serious damage to someone had it struck them; luckily as well as happily this day it didn’t.
