Have you, like me, noticed that something many of us know and love is missing from our summer – a summer of unblemished weather, when there is as much chance of Gianni Infantino taking a vow of poverty as there is of rain stopping play? I refer to red-ball cricket, that staple of high summers since the mid-Victorian age, but now regarded as so unspeakably boring and irrelevant that it must play second fiddle to the ludicrous Hundred.
The World Cup is finished and the rugby is done, as are Ascot, Wimbledon, Henley and the Open. Goodwood is about to end, and the Commonwealth Games are dying a lingering death. It should be the perfect moment not just for a Test series to engage the public with the magnificent game of serious cricket but also, as in the summers of not long ago, to take championship cricket around festival grounds all over England, and present the real game once more to the public.
Instead, late July and much of August are surrendered to the most extreme form of Mickey Mouse cricket – a term I use reluctantly out of respect for Mickey Mouse – played by manufactured teams to whom no one except their financial backers has any shred of loyalty, and which demand the most radical interpretation of what most understand by the term “cricket”. Once again, the people who run the English game have shown their contempt for the cricketing public but also, I fear, their stupidity.
The hope was that this franchise would pack in the crowds wherever it was played; but they are evaporating as the novelty wears off and as the fatuousness of this so-called game becomes more apparent. Initial fixtures at the main venues attracted a total crowd of 89,413, compared with 109,517 in the equivalent matches last year. Those individuals and businesses who invested in the stunt must be somewhat rattled: but not for that reason alone.
The bright idea behind the Hundred franchise was that it would be sold around the world at a substantial profit for its owners. But where are these queues of those wanting a slice of this particular action? When it comes to cricket for those with minimal attention spans – and there is such a market – Twenty20 dominates. It is truly international and has taken root: and even though the English authorities have done their bit to wreck the game here by squeezing T20 and the Hundred into one fixture list, others either have no need or are not so stupid as to try.
For how much longer, too, will television be interested in this pitiful spectacle, and want to pay handsomely to screen it? One day, before too long, those who decided to give such priority in the fixture list to this nonsense will have to be held accountable: not least by those who were stupid enough to pump money into it, but also by a public that has been betrayed.
This has had a desperate effect on red-ball cricket, with 59 days at the height of the season passing without a single minute of it. On the third day of the next Test match, against Pakistan, football’s Premier League starts, casting this greatest of sports to the margins again. It will also be the second day of the next round of County Championship matches, which, in pushing them to the end of the season, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) seems to believe are largely irrelevant. Nor does it seem capable of learning from its mistakes. Next summer’s Ashes, supposedly the most important cricketing event of all, will be over and done with by August 2, again to give Mickey Mouse a decent run in the school holidays.
Here is a paradox: when it suits them, the ECB and its apologists (prominent among whom, I deeply regret, are the leadership of Marylebone Cricket Club, so-called guardians of the spirit of the game) laud the wonders of Test cricket. However, the very skills required for Tests, in England at least, are strangled by the superfluity of white-ball cricket played by Test cricketers. The dismal performance of the England team in Australia and against New Zealand, culminating in the removal of Brendon McCullum, provides evidence enough of this, for those with the intelligence to perceive it. The obsession with one-day cricket is killing the skills needed for Tests.
I feel sorry for McCullum. People in the ECB above his pay grade have taken the decisions that are destroying red-ball cricket, and have long outstayed their welcome. For years, County Championship cricket has not been marketed, so its attendances have dwindled. The best players usually do not appear, which also drives people away. The next three weeks should be full of serious, intelligent cricket helping develop the best Test players and entertaining the public. But it is not, and the idiocy will be repeated next season. No wonder counties are finding it harder to attract and retain members.
In my school holidays 50 years ago there were always championship matches to watch, which hooked boys (and some girls) of my generation on to the serious game. Now, the younger generation has no chance to be exposed to it. This is a loss for them and for the red-ball game. But unless the problem is recognised and treated, it will kill our ailing Test cricket.