No 134, Aug 22 - The Grumbler's County Cricket Newsletter
🟢 The County Championship is back 🔵 All the previews 🔴 Franchise sales begin 🟣 Charging for county streams 🟤 Signings for Surrey, Kent, Glamorgan, Worcs, Sussex 🟠 Leics call for member support
The Championship is back.
We have six solid weeks of red-ball cricket to enjoy until the end of September.
However, on the flipside, there is so much for county fans to worry about right now. I outline some of the issues below. It makes for sorry reading.
It feels like the start of this saga’s third act which, in the traditional narrative arc, means ‘a resolution of the story and its subplots’.
‘Resolution’ might be a stretch. The ECB lack the power to achieve that and, given that they are selling control of the key revenue drivers in English cricket, maybe they realise the impotence they have created for themselves.
However, I feel the subplot of cutting adrift the second-tier counties will be concluded.
The idea that all-powerful overseas investors will care about a set of loss-making teams because it helps English cricket is a fairy tale.
So make sure you savour the conclusion of this season with 18 first-class (and still just about relevant) counties while you still can.
For the have-nots, the future of the county game does not bear thinking about.
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PS. I hate Twitter but it is a necessary evil and I post regularly. But I am experimenting with these alternatives in the hope they replace it.
Threads | BlueSky | Reddit |TikTok
Then there is Last-Wicket Stand Book on Facebook | Instagram
PPS I have set up a County Cricket Chat space on Reddit - r/CountyCricketChat
PPPS If you want to get involved in any groups to change this situation. Then there is the County Cricket Members Group and, of course, the Cricket Supporters Association.
County Championship - previews
Click on a different team name for a different preview
Division One
Durham vs Nottinghamshire
Hampshire vs Essex
Surrey vs Lancashire
Warwickshire vs Somerset
Worcestershire vs Kent
Division Two
Derbyshire vs Glamorgan
Gloucestershire vs Leicestershire
Middlesex vs Northamptonshire
Yorkshire vs Sussex
County Championship is back: The return of red-ball cricket | BBC Sport
Jonny Bairstow: Dropped England wicketkeeper-batter to play for Yorkshire against Sussex | BBC Sport
Scarborough Host Yorkshire Cricket In Four-Day Clash | This is the Coast
Surrey support Alzheimer’s Society for match against Lancashire | Kia Oval
Club’s glorious past embraced during Red Ball Festival of Cricket | Worcestershire CCC
Players news - signings, contracts etc
Glamorgan: Ned Leonard and Fraser Sheat join for County Championship games | BBC Sport
Akeem Jordan joins Kent’s overseas line-up until 20 September | Kent Cricket
Glamorgan sign Kiwi Fast Bowler Fraser Sheat | Glamorgan CCC
Jayden Seales and Daniel Hughes re-sign for Sussex for 2025 | BBC Sport
Sussex: Tom Alsop, Jack Carson and James Coles sign new three-year contracts | BBC Sport
James Hartshorn: Worcestershire sign seam bowler for remainder of season | BBC Sport
Gloucestershire pace bowler Zaman Akhter extends contract | BBC Sport
Che Simmons signs Warwickshire contract extension | Edgbaston
Noah Thain extends Essex deal until 2026 | Essex Cricket
Jason Kerr: Somerset head coach signs new deal | BBC Sport
News, Views and Interviews
H*ndred viewing figures down by more than a quarter as tournament stagnates | Telegraph
IPL owners will be able to rename H*ndred teams with minority stake | The Hundred | The Guardian
What does the future hold for The H*ndred? | The Independent
What the H*ndred has got right (and very wrong) this season | Times
Counties turn to Premier League football clubs to invest in domestic cricket | inews
Don’t say it…
Don’t say it…
Don’t say it…
… Thank God that crap is over for another year.
OK, I am exaggerating to make a point.
Speaking of which, the metrics will be lauded as nothing but marvellous by the ECB. But county fans have long since stopped listening to them on this issue.
In all honesty, I think the headlines have been a little harsh. Just like you cannot compare the actual numbers of the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named to the potential numbers of the Blast due to the vastly different marketing budgets, loss-making and support by the ECB, the Olympics skews this summer’s narrow non-football window.
But you can certainly say that the feeling of stagnation after four years compares unfavourably to the Blast. At this stage, it was still growing, gaining imitators and, in 2019, posted record ticket sales, the third successive annual rise.
One point though, the London franchises are holding up the figures. It has been reported that they are the main focus for bidders. In that context, what chance a third team in the capital over the much-reported expansion in the north-east or south-west?
As for allowing minority owners to change the franchise names. It just shows the powerlessness of the position the ECB have created for themselves.
English cricket is not being bought into, it is being bought.
I look forward to the reaction of the MCC members when the MI London (aka Mumbai Indians London) take the field at Lord’s. (Yes, I know it won’t happen, indulge me). If only Rising Pune Supergiant were still in the IPL.
However, these figures do prove my thesis that meaning and identity trump money and marketing in sport. How do you think pistol shooters and skateboarders commanded more of the UK’s sporting conversation than famous franchise cricketers? It is because we know the importance of the Olympics and we have an emotional investment in our nations. The sport and its presentation do the rest.
Few seem to think this season in you-know-what was a great sales pitch for the franchise but the manoeuvring will now start in earnest. Expect the ECB to say interest is sky-high, the money will benefit the entire game, especially grassroots and counties, and everything will be just peachy.
But when they do, just remember all those owners who have bought lower league football clubs, and promised “the Premier League in five years” only to run out of money, patience, ideas and ambition. Leaving wreckage behind.
In football, players, coaches, executives and owners come and go. Only fans, with their deep emotional ties, stay.
The problem with franchises is the support has no roots to sustain it during bad times.
And they always come.
Cricket: Is the future for NZC to join forces with IPL? | RNZ News
World Cricketers' Association to review 'broken' global structure of cricket | BBC Sport
County cricket: Somerset to face Glamorgan in One-Day Cup final | The Guardian
Anthony McGrath could return to Yorkshire in new all-powerful role | Times
Somerset & I: James Hildreth - by James Hildreth | CiderPress
England must start investing in opponents to make these summer series work | Telegraph
Pyrah returns to Yorkshire as women’s head coach after racism scandal | Yorkshire | The Guardian
David Ripley Appointed As New Women's Head Coach | Northamptonshire CCC
Derbyshire Cricket - Peakfan's blog: Rumours... | Peakfan
This letter caused a bit of a stir. Anything from a CEO or chair hinting a county could go under will do that.
I have a soft spot for Leicestershire as I studied there in the 90s and went to Grace Road a good few times. As someone who cares about maintaining 18 first-class counties, I keep a special eye on Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire as they have always been perceived as the most vulnerable teams. Not that this is necessarily true.
CEO Sean Jarvis has grasped the nettle at Grace Road and is making a difference. There is lots to admire on and off the pitch. Perversely, this is best illustrated by the recent experiment of charging for county streams (see YouTube clip above). I vehemently disagree with the move, and this is my area of expertise, but I understand it. Money is too tight to mention. On X, Jarvis has explained the reasoning for the experiment, given detailed numbers and engaged with fans over his thinking.
If only other counties approached controversial decisions in this way.
The above letter called for “an upturn in membership” or “the future of the club could be very bleak”.
However, the very concept of membership has been denigrated from all sides in recent years.
For a start, the shunting of the Championship to the grey-weathered margins of the season and the diminution of the 50-Over Cup to a second-string competition has reduced the value of the product being sold. If Andrew Strauss had had his way there would be two fewer four-day games at home. Surely that would have meant a push to reduce the price.
In presentations over the future of the domestic game, we have been told membership fees constitute around 10 per cent of overall club revenue while the ECB payment for talent creation (not ‘handout’) contributes four to six times that.
Some of us interpreted this as ‘sit down, shut up, because you don’t pay the bills’.
Right now, the ECB provides a financial lifeline to the counties which it tugs on to just about keep the game together. It believes The Hundred auction will transform counties’ finances. But what if in doing that it finds itself just managing England teams whose players are effectively controlled by the franchises, plus village green cricket? Perhaps that’s the outcome that its modelling has pointed the ECB towards all along. (Ed Warner, ex-chair of UK Athletics, in the Sport Inc blog)
The counties’ communication over agreeing franchise sales has been varied in its openness and most have not committed to votes. A decision so sizeable that I suspect this might be open to legal challenge. But they know no one will bother.
Meanwhile, demutualisation is increasingly perceived as pretty much all upside as it allows counties to fully realise the investment coming in from the outside.
In the wider media, county members have always been painted as ‘a problem’ if not ‘the problem’. As the saga of the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named has unfolded, the veil has come down and it is seeping out that cutting out member influence has been one of the primary drivers.
With his gentle delivery, ECB CEO Richard Gould told Sky that the organisation, under previous control, “could have been more honest” in their intentions at the start.
Err… so can we take it that the governing body lied then? To the counties. Who they supposedly serve.
And there has been no comeback for that.
At all.
And senior figures in the ECB at the time are still involved in county cricket now.
County members dipped their hands into their pockets, donating their subs and more to help keep the lights on during the pandemic. My name is proudly displayed at Chelmsford… on the outside wall of the Members’ toilet in the pavilion.
Since then, members have been derided and ignored. Called luddites and fleas by senior figures within cricket, let alone the players-turned-pundits who are fully cognisant of how their bread is buttered. Who wants to sign up to that?
I have said before that the concept of membership needs reframing, partly because of the kernel of truth at the centre of this entirely negative perception. One of my half-ideas involves embracing the grey pound and grounding the product in cricket, community and social good. Our treatment of old people in this country is an utter disgrace and there could be funding available. But it is also critical to appeal across the demographics.
However, we are probably moving into an era of owners and season ticket-holders. Hopefully, stadia and facilities will improve, certainly, prices will rise to pay for it.
That changes the relationship and the connection will be lost.
At that point, I am out. I’ll just pay on the day.
Which probably means I will not go as much or contribute as much.
I want to be a part of something (and have something to believe in) not be another commodity to be monetised.
And finally…
The story of this newsletter
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I have been a member of Surrey, on and off (currently off as the lack of County / Test cricket in August makes it pretty pointless for me and their treatment of members has become careless), since 1983 and am a member of Sussex (since 1982) and I will be until I die, unless they abolish membership. I have lived in Aberdeenshire for 21 years so its quite a hike to Hove and I can't claim to get "value for money" from it. But, I love being there and having access to all the facilities. I donated my membership in Covid. If membership goes, I will still go but fewer times and I certainly won't see the point of a season ticket living in NE Scotland, let alone donating it's value in the next pandemic. Sussex continue to say all the right things. I hope they aren't being naive. For Sussex to be killed of by the sharks at the ECB would be an irony indeed.
I have been a member of Surrey, on and off (currently off as the lack of County / Test cricket in August makes it pretty pointless for me and their treatment of members has become careless), since 1983 and am a member of Sussex (since 1982) and I will be until I die, unless they abolish membership. I have lived in Aberdeenshire for 21 years so its quite a hike to Hove and I can't claim to get "value for money" from it. But, I love being there and having access to all the facilities. I donated my membership in Covid. If membership goes, I will still go but fewer times and I certainly won't see the point of a season ticket living in NE Scotland, let alone donating it's value in the next pandemic. Sussex continue to say all the right things. I hope they aren't being naive. For Sussex to be killed of by the sharks at the ECB would be an irony indeed.