Category Archives: England

Cricket and Privilege

Is red-ball cricket fairly thought of as a game for the privileged classes?  Lord’s prices for Test matches are certainly one pointer. As to  the players, on the county circuit 105 out of (14*11=) 154 at the Oval last summer had been to an independent school, add in those from overseas with similar educations and the 2022  county champions may have been the most privileged in the competition’s history.

Cricket Archive data.

Whether Surrey were also champions because of it is moot; the numbers for Sussex and Worcester were  not so different, the numbers for the ‘smaller East Midlands counties’ not so many. The average of English-qualified players across the game was around 55%, although fair to add this was slightly above that for the  England teams in the 15 Tests in 2022 (52%).

But the head count of players that have been to an independent school, whether on a bursary or fee-paying, has risen markedly in recent seasons; of those that weren’t around in 2018 but were in 2022  the figure is close to 60%. While it  fits in to what might  have been expected given the ECB’s priority of £s over FTA after 2005, it’s also a legacy that probably has a distance to run over the next decade.  An increasing concentration from a small number of independent schools seems likely, getting on for a quarter of English players came through 20 of them last year.

In ‘democratic’ white-ball cricket this reliance on places attended by 6-7% of those of school age was quite similar, the numbers a bit higher if anything; as broadly it was with the pattern of domestic and England players’ backgrounds. Cricket Archive has not so very much on those in the Women’s 100, although it would be no big surprise if it was in line with the men; for what it’s worth the counts last year were 6/13.

There is an obvious follow-on question here about the backgrounds of recreational players. As to the answer to the long-term decline in  the game’s playing base being private equity at the top, cue higher ticket prices; football has  travelled a distance up-market from where it was in 1992, but with cricket, starting from here, why follow?

Cricket and Privilege

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

England’s Cricketers in 2022

2022  started with Australia finishing off an Ashes whitewash, but some high performances since by England  in a year of much cricket: 15 Tests, 12 ODIs and 28 T20 fixtures; a schedule with 115 playing days, Ben Stokes  playing  on more days than anyone.

It’s a tricky period for the high performance thinking in the Strauss Review and the idea that less will lead to better: in 2022 the number of playing days, the different formats on  England’s (nine-month) schedule were pretty much pro rata with the domestic season. 48 players overall, a few too many to put on one graphic, but still an idea below about who did what, and the split between  red and white-ball players: most  mainly, if not wholly, one or the other.

Scheduled days, source Cricket Archive.

All good then or simply too much? The non-crowd at ODI batch number CA20ECB12  was one pointer  this year. But there are 45 Test matches coming up over the next four years and  county members putting their hands up for a 14-game  Championship have quite reasonably been giving those in charge a fair reminder.

EnglandCricketers2022

Too Many Counties?

When this subject comes round it  doesn’t  often start with whether there are too many Test match grounds, obvious enough question that it is. Did anybody ever think nine was the right number? Maybe they did, or at least were in favour of competition to upgrade facilities, although of  the  150+ home Test matches since 2000, England have played just 15 of them at Cardiff, Chester-le-Street and Southampton.

This is a very different pattern to the expansion of Test cricket that took place after WWII  when as more Tests were played, more were played at Edgbaston, Trent Bridge and Headingley. In the years 1970-99 England played 150+ Tests and all six grounds staged more than of 20 of them,  albeit that as five Test summers became six more often in the 80s and 90s, Lord’s staged two matches.

One ground then usually missed out and  with Lord’s and the Oval something of a given, it left three from four. In the 21st century with the three newcomers and seven Test summers, a problem; too many and not only in hindsight.

The  consequences of this financially were wholly unsurprisingly sizeable losses at some of the TMG counties, followed by debt write-offs (a great big ‘profit’ for Glamorgan in 2015)  and other financial restorations. Taken together on this horizon the smaller counties  have essentially broken even, although whether they are more sustainable now with The 100  is moot.

So too many smaller (non-TMG) counties ? Or the opposite and that  they are not  ‘county enough’,  too much like smaller versions of the Test match counties when they should be staging  more festivals in more places.  As cricket finds out whether there is enough interest to sustain both The 100 and The Blast, a big expense, it doesn’t need the  bonkerdom of shrinking the cricket map as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

England’s Ashes Cricketers

Cricket Australia

The Gabba, Pat Cummins about to start his 3rd Test in 2021, Joe Root his 13th, leading an  England team that were, in the words of Gideon Haigh, over managed and under prepared. It seemed like a reasonable explanation of things when I read it.

Numbers on the cricket played by those appearing for  both sides in  2021 are here. Despite white ball priority since 2015 England  have continued to play more Test cricket, 96 matches 2015-21 to 73 by both Australia and by India; the Ashes coming at the end of calendar year in which Australia last played a Test v India in January.

So  is Test cricket now being played to the point that its followers in England are not switching on, greed at the ECB turning in on itself? Maybe so, the possibility of simply too much a  blind spot for those in media centres with a liking for world travel, and for  those who complain 18 is too many counties?

In the year of a T20 World Cup both sides had similar amounts of  short-form cricket in their players. The Australians played rather more in their domestic 50 over competition in 2021, the Marsh One Day Cup, which  might have helped them to  an extent, but players meeting  commitments to the IPL, were Warner, Smith, Cummins, Hazlewood and Richardson on one side and Malan, Buttler, Stokes Bairstow and Woakes the other.  Something similar  could be said in relation to the other T20 leagues around the world.

A match-up then between the Sheffield Shield and the County Championship, with the later guilty as charged? One look at what the players do  points as much as anything to the fundamental of the playing talent: the generational effects of taking  cricket behind a TV paywall and the prominence of London 2012,  and a line of ‘South Africans with Scottish grannies’ that had given England’s batting backbone, and brilliance, over the decades drying up. A  message from Ashes 2021 to English cricket not to understate its diversity problems.