No 100, Aug 12 - The Grumbler's County Cricket Newsletter
🟤 #MetroBankFever is catching 🟢 Worcs' 10-year high in one-day ticket sales 🔵 Derby's Disability Liaison Officer 🟣 Desperate measures to save men's you-know-what 🔴 💯 editions of this newsletter
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This is my 100th newsletter, so forgive this bat-raising introduction.
As the blurb at the bottom of every edition states, it only exists because, incredibly, no one else is publishing one.
The comments I get and coffees I am bought tell me that people appreciate it. Meanwhile, the criticism suggests the message does get out beyond the like-minded.
It is a long job every week and I have come close to jacking it in on a couple of occasions but, truly, this is a labour of love.
And given the spite and bile that characterises this particular time of the season when the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named is played, we need a little of that.
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Player moves & Metro Bank One-Day Cup
Signings: Van Beek (Worcestershire - Metro Bank & 2 Champ), Wagner (Somerset - 3 Champ), Brookes (Warwickshire to Worcestershire)
County cricket: how can we inject some jeopardy to the One-Day Cup? (The Guardian)
Leics make record 411-6 to beat Lancashire in cup (BBC Sport)
So £10 tickets (£1 for junior) have led to Worcestershire's best attendance in the competition in a decade. How revolutionary?
Junior Journo: Conor's Match Report (Kent CCC)
Smashing idea from Kent.
We need Gen Z on county commentaries too. At least get a team covering a game every round. Too many crusty old men and public school boys. The former do appeal to crusty old men such as myself but that is not the point.
The fallout from the abandoned game at Scarborough continues
Dutch treat for cricket – Netherlands under consideration to enter T20 Blast (Telegraph)
Now then…
News, Views and Interviews
The Men's [Tournament-that-shall-not-be-named] will be saved by the Women's (Telegraph)
So, we are now looking for reasons to save it, are we? Using the happy accidents that emanated from the original plan. Not the plan itself.
What happened to the ECB’s strategy? The men’s you-know-what was the central plank. So now, to use the needless business BS that tends to cloak the simplicity of their thought, we need to ‘pivot’.
Or, just maybe, you were simply wrong?
We do need to know because that big, glossy Inspiring Generations plan was trumpeted from the hills. You wanted more people saying ‘cricket is a game for me’ and were prepared to bully your plan through, ruining relationships and eating into those previously healthy reserves to do so.
Play the above. Here’s what really Inspires Generations in sport - connection, most often family. Which is why the current agism in the debate over the future of English cricket is so damaging
Certainly, the women's game has benefited from you-know-what. But even then, it was not the only route and significant sections of their game was lost too.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the expansion of franchise cricket eventually kills the county game. Replacing it with a sport played in fewer places with a much greater emphasis on money and the elite end fueled by private equity.
This would be a heist similar to the one we have seen in football in the last 30 years, with the people’s game stolen and now controlled by rich, self-interested individuals or nation-states.
I covered top-level women's football 15 years ago when no-one cared. The recent explosion in the sport has been based on little but a change in the desire to put it in the public eye. Largely speaking, all the conditions were there when I was interviewing Alex Scott after Arsenal games. At that point, she had a second job washing the men’s team kit. The significant driver has been the promotion and availability of matches, closely followed by re-organisation at national level. It has grown so quickly because it had been held back for years.
This was sped up by the BBC jumping on board. Maybe because it was the right thing to do but maybe because they were increasingly priced out of the men's game and it suited their needs. Still, sports execs have finally cottoned on to the fact that women and girls like sport as much as men, and even more so if there are female role models to follow. (That said, pay disputes are starting to bite and UK television only offered eight percent of the money they spent on the men’s World Cup to screen the women’s version.)
According to an independent report, you-know-what lost at least £9m in its first two seasons while the ECB somehow calculated it as a £10m profit. The men's version will have to lose much, much more in player salaries to have any chance of catching up to the big guns in T20, let alone new pretenders such as Major League Cricket.
Remember, according to George Dobell: “The [tournament-that-shall-not-be named]'s first two seasons [cost] about £110m. By comparison, the ECB has spent £137.5m on international cricket since 2018”.
And that vast sum is STILL NOT ENOUGH to make the men’s version a success.
Sustaining these ever-increasing (and increasingly pointless) losses in the men’s game for the women's version the thrive when a free-to-air county T20 would still fulfil most of the positives without costing the game more cash would seem to be the answer. Long-term resilence and reuniting the game must be the call given that all the players of both sexes will emanate from the county system. It is not as if the powers that be have not messed around with women’s cricket enough in the last few years. Now it has proof of audience and there is clear evidence that they have been grossly underpaid in comparison to the attraction they create.
England won the Women’s Cricket World Cup (50 over and T20) well before the men and I am sure a repeat would propel the female game much further forward these days. Remember, another part of the ECB’s super-dooper-sparkling-mega-strategy was that they would reap licensing fees from the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named. That is why they got all those costly consultants in. This has failed too so why not just forget it.
They were wrong but, just like Fonzie, they just can’t say it.
(Of course, as usual, those who should apologise have left, or are leaving, having banked a huge bonus. So maybe just forget the sorry and give some of your cash to the 60 ECB staff made redundant a few months before you banked that cheque. Actions speak louder than words anyway.)
Re-building the women’s game towards World Cup success by organising best-in-class domestic competitions in the same formats would make sense. Then leverage that attention and money back into these events to create a virtuous circle. (If not, you might end up like the men, a few weeks away from defending your world title but playing a different format.)
I hope this is not construed as being dismissive of the women’s game. If there is a business and strategic case for keeping you-know-what as a stand-alone event then let’s all discuss the future in precisely the way we did not before. Traditionally, there has been less money and history in the women’s county game. Therefore, there are fewer roadblocks.
However picking the bright sparks from the dying embers of that huge stack of cash you have burnt, let alone all the bridges, is no sort of strategy.
An afternoon watching Kent proved to me The Hundred is no more than manufactured rubbish (Telegraph)
So "rich history and tradition" ARE valuable assets when faced by a moneybags league taking all the players and attention, are they?
Of course, they are. With the exception of the likes of Ronaldo and Messi, we come to support teams, not players.
I interviewed David Tossell for my Cricket Paper column and turned the full interview into an edition of my podcast.
The great [you-know-what] debate: Simon Wilde v George Dobell (Cricketer)
Interesting discussion.
As George Dobell says: “We could have found a new audience using existing T20 competitions without alienating our existing audiences. TV audiences were down last year and it's not made money. Let's move on.”
The most interesting part. These two well-informed, experienced cricket journalists do not know how much you-know-what has cost. They will have asked, researched and yet there is no clarity.
Remember, this is the governing body of a major national sport, not a private business.
Who has a vested interest in keeping this figure so opaque and why?
Especially when other figures, always positive and sometimes dubiously calculated, are heavily PR’d.
India cricket board makes $1.5bn surplus in five years (Dawn.Com)
Even the figures made by the famously secretive BCCI come out eventually.
Obituary: Lancashire County Cricket Club's Edward Slinger (Lancashire Telegraph)
Lily Smith on her role with Derbyshire and beyond (Derbyshire CCC)
“Plans are underway to install new toilets at the ground, including additional disabled toilets, while dedicated accessible viewing bays will be a new addition for the 2023 season, ensuring supporters with accessibility needs have an unobstructed view of the outfield.”
Lily is one of my Masters’ students.
The Wurzels to play show at Somerset County Cricket Club (Somerset County Gazette)
This, as they say, is entirely ‘on brand’.
Call It A Loan (Rain Stopped Play, inspection at 3)
Blue Star investee launches e-sports cricket competition (AIM:BLU)
Thinking Outside The Box: Cricket And Autism (Wisden Almanack)
And finally…
Here’s SleepBaseball, audio of a fake game that helps you go to sleep. You know where I am going with this. But then, it will just fuel the critics.
It seems that, these days cricket is a game that can only exist when turned up to 11.
The story of this newsletter
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Just discovered you - this is great. And well done Worcestershire!
Interesting juxtaposition of your two main points here. The TTSNBN has been ‘vital for the women’s game’ but all women’s sport has taken off big-time in a roughly similar time-frame to the existence of the TTSNBN. Is it possible that...no, surely not?
The Kia Super was already thriving at a level above anything seen before. The co-branding has helped, sure, but surely we’d not still be where we were if they’d just put some money in and televised double-headers together? It’s a marginal gain, not a revolution.