No 49, May 11 - The Grumbler's County Cricket Newsletter
🔴 All the Champ previews 🟠 Lots of free tickets available 🟣 Is a different Dukes ball the reason for all the runs? 🟤 Finally, an ECB chair we can believe in? 🔵 Sparkling new Potts 🟡 Best of the blogs
In many ways, it has been an uplifting week. I have seen lots of enthusiastic schoolchildren at grounds around the country, the stars have been out in the County Championship and the nascent tables are fascinating despite a glut of bore draws. As you’ll discover below, a couple of the more innovative counties are giving away thousands more free tickets this week, also it’s Stokes v Labuschagne at Durham and Yorkshire v Lancashire at Headingley. Happy days.
I am even prepared to accept new England MD Rob Key appointing Brendan McCullum as the Test team coach despite him having little experience for the role. Let’s face it, Key was highly underqualified too. I harbour doubts over both but you cannot say this is ‘more of the same’.
Change is good and, frankly, I am tired of seeing the same types of people appointed to top jobs and getting the same type of failures, no matter how hard you try to dress them up.
If you like this newsletter (and you can afford it) please consider buying me a coffee. Full explanation at the bottom. All coffee buyers are name-checked in the next edition. Also buy my book, Last-Wicket Stand, see bottom.
County Championship Previews
Click on each team name for a different preview.
Warwickshire vs Northamptonshire
Kent vs Surrey
Yorkshire vs Lancashire
Derbyshire vs Worcestershire
Durham vs Glamorgan
Leicestershire vs Sussex
Middlesex vs Nottinghamshire
Gloucestershire vs Somerset
These tweets all deserve a special mention.
Player signings: Rossouw (Somerset), Wheal, Bethell, Chappell (Gloucestershire), Seifert (Sussex)
Reviews of last week’s games
Cricketer Championship round-up
What happened in Round 5 of the LV= Insurance County Championship? (ECB)
Ascendancy - Lammonby, Bohannon and Bracey (Yahoo Over Cow Corner)
Championship Review (Aspiblog - A blog by an autistic person)
County cricket: London sprawling as Surrey and Middlesex top tables (Guardian)
News, Views and Interviews
First and foremost - Get well soon Graham Thorpe
Bowlers blame smaller seam on Dukes ball for surge in County Championship run-scoring (Times) ($)
This story is a little odd. Not so much the change itself but the reaction.
The move to eight points for a Championship draw and the much-discussed request for pitch curators (are we doing that word now?) to create flatter tracks are seen as measures to improve our Test batting. But there does not seem much transparency in this latest development. This ball change was a rumour for weeks and, even after this story came out, I have not seen any clarification. What’s with the secrecy?
Overall, I'm unsure about this drift because, for the 18-county Championship to survive, it must have some intrinsic value as a sporting competition. If it is just about feeding the Test team with players (an argument both reformers and preservers have used) then ultimately it becomes a glorified practice event. We have seen far too many stale Sundays already this season with games ending in a bizarre situation where part-time bowlers deputise for tired specialists while batters compile heavy but meaningless scores.
With few fans watching and the game listing there is no pressure. This nullifies many of the benefits the situation is designed to create.
The rise of Matty Potts, the latest quick off Durham’s production line (Wisden)
‘Naughty kid’ Matty Potts targets England debut in first Test of New Zealand series (Times)
Steve Harmison has been telling everyone about this quickie for a while. He has been a great signing for my Cricket Draft team. (BTW Anyone want to invite me to their League?)
Groundbreaking Disability Premier League confirmed for inaugural season in 2022 (Cricketer)
Of course, we all applaud this. But might they have asked the senior designer to do the badges? I could do better on Canva.
Cream of men’s Test team to miss another BBL season (The Age)
This is a piece from Australia on the way interest in the Big Bash has tailed off. Certainly there is a feeling they have oversold it, trying to squeeze out too much money too quickly. Franchise cricket is susceptible to this because is artificially created by marketers and does not have the organic, generational support of something like the county game. The fizz and the fireworks work for a period but, after a while, it needs to be backed up with something real. And when you are selling your tournament as a showcase for the best talent and they don’t turn up then the punters are not going to maintain their interest.
CEO Sean Jarvis is turning Leicestershire around. Lots of interesting initiatives are coming out of Grace Road…
Ian Holland reflects on becoming 'Cricket Superstar' (Cricket.com.au)
Has anyone had a more unusual route into professional cricket than Ian Holland - reality star, USA international, Hampshire all-rounder.
The long shadows over English cricket (New Statesman)
Wisden’s overseas County Championship XI of the 21st century (Wisden)
I must admit I never ever thought about this issue (below) but now I have a teenage daughter I realise its importance.
Miranda Farrell wrote about it and, I’d venture that the Rajasthan Royals’ content last season made a difference in India.
ECB back to square one in hunt for new chair as Ron Kalifa withdraws (Cricinfo)
Richard Thompson could be tempted into ECB chair role, and he would be a perfect fit (Cricketer)
English cricket needs the Surrey strut (Cricketer) ($)
Sometimes, it is the way of things. Rainbows follow showers, roses grow from manure and, just occasionally, another ECB balls-up leaves the game in a better position.
The role of ECB chair has been troubled for years. First there was Colin Graves, who barged through the-tournament-that-shall-not-be-named, tried and failed to extend his tenure then was accused of interference beyond his remit at Yorkshire (though his money has been keeping the club afloat for years). Eventually, he was succeeded by Ian Whatmore, who was pushed out after a few months. Since then the hunt for a replacement has been led by Ron Kalifa, who after an exhaustive search ended up thinking the best candidate was… Ron Kalifa. This ‘shoo-in’ situation reportedly put off applicants and, in the vacuum, Teflon Tom Harrison remained in post as CEO. The other lead actor in farce that is the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named had been reportedly pushed towards the door for months.
The news of Kalifa pulling out left English cricket back at square one and me thinking of a new nickname for Harrison (unfortunately Trevor Bailey had already taken The Barnacle). However Richard Thompson is in the frame and George Dobell floated that he might be able to lure back Richard Gould as CEO. These two led Surrey to great heights, off the pitch at least, in the last decade. And I say that as an Essex fan who loves to tease them as the underperforming ‘Man United of Cricket’. On my Twitter account, ‘$urrey’ are painted as the cocky braggarts who, in the words of Adam Ant, “spend their cash on looking flash and grabbing your attention”. Not that it brings them as many trophies as it should.
However, in contrast to Man United and the other greedy clubs who tried to form football’s European Super League, under these two, Surrey made decisions to sustain an 18-county structure when they could have led an eight, 10 or 12-team franchise league. This year they announced record membership figures and I have been posting videos of their impressive fan engagement executions. $urrey strike me as the best county organisation on the circuit, which is why I put my Essex credentials aside and applied for the Head of Media role recently advertised. (I did not get an interview). Thompson and Gould have excellent reputations in the game and this pair give me hope. The latter was interviewed for Harrison’s job and pitched a high-profile Blast on free-to-air television, which proves the board has always been as much to blame as those they appointed.
Mark Wood is living proof that character and personality count. Here he is (above) on a podcast “hosted by autistic students from a special school in the UK”.
A New Look For Middlesex Youth Membership (Middlesex CCC)
This is intelligent from Middlesex, dividing up their youth membership into different age brackets. Any parent knows what interests the pre-teens is not going to fly with the 16-year-olds. There have been school parties at the last two days I attended at Essex. They watched a session then played on the pitch at lunch. I believe some players went over to say hello but I wanted more of them involved. Like you manage umpiring duties in Sunday games, the tail-enders of the batting side could do 10 minutes first then the openers could pitch in once they are out. Still, the kids seemed to get into it. They cheered the ball when it came near them and roared as quick bowlers steamed in. But to truly love any sport you need to understand it. This is where the complexity of cricket is a problem and the lack of participation in state schools means modern youngsters have less of a grounding in the basics. (I learnt a lot about the longitudinal effects of sport in school on fandom in the US from a podcast I did with Rick Luker)
Which brings us to…
Revealed: The great private school cricket arms race (Telegraph)($)
Regular readers will know this is another hobby horse of mine. However, like the endless ECB affairs, I only keep writing about it because there are stories every damn week. This one talks about the ‘arms race’ among public schools to sign the best talent - bespoke scholarships, 110 per cent of fees paid, a raft of top quality coaches. There are always defenders of this position but, for me, the highest levels of the game have retreated into the hands of the elite over the past generation. The biggest issue UK cricket faces is reversing this trend because it will create more interest and more players which, in turn, creates more television eyeballs, more advertising spend and greater revenue.
English cricket seems to be the only sport that is happy to contract into its safe spaces.
And finally…
Classifieds
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