The Googly Huw Turbervill @huwzat
JAMES CHANCE/GETTY IMAGESABOVE
The crowd at the
Hurricane Relief
T20 at Lord’s
suggests a new
audience is thereLooking to the future,
preserving the past
What do newspapers and cricket have in
common? Quite a lot, now you ask.
When it came to professional cricket,
until the arrival of one-day matches in the
1960s, there had only been the longer-
form game. Limited-overs then became
popular, it multiplied at an alarming rate,
and ate into the fi rst-class schedule. T20’s
advent in 2003 impacted on the multi-day
game to an even greater extent...
And newspapers? Digital is the equivalent
of one-day cricket. People increasingly read
via electronic devices, and – alas – people
are seemingly less inclined these days to
buy print publications.
There are exceptions to the rule.
Where newspapers like The Times and
Daily Mail have invested in print, the
haemorrhaging has slowed. Magazines
like Private Eye, The Spectator and The
Cricketer have increased expenditure on
print and added readers. In these cases it
has been proved... print is far from dead.
Other media proprietors have treated
the internet rather like the goose that laid
the golden egg, though. They believed
digital was the future, so they neglected
print, only to become frustrated when
vast profi ts have failed to materialise...
then realising the damage they have
done to their original publications.
It strikes me it is a similar story with cricket.
Administrators and broadcasters thinkThese fans appear to have scant
a liation for county cricket: 39 per cent
support an IPL team, but only eight per
cent back a T20 Blast side, according
to ECB stats.
But what about the half-a-million who
do not want these new teams, formats
and tournaments? They want to see
batsmen build innings, and bowlers
deliver long, probing spells. Amid the
splendid surroundings of Hove, Taunton,
Tunbridge Wells and so on...
That is why a divorce could be a
possibility: the ECB’s independent board,
to look at the bigger picture, pursuing
new formats. And a more traditional,
county-focused group, to preserve what
cricket already has. To maintain the
‘heritage’ competitions.
Perhaps counties will simply not be
able to bite the hand that feeds them.
A typical county will certainly struggle
without the £2m or so they receive from
the ECB. They would need to seriously
ramp up commercial activity, and
probably streamline their playing sta ,
overheads and so on.
Maybe Wasim Khan’s ECB working
group will avert a parting of the ways...
But they have a huge task on their
hands, because there is considerable
unrest in the air.
P.S... That fi gure of half-a-million is
interesting. According to the 2018 Wisden
Cricketers’ Almanack, 494,172 people
attended the Championship (i.e seven
home games) last summer.
Here are the individual fi gures:
Middlesex 52,737 (boosted by MCC
members); Yorkshire 46,394; Somerset
41,664, Surrey 40,901, Notts 37,333; Essex
36,018; Worcestershire 30,797; Lancashire
29,250; Sussex 28,888; Kent 26,092;
Durham 23,179; Gloucestershire 21,224;
Hampshire 20,035; Warwickshire 17,956;
Northants 14,009; Glamorgan 12,020;
Leicestershire 9,090; Derbyshire 8,585.
Some counties – Worcestershire, for
instance – are higher than I expected,
and some have worryingly low fi gures...
And adding Somerset and
Gloucestershire together for a total of
62,888 calls into question if The 100 was
right to disregard the West Country...the longer form of the game
is dying. They see T20 – or its
variants, including the new
100-ball – as the future.
So we have more short-form
games, and fewer fi rst-class.
Yet not everyone is happy.
About half a million people
attend County Championship
matches (not to mention those
who avidly follow the scores
and read about it). They do not
want a diet of T20 only. They
were mi ed when the number
of fi rst-class matches was
reduced from 16 to 14. They are
horrifi ed at the thought of further incisions.
Half a million is a fairly signifi cant
number. We are told they are old and
dying out (rather insultingly), yet
people are living longer than ever before.
Retirements can last for decades.
These people need things to do. They
have considerable disposable income
(compared to the young, who must
wait years and years to buy a house, for
instance).
These are the same people who used to
buy newspapers. But then stopped buying
them when they realised all the content
was being put up on websites the night
before.
The newspaper I used to work for
had an idea about this. They created
dedicated teams for print and digital.
And I wonder if we may be going in a
similar direction with cricket.
The ECB want to capture a new audience,
one that is disinclined to attend county
games, so we are told. The centerpiece of
this is the new 100-ball tournament, with
eight generic teams (so as not to o end
anyone on a geographical basis!).
Fine. There is an untapped audience
out there. I attended the West Indies v
ICC World XI T20 at Lord’s for Hurricane
Relief and there was a sizeable crowd,
and most of them seemed to be
non-white.
According to the ECB document
‘Engaging South Asian Communities with
Cricket’, South Asians make up 4.9 per cent
of the population, but represent about a
third of the ECB’s recreational playing base.thecricketer.com | GOOGLY | CRICKET LIFE