Poppycock

On Saturday November 13th 2010  England’s Rugby team played Australia at Twickenham. This reference is not about that match but about the date and the shirts. Take a look at the photograph of Chris Ashton scoring a try. Anything remarkable about it? True England appear to be playing in the wrong colour shirt and shorts but this is the RFU remember and for reasons best known to themselves they often send England out in the wrong kit. No the point here is the flower on Ashton's chest. It’s a rose – as you would expect. Do you see any other flower on display? No? No poppy then.
Now whatever venalities the RFU can be accused of a lack of patriotism or insensitivity to the importance of our Armed Forces past and present is not one of them.  Indeed the military presence at Twickenham is usually very significant indeed as the  “Help for Heroes” charity is often at the match. So if the RFU had thought it appropriate to put a poppy on the shirts of the England players last year because the match v the Aussies fell between Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday you can be sure that they would have done it. Whether it occurred to the Rugby bosses to do this I’ve no idea. But they didn't do it largely I suspect because there is no tradition of National sports teams wearing poppies - and there was no reason to create a precedent.

On Saturday November 12th 2011, the day after Remembrance Day and the day before Remembrance Sunday, England’s Football team take on Spain at Wembley and some bright spark thought it would be a good idea for them to wear an embroidered poppy on their shirts. There is no precedent for this any more than there was last year for the Rugby team. The suggestion has led to an unsavoury and unnecessary confrontation with FIFA who say that it would be against the regulations for this to happen. I have no view on whether this regulation is right or wrong but I do have a view as to whether the idea was a good one in the first place – or not.
 
Remembering our war dead is one of the annual rituals that helps define us as a Nation (that Nation is the United Kingdom, by the way, not England). I have always respected it and found it deeply moving – especially the service at the Cenotaph. And the Poppy is the traditional and highly respected symbol of our remembrance. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row…” John McCrea’s 1915 poem was the spur for this. But in recent times there have been occasional media stories about the wearing of the poppy (or not) which have created rather more heat than light. A Newsreader’s decision not to wear a poppy was a cause celebre a year ago and his coining of the phrase “Poppy fascism” really riled some. Aside from my belief that the decision to wear a poppy (or not) is a personal one I don't feel particularly strongly about the issue. I wear a Poppy – but not in October, as some did this year,  and not every time I venture out of the house in early November either!

So what is the objection to the England team wearing poppies on their shirts at Wembley? Traditions have to start somewhere I suppose - but do we really want to create one like this? Because you know what will happen. Next year there might be a full Rugby and Football programme on 10th/11th November. And the England cricket team might be playing a match somewhere. And all of these teams will feel obliged to wear Poppies because the tradition has been established and they don’t want the “Poppy Fascists” on their case. And before long anyone doing anything collectively at this time will feel obliged to follow the newly created rule that poppies are mandatory.   The key word here is “Collectively”. As I have argued wearing a Poppy is a personal choice and it is wholly inappropriate to compel anyone to do so - whether they be sportsmen or anyone else.   

Now some might argue that the beneficiaries of Poppy Day are the Royal British Legion and that anything that helps them raise more money for a good cause is worthwhile. And similarly they could argue that to give the Poppy prominent display on an England team’s shirts will raise awareness of the Legion – as well as being a sign of respect for that cause. Poppycock!   The wearing of Poppies in early November is so widespread that I cannot believe that anyone can have missed it – and if they have eleven footballers wearing poppies on their shirts is hardly likely to make a difference. And will it raise any extra money for the Legion? I doubt that as well. The chances to give to the British Legion are many and varied - and anyway collectors could be present inside or outside Wembley Stadium on 12th November whether the players wear poppies or not.

So why should we invent a tradition that sports teams on or around 11th November should wear poppies? Eric Hobsbawm has said     

“Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.... However, insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of 'invented' traditions is that the continuity with it is largely fictitious.”

And that, for me, along with the other arguments I have made in this piece, is enough.

Golden days for British and European Golf

A friend who is a keen golfer and ardent follower of the sport reminds me just how successful British and European golf is at the moment. And for me the top sporting experience of the year was not any of England’s many and deserved cricketing triumphs, good though they were, but the four days my wife and I spent at Royal St George’s watching the Open Championship. This was sport at its peak both in respect of the quality of the golf played over the four days and the wonderful end game in which Darren Clarke was triumphant. Tiger Woods apart all of the world’s top golfers were at Sandwich and is was a delight to see some living legends of the game, like Tom Watson, as well as the impressive and precociously young rising stars like Rickie Fowler and the British amateur Tom Lewis. Oddly the British players who have risen to the top of the world rankings, Donald, Westwood and McIlroy and those close by – Rose, Poulter and Casey all had a poor Championship. But that was swiftly forgotten as we celebrated Clarke’s triumph. Golf crowds in my experience are generous in their applause and well-behaved (I’ve never been to a tournament in the United States) and that was certainly the case at The Open. To this the players responded and there were a few moments which would grace any sport – Tom Watson’s smile at the end of the second round not because of his play (good though it was) nor because of his hole in one at the sixth but because his playing partner, 20 year old Tom Lewis, had followed his opening 65 with a solid 74 to make the cut.

The “Tiger effect” on golf has been good, bad and ugly. Good because it undoubtedly raised the profile of the game. Bad because it detracted somewhat from Tiger’s contemporaries as so much of the media attention was on Woods. And ugly because it eventually emerged that the Emperor had no clothes (or no trousers anyway) and that beneath the commercially burnished exterior there was a disturbed, dysfunctional and struggling human being. Well behaved though they generally are pro golfers are not saints and from time to time they set a pretty bad example. The American team in the Ryder Cup has a simplistic chauvinism about it that is stomach churning to the more urbane European eye. When they had a pre-tournament pep talk from an Army major last year it inspired Phil Mickleson to comment “I feel proud to be part of a country that cares about the civil rights of people all throughout the world and not just in our own country,” Hmm!

The top golfers are multi-millionaires and used to a lifestyle that is beyond the imaginings of most of us. I have no problem with this because below that top tier are hundreds hoping to make it and not living in the lap of luxury whilst they do so. Ian Poulter recently tweeted when someone criticised his poor performance in a tournament “You think I'm going to lie here feeling sorry having worked in a pro shop for 7 years earning $200 a week. Enjoy what you work hard for.” A nice piece of honesty from Poults – and few would disagree with his sentiment. Poulter is the archetypical Ryder Cup competitor – fiercely proud and a great team man. Woods never really delivered in the Cup what his talent should have given – and the contrast between the striving for individual glory of Tiger and the authentic team focus of Poulter and the rest of his European colleagues has been marked. Golf is such an individual game that it takes something special to blend rivals together but with Britain and/or Europe holding the Ryder, Walker, and Solheim Cups (and GB and Ireland the Seve Trophy) we must be doing something right this side of the Atlantic! Long may it continue – and let’s hope that Donald, Westwood , Casey, Rose and our other very good British pros can find a way to follow Clarke’s triumph ( and those of McIlroy and McDowell) and bag themselves a Major or two soon.

The tough realities behind the nostalgia for County Cricket

 

There has been plenty of highly charged and emotional stuff around since Lancashire’s victory in the County Championship. From me included! And this nostalgia, when you come down to it, is a big part of what is wrong with domestic Cricket in England. Its strengths – the sort of honest but blind devotion we see in this blog for example – are also its weaknesses. The irony will have escaped some but at a time when the England team is at its strongest point for years the County system is on its knees. It is ironic, but it is not paradoxical. The England set up has little if any connection with County cricket – its centrally contracted players rarely appear for their counties and County cricket is largely an irrelevance for England. “Hang on”, the cricket traditionalist will cry, “where do the international players come from if they don’t come from the counties?” Well one answer would be “Ireland, South Africa and now New Zealand” but that might be a bit too clever-clever and pat. Of course the England squad have all come from County cricket - where the heck else would they come from – it’s the only game in town! But that doesn’t make it the best game or even the right game – except to those who close their minds to change.

The stark reality is that virtually all of the 18 counties are bankrupt or close to insolvency. They are only kept alive at all by hand-outs of around £2m each from the ECB. And where does the ECB get its money from to distribute this largesse? Well you and me actually. Three big sources of ECB funding are the Sky contract, international match ticket sales and the bids that major County ground owners make to have the right to stage a Test match or a limited overs international. Let’s just run through the implications for the cricket fan of these three ECB income streams.

The Sky contract is exclusive – there is no live cricket on non-subscription television in Britain. None! So a cricket fan who wants to watch England’s Test match triumphs live will have to fork out a minimum of £50 a month across the year to see it on Sky. Our summer sport, unlike to an extent our winter ones (at least the international part of them) , is unprotected from the commercial priorities of Sky – this is regressive of course. The rich man in his castle pays the same to watch Sky television as the poor man at his gate. So if the poor man’s ten-year-old takes an interest in cricket he can’t just switch on the BBC or ITV or Channel 4 – he has to persuade his hard-pressed parents to cough up £50+ a month. Not very likely is it?

Then there is the price of international cricket tickets to consider - they are by far the highest in the world. You can watch five days Test cricket in Australia for the cost of one day at Lord’s or The Oval. And you could watch a couple of seasons for that same amount in India. Why so high? Because the ECB says so - and the ECB says so because it needs the loot for the Counties. A day at a Test match for a family of four this year would have cost around £350 for the tickets alone. Oddly enough I didn’t see many families of four at the grounds this summer.

What about the auction that the ECB runs for the right to stage international matches? Sealed tenders mean that for most of the games the keen applicants have to take a hard expensive punt to stand a chance. This has nearly bankrupted Glamorgan – to such an extent that they had to withdraw from staging a West Indies Test at Cardiff next year despite being awarded it. They couldn’t afford to pay for the privilege! And the MCC, owners of Lord’s, were forced into a trading loss last year by the blind bids they made to host Test matches. Its complete nonsense of course – most of all when you realise that the ECB only does it to gather money for the failing Counties! So Glamorgan bids high to stage a Test which generates income for the ECB who pass it back to the Counties – including Glamorgan. D'oh!

So we pay of the order of £36m per year to keep the counties afloat. But, as this blog correctly says, nobody goes to watch them play - in the County Championship anyway. That we follow it in other ways may be true but that is hardly the basis of a sustainable business! And whilst the final round of Championship matches was certainly exciting through most of the season most of the cricket watching public hadn’t a clue about what was going on. The competition even stopped for a month or so so that the more money-spinning limited overs competitions could take place. Conservatives argue that outmoded businesses that blunder on sustained only by public hand-outs and with out-of - date business models should be allowed to die. That is precisely what we have in our current County system. There is direct public money – via the Sports Council – and indirect via Sky or the ECB’s inflated ticket prices going to County cricket. It may not all appear on Mr Osborne’s public sector accounts – but it’s as much public money as the NHS or the welfare state.

I have argued that the solution for English domestic cricket is to have far fewer top tier domestic teams – about eight seems right - and far better competition. This need not be the end of the Counties (please follow the link to see my argument for an alternative County model). As with so much in life this is a battle between the modernisers who see the realities and the traditionalists who really do think that all is well. Act soon – or those past “Glories” will turn to dust!

Its been a very long wait for Lancashire

My father was born in Stockport a few days before the battle of the Somme in 1916. The town may be technically in Cheshire but then, as now, many of its inhabitants saw themselves as Lancastrians – my father certainly did - not least in his lifelong support for Lancashire County Cricket Club. Like me Dad became a cricket fan at a very early age and by the time he was ten a Lancashire allegiance was engrained in him. Good timing, for in 1926 Lancashire won their first County Championship for 22 years and followed this with further wins in 1927, 1928, 1930 and 1934. A golden age indeed for the red rose County but thereafter, a solitary tied Championship in 1950 aside, no wins at all – until now.

Back in the 1920s one of the lynchpins of the Lancashire side was the Australian Test match fast bowler Ted McDonald. From 1925 to 1930 he was virtually an ever present in the side taking 970 wickets in 193 matches – an average of five per game. McDonald has a firm place in the Briggs family folklore because in 1930 he was photographed giving his autograph to a couple of young Lancashire fans – one of whom (the boy on the left in the cap) was my father. Not only did he sign Dad’s autograph book but he undertook later to get all of his team-mates autographs as well – on the cardboard frame in which the photo was placed. The original of that framed photograph is in the excellent cricket museum at Old Trafford.

Ted McDonald was unusual in playing in County cricket as an overseas player in the inter-war years he had to qualify and for two years he played in the Lancashire League before making his county debut in 1924. This followed a very successful tour with the 1921 Australians when he took 27 Test wickets at an average of under 25. It is intriguing to observe that he was already 33 years old when he made his first appearance for Lancashire and that his in final full season, 1930, he was 39. Not bad for someone described in Wisden as being “…far faster than the average English fast bowler”!

My father would have been thrilled with Lancashire’s success in the Championship this year. I only watched his County with him once but that was in the famous 1971 Gillette Cup final against my own County Kent. I was born in Kent and it was never even a subject for discussion that I chose to support the County of my birth rather than adopt my father’s team. We sat together for that enthralling match at Lord’s when Kent looked to be on the way to overhauling Lancashire’s modest 60 Over total of 224 until Jackie Bond took a famous catch to dismiss the on-fire Asif Iqbal. Lancashire has an astonishing record in One Day cricket with no less than 16 trophies between 1970 and 1998 – though none since. But for all this, in my father’s view, the only domestic cricket prize that really mattered was the County Championship and I am sure that if Dad was around today his smile would have been as wide as it was at Lord’s in 1971 – and he would be reminiscing about the games he saw the last time Lancashire stood unchallenged at the top of the pile way back in 1934.

That was never a champagne moment !

 

 

The atmosphere in the Pavilion, never mind the rest of the ground, was electric at the Tea interval on the third day of the India Test match - the good burghers of Nottingham were sure that cricketing justice was not being done. Hence the booing. Not that a riot was on the cards - but the natives were restless. What we had just witnessed had defied belief. In short when the last ball of the over before Tea was hit towards the boundary the fielder, Kumar, dived over the boundary rope like a dying swallow. Seeing this batsmen, not unreasonably, assumed that a boundary had been hit. Kumar assumed the same. He picked up the ball and tossed it gently towards the wicketkeeper. Meanwhile the batsmen, Bell and Morgan, headed Pavilion-wards for a well-earned Tea. The keeper, Indian Captain MS Dhoni, caught the ball and threw it gently to the bowlers' end where the stumps were broken. Why did Dhoni do this? Well maybe he realised that the Umpires had not signalled a "Four" and that technically the ball was still in play and with the batsmen en route for Tea one of them (Bell) could be deemed to be Run Out. The Umpires then burst into action. Was Bell Run Out? Much radio chat with the third Umpire. Meanwhile Bell and Morgan were barred from returning to the Pavilion by one of the umpiring team! Back at the square the Umpires asked Dhoni if he really wanted to appeal. He said that he did. In the circumstances the Umpires had two options. They could have said to Dhoni that such an appeal was likely to be deemed later not to be in keeping with the "Spirit of Cricket" (unequivocally entrenched in the Laws of the Game). They didn't do this. They took option 2 which was to accept Dhoni's appeal and, inevitably, give Bell out.

There is a real sense of what is natural justice amongst cricket supporters. Instinctively we tend to know right from wrong. And this was wrong. The Umpires and the Indian team were roundly booed as they went to the Pavilion for Tea. It was loud, pointed and not open to misinterpretation. The forcefulness of this reaction no doubt supported the England team as they tried to cope with a gross injustice. Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss elected to go to talk with their opposite numbers Fletcher and Dhoni. And, as the later interview with the honourable and decent Rahul Dravid confirmed, the Indian team thought again and decided to withdraw their appeal. The brief version of what had happened can be summarised as follows:

1. Everything pointed to a four having been scored and the over having being finished – not least Kumar’s relaxed returning of the ball to Dhoni.

2. The breaking of the stumps was almost an afterthought. There was little urgency to it and it seemed little expectation, on the part of the Indians, that a run out had really been effected.

3. Bell and Morgan were already on the way to the Pavilion for Tea when the stump breaking took place. They clearly assumed that it was the end of the Over and the Session.

4. It eventually dawned on the Indians that in fact the ball had still been in play when they broke the stumps and that technically Ian Bell was run out. It was at this point that they appealed.

5. When the appeal happened former England Captain Michael Vaughan’s commentary on television was “[That was] a big mistake by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I think this is [against] the Spirit of the Game.”

6. The Umpires then asked Dhoni a second time whether he wanted to pursue the appeal. Dhoni said he did. Bell was given out.

7. The Umpires and the Indians were roundly booed off the pitch not only by the majority of the crowd but by I would say a third of the members in the Pavilion where I was sitting.

8. During the Tea interval the Indians discussed the matter and, in the words of Rahul Dravid, they concluded that “If we took the letter of the laws of the game strictly [Bell] was out. But something was not right.”

9. The England Coach and the England Captain asked the Indians to withdraw the appeal which they graciously did. They might have done this anyway without the two Andys’ intervention. Who knows? Dravid’s remarks suggest so.

10. No announcement was made to the crowd and at first the Umpires and the Indian team were booed again. Then Ian Bell emerged and some amongst the members thought that England was playing hardball and refusing to accept the dismissal! Then, slowly, the truth emerged and in time the Indians were applauded for their belated sportsmanship.

Subsequent to this sequence of events the cricket Establishment has sought not only to praise Dhoni but to say that the "Spirit of Cricket" is enhanced by his actions. Well yes - but remember it was Dhoni and his team who created the mess in the first place! As Michael Vaughan correctly put it in real time on commentary the Indians were technically correct to appeal - but that appeal was plainly not in line with the "Spirit of Cricket”.

So to sum up. Technically Ian Bell was run out. But to pursue this offended natural justice as well as undoubtedly the "Spirit of the Game”. Dhoni, initially, pursued the appeal and the Umpires complied. They did not need to do this! Remember again the "Spirit of Cricket" is in the Laws and the Umpires would have been within their rights to advise Dhoni that his appeal conflicted with this Spirit. But this didn't happen. It was only when they were sitting in their dressing room having been booed from the field of play the enormity of the error that they had made dawned on Dhoni and his team that they saw sense (as Rahul Dravid pointed out).

The willingness of MS Dhoni to appeal in circumstances that were clearly suspect and unique was regrettable. The smiles on the faces of his colleagues as they went into Tea were reprehensible. That they subsequently, under some pressure, recanted is commendable. But let's cut out the bullshit. This whole problem came about because the "Spirit of Cricket" was initially, and in the heat of the moment, far from the mind of the Indian Captain. And it didn't feature with the Umpires either. Cricket's spirit has been rescued by England's Flower and Strauss and by India's Fletcher and Dhoni's reconsideration and welcome retreat.

The final (possibly!) coda to this affair was when the Test Match Special team of commentators and summarisers elected to give MS Dhoni the “Brian Johnston Champagne Moment” award for his withdrawal of the appeal. I found this so stomach-churningly obsequious that I “Tweeted” immediately from the ground “BJ Champagne moment choice is sentimental, craven, establishment-pleasing nonsense. Really bad.” On cool reflection I stand by this 100%. It was a match full of genuine champagne moments on the field of play – not least the brilliant third ball of Stuart Broad’s hat trick. That MS Dhoni had the wit and the sensitivity to reverse his appeal was commendable – but in truth I think that he had little choice but to do this if the match and the rest of the series was to progress smoothly. I was right among the cricket fans at Trent Bridge and at Tea they were incensed by what had happened and in unforgiving mood.

The day after these events the establishment closed ranks and the message in the media was disturbingly consistent – Ian Bell was dozy, naïve, careless or worse. MS Dhoni was a hero. The umpires were blameless. Yes, as I have shown, Bell and to an extent Morgan were a bit sloppy but the former had been batting through two sessions under considerable pressure and with the game in the balance. He played magnificently and was certainly entitled to his Tea! He saw Karma dive over the boundary and saw the subsequent body language of Karma and the rest and understandably felt there was no suggestion that a “play” of any sort was on. The Indians initially thought so too and when they appealed a quick word from the umpires to the effect that this was not a very good idea in the Spirit of the Game would certainly have sufficed. The umpires did not do this and this was very bad judgment on their part. It really was!

And Dhoni and the Indian team’s belated retraction of their appeal sullies the good record of Test Match Special – it was no champagne moment! No Way!

Beware the Sporting Trojan horses

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. Well I suppose in the current economic crisis in the Eurozone it’s more likely that our friends in the Aegean would be seeking gifts rather than bearing them – but you know what I mean. I refer to the truism that plausible and seemingly generous offers from some sources often have hidden complications – whether (in the case of cricket) it is Allan Stanford or  Sky Television, sport and especially British sport and the broadcasting of British sport, is increasingly beholden to people whose values are not really ours and who can, and do, demand a lot for their largesse.

That the leaders of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are still in place despite the Stanford affair and other dramas has been a source of amazement – except, that is, to insiders who know that change at the top of the EBC is virtually impossible to achieve. Those who got us into the Stanford mess are still in power because those who put them there choose to keep them there to protect, as they see it, their own positions. Any rational observer of England’s domestic cricket scene could only but conclude that there are more than twice as many teams competing in top tier competitions than is affordable and logical. But on the irrefutable grounds that turkeys tend not to vote for a Christmas annihilation so the leaders of the eighteen First Class counties won’t vote to reduce their number. And they certainly won’t vote for a more radical Chairman who might actually do something about the mess that is English domestic cricket. So there is a Faustian (and probably unspoken) pact between the counties on one side and the current Chairman and Chief Executive on the other which maintains the status quo. The gift that these particular Greeks bear is the promise of funding to ensure that what are otherwise unsustainable “businesses” keep on going. No responsible business entity would pass good money to a subsidiary where they know that it will turn bad. But that is what the ECB does with tens of millions of pounds of money that they extract form you and me – directly though International match  ticket sales or indirectly by way of our Sky Sports subscriptions.

Sky Sports is the jewel in the crown of BSkyB’s properties – a source of income to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp that is invaluable to them. Murdoch’s (now rebuffed) wish totally to control Sky is in no small way attributable to the success of Sky Sports. But for the sports with which Sky has a contract for broadcasting rights the  “Gifts” that this US/Australian “Greek” brings come at a price. True the income from Sky that the ECB receives is considerable but what Sky asks for in return is substantial to. Firstly a total monopoly of live TV coverage domestic and international. There is no live cricket on British television except that on Sky - and to see that you need a subscription that costs at least £50 a month. And if you think that you can get round that by going to the Pub think again. Sky have increased the costs to pubs and clubs to such a level that it is unaffordable for many. That’s why the Red Lion in your village doesn't show the cricket or Premiership football any more!

The second demand that BSkyB makes is on the fixture list. The answer to all the following questions is “Because that’s what Murdoch wants”. Why are there 43 days of International cricket in 2011? Why were there seven One Day Internationals in Australia last winter? Why is England playing five ODIs in India in October when surely the players deserve a rest. Why is the domestic Twenty20 fixture list so crowded? Why is England playing Australia in three one Day Internationals in 2012? Why will the next Ashes series be back-to-back in 2013 (in England) and 2013/14 (in Australia)?  

The third demand is influence. He who pays the piper calls the tune. It is safe to say that no changes will be made to anything of significance in English cricket without Sky agreeing to it. It is indisputable that the income stream from Sky to the ECB to the Counties can only exist if the content for Sky is in place. The ECB has to deliver that content – predominantly Test matches, ODIs and international and domestic Twenty20.  

The events of the past week which have brought the malignancy of the Murdoch empire into sharp relief present an opportunity for those who argue for change to English cricket to act. Because, as I have tried to show, the whole pack of cards is sustained only by the Sky deal. Remove BSkyB from the equation and sanity will prevail. It wont be easy – but it sure is necessary. Let’s run through the plusses. If English cricket returns to terrestrial television then cricket viewership figures would return to the levels they were when it was on Channel 4 in 2005. But there will be less money in the pot – so the ECB will be forced to so something about the unsustainable nonsense that is an 18 County structure. And for the ECB the benefit is that in a more principled media rights environment it would always be they not the broadcaster that called the tune.

Our summer sport should not be in hock to Rupert Murdoch. We should not have to pay £100 for a seat in the Grandstand at the Lord's Test match or £50 a month to watch it on television. We should have competitive cricket clubs at the highest level playing in fine urban grounds with predominantly top English players in their squads. Cricket should be run by and for cricket fans not for the benefit of dubious and squalid commercial enterprises for whom the only measure of success is financial. That’s what the “Spirit of Cricket” should mean.

The wit and wisdom of Graeme Swann

Graeme Swann is a wag – and very funny he can be as well. His video reports from the Ashes tour were often hilarious and Swann’s intelligence as well as his humour shone though. So why would he make remarks as crass as he has as reported in n today’s newspapers? According to Swann Broad is

 

  “one of the best bowlers in England, certainly in my top two, and I love his aggression and the streak of nastiness about him because you definitely need that as a bowler. I don’t want to see our fast bowlers opening a kitten sanctuary; I want to see them bowling bouncers and breaking people’s fingers.”

Professional cricketers, like all pro sportsmen, have two main fears. One is that they will lose their form and the other is that they will be injured. Either can lead to a loss of place in the team and to loss of earnings – even to premature retirement. For Swann to call on a colleague to break the fingers of his opponents is about as far from the spirit of the game as you can get.  It happens – but I have never heard before one bowler call upon another to injure a batsman. I know what Swann means about fast bowlers – they do need to intimidate but they need to do this fairly and not to aim not at the player’s body or hands with a view to physically damaging them.

Sorry Graeme but this was an ill-considered remark and even though you said it lightly and perhaps didn't mean it  it gives a bad example to all cricketers, especially young ones, as to what the game of cricket is all about.

Play up, play up and play the game

And so the England management decides that one Public Schoolboy captain isn’t enough and they appoint three. The split between Limited Overs and Test Captaincy makes sense only in the context of crowded fixture lists and the giving of respite to the Captain. Strauss discharged his duties admirably in the absurdly overlong One Day series in Australia and in the grotesquely protracted Cricket World Cup after it. What damage to his mind and his family there was from this only he will know – and perhaps Andy Flower. I think that Strauss’s retirement from One Day Internationals is highly regrettable – he can play the game well. Cook is also a one day player of talent but was omitted from the arduous post- Ashes one day games. Lucky him because that decision has ironically brought him the captaincy.

The splitting of Twenty20 and ODI captaincy makes no sense at all. The formats are sufficiently similar for the special tactical nous of the One Day Captain (if there is one) being equally applicable in the T20 area. And there aren’t very many T20 matches anyway – so if Cook is the right person for One Day Internationals there is absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t also captain the T20 side.

With Collingwood’s departure from the scene England has now chosen a trio of men who learned their cricket in Independent schools and whose social background is identical. Maybe that is the background that the blinkered honchos of the ECB, headed by Old Rugbeian Giles Clarke, see as being desirable in a leader. There is also clearly now a hierarchy involved with Test match cricket at the top, ODIs next and T20 as the “apprenticeship” format. This is nonsense as well. In an ideal world the same man – and the best captain – should be England captain in all formats.

If you can play you can play – and if you can lead you can lead. As Geoff Miller put it back in 2008 when Kevin Pietersen was appointed: “In choosing a new captain, we were keen to identify a player who could lead the team in all three forms of cricket and bring fresh enthusiasm and ideas to the role of captain.” Miller was right then and the 180 degree swing away from that now is wrong – workload aside.

How to run the 2015 Cricket World Cup

The Cricket World Cup 2011 is behind us and it will fade rapidly and disappear from our consciousness. Especially perhaps in England, South Africa and Australia - but even in the sub-continent where there was more to celebrate. Will the lessons of the tournament be learned by the participants and especially the International Cricket Council (ICC)?

For the ICC the 2007 Cricket World cup was a disaster. It dragged on from March 13th to April 28th and India and Pakistan failed to make it beyond the Group stages - unfancied Ireland and Bangladesh took the places in the next stage that had been pre-ordained for these two money-spinning nations. So for a month we had a tournament without India and Pakistan and the sub-continent, Sri Lanka aside, switched off. Never again said the ICC - so for the 2011 tournament no risks were taken. The eight main Test nations were virtually guaranteed a quarterfinal place, which they duly took. Although England made life difficult for a while by losing to Ireland and Bangladesh, which they weren't supposed to do! For India and Pakistan it was mostly plain sailing, as it was meant to be - and as the ICC's sponsors demanded.

So what of 2015 - the next tournament? First, you would think, there has to be an acknowledgement that we have twelve decent One-Day International sides. There is the top ten - the eight big beasts plus Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. The last mentioned might be a question mark but they are full members of the ICC and surely by 2015 their nation will have restored a semblance of normality and their cricket as well? Then there is Ireland who have performed brilliantly in the last two World Cups beating Pakistan and England along the way. And The Netherlands who ran England close this time around and are a team comprised of more then decent limited overs cricketers.

The ICC, however, has decided that Ireland and The Netherlands will be excluded from the 2015 tournament. It is to say the least discouraging to these two cricket nations whose improvement in recent years has been marked. And the decision makes to logistic sense either. There are virtually no disadvantages to having a 12-team tournament compared with a 10-team one. So what is the solution?

In 2015 the Cricket World Cup should comprise 12 teams. Recognising the need for the ICC and the member countries to maximise their income streams there should be a Group phase with the twelve teams divided into two six team Groups. This would mean 30 matches in total in the Group stages which with two matches per day and allowing for travelling and rest time would last about three weeks. Then the top four teams in each Group would progress to the Quarterfinals and so on. Another couple of weeks maximum. A five week tournament - long for sure but much shorter than 2007 or 2011 (19th February - 2nd April). The key would be the scheduling of the Group matches. By playing two matches per day the overall duration is limited - but with Australia and New Zealand crossing five time zones and allowing for a mix of Day and Day/Night matches the television clashes can be minimised. It's perfectly feasible. Over to you ICC !

MCC to sell Lord's and move to Stratford

St John's Wood 1st April 2011

The world of cricket was rocked to its gleaming white boots today by the news that the Marylebone Cricket Club, its most revered institution, is to sell its iconic Lord's cricket ground and move to a ground share with West Ham United at the Stratford Olympic Stadium. Speaking to the media Secretary and CEO Keith Bradshaw said "I'm sure this news will be a surprise but when we looked at the options this was the one, by far, that was best for our members - who after all own the club". Bradshaw revealed that each of the MCC's 20,000 members will walk away with £150,000 as a result of the sale to the new property development company "Warner-Grace Enterprises". "Lord's is a huge site in a prime area of London. The ten twenty-storey blocks of luxury apartments will fully exploit the location. Each will have a £15million penthouse and with the average price being over £5million for the other flats this is an offer too good to be true".

The whole of Lord's will be demolished except the Pavilion, a listed building which will be become a Hotel, Casino and restaurant complex. "The Long Room will become the main gaming hall and we plan to use other rooms, like the dressing rooms, for poker and other games" said a spokesman for the new "Compton Edrich Casino" company. The Media Centre will also remain and become a health and fitness centre and Gentlemen's Club.

The MCC became aware of the development potential of the whole Lord's site as it progressed extensive plans for the Nursery End. What came as a surprise was not so much the very high value of the total Lord's Real Estate but the fact that Westminster Council encouraged the development and said that planning permission would not be a problem. A Council spokesman said that in this difficult times assets must be fully exploited and the current use of Lord's was clearly sub optimum. Lord's future as an International venue has also been under question as a result of the recent decision of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to award Test matches to County grounds like Cardiff and the Rosebowl rather than the "Home of Cricket".

The partnership with West Ham is based on the fact that the football club will only need its new stadium for ten months of the year. "There is a window of opportunity for cricket for nearly eight weeks in the summer" says West Ham Vice Chairman Karen Brady "and the MCC's plans to play lots of Twenty20 matches at our new home should bring the money in". She confirmed that there will, however, not be any Test matches at the ground when the MCC moves to East London.

Welcoming the move the England and Wales Cricket Board said that it would relocate its premises from Lord's to Dubai. "As the ICC has shown the tax advantages of a move to Dubai are very strong" said ECB Chief Executive David Collier "and we believe there may also be some financial benefits to English cricket as well. We will miss Lord's but nothing is forever and I am delighted that the MCC has been so forward-looking in making this decision." The move has also been welcomed by Arts and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. "This is very much a "Big Society" decision. In the 21st Century we have to work together at all levels to further our society aims. In truth Lord's was rather elitist in the past and I am delighted that much needed housing supply in London will be enhanced and that more productive use will now be made of these acres of NW9."

Construction on the new "Lord's Village" will begin immediately the main 2012 fixture has been completed - the Olympic Archery tournament. Asked when the final Lord's Test match would be played Mr Bradshaw replied "Good question - I'll come back to you on that one. Need to check with the ECB"

Lets stop raging against the dying of the light of county cricket

 

The subject of the need for reform of English domestic cricket is unlikely to make headline news – even on the sports pages. But in the circles where those of us who obsessively care about the game move there is no question more divisive pitching, as it does, the traditionalist against the moderniser in an often rancorous battle of words. For example in an article in the Kent County Cricket Supporters Club Magazine last summer I argued that the current “18 county model for the county game is broken beyond repair” and that we need an 8 team franchise structure based on established international grounds. It wasn’t a particularly original proposal - the “Cricket Reform Group” and others have been arguing for something like this for years. However to suggest to the Kent faithful that Kent county cricket would have to be downgraded to a semi-professional domestic second tier was tantamount to blasphemy for some. In the next edition of the magazine I was accused, by the County curator (archivist) no less, of being “disingenuous”, “misguided”, “promoting nonsense”, of being someone who doesn’t care about the “history and traditions of the game” or the “distinguished past” of the counties. I am, according to this self-appointed guardian of cricket’s traditions, promoting “elitism” and, finally, “barmy”!

Whilst Kent’s curator knows what he doesn’t like, and uses intemperate and insulting language to let us know about this, he fails completely to offer any alternative suggestions as to how we put right the mess that is County cricket. Ironically Kent CCC is one of the most obvious examples of one of the many problems of the current county system. The county’s finances are a shambles, attendance at many of their matches is pitiful and they simply do not have the resources to compete effectively in the top tier. It was no surprise that they fell back into the Championship’s second division after an embarrassingly unsuccessful 2010 season. Kent has also alienated its most loyal supporter group – its members – by implementing swingeing increases in annual membership costs and failing to respond to members’ complaints about having to pay a minimum of £200 per annum to maintain their membership rights. Kent is not the only County that wouldn’t have any financial future at all without huge subvention from the England and Wales Cricket Board - indeed this is the rule not the exception in our antiquated and unsuitable domestic structure.

Support for the need for change comes from an unlikely source in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. Shane Warne, who of course played for and captained Hampshire, says that “It is time to cut county cricket from its traditional base of 18 teams back to 10”. He makes the excellent point that a ten team structure with say 16 players per squad would make 160 top cricketers in all compare with the 360 at present - among which, according to Warne, are “plenty of people who don’t deserve contracts” and that some sides in the second division are “not even club standard” ! Warne is right of course – although no doubt he would also be accused of being “barmy” by some of cricket’s old-school. I’d be happy to engage in a debate as to whether ten, eight or even less is the right number for a top class domestic system. William Buckland in his seminal book on the subject of English cricket “Pommies” thinks that a five team domestic structure is ideal – half again of Warnie’s suggestion. Whether it’s five or eight or (at a pinch) ten can be debated. But it sure as hell isn’t 18!

In the article I referred to above I tried to present a positive view of how cricket at England’s beautiful festival grounds like Tunbridge Wells and Arundel might be sustained and evolve. My guess is that the crowds for matches between Kent and Sussex (for example) wouldn’t be much less if the two counties were playing good quality semi-professional cricket compared with playing in the current substandard so-called “first-class” competition. Change isn’t easy and there would be huge regrets that the shire counties no longer hosted matches in the primary domestic competition. But the counties wouldn’t disappear and in the same way that good quality rugby continues to be played at historic clubs like Blackheath, Rosslyn Park and London Scottish despite the fact that they are not top tier any more so it would be with cricket’s counties. The Old Farts of Rugby had to bow to the inevitable and whilst I would not argue that the the 12-team Aviva Premiership is perfect its establishment did not lead to the destruction of those clubs who couldn’t make the transition to the new much more sustainable and commercial top flight. So it would be with cricket and nobody is served by nostalgically clinging to the past and raging against the dying of the light.

A vintage year in Sport? Yes but, no but…

 

“Prats – talking, writing and pontificating about things of which they know nothing are the curse of modern sport. And I definitely include prominent former sportsmen; in fact they are the worst of all.” Andy Ripley

Andy Ripley, that fine and fearless man of Rugby, and a great deal more, died this year at the tragically early age of 62. Andy was not an establishment man - and yet he did more for sport as a player, commentator and administrator than all of the men in suits he mercilessly mocked put together. Quite what he would have said about the myriad sporting scandals that have grabbed the headlines in the six months since his death can only be conjectured – but you can be sure that he would have had a point of view. There is hardly a sport that hasn’t featured on the front pages as well as the back for all the wrong reasons this year. Drugs, violence, greed, cheating, bribery, corruption, disloyalty and just plain stupidity have been almost daily occurrences and no sport has been free of the whiff of scandal. So I offer below, and to the memory of Andy Ripley, a cynic’s antidote to the Awards season when sportsmen (they are mostly men) some of whom we know to be self-indulgent and avaricious prats, will dress uncomfortably in designer suits to pick up one gong or another. “And the award goes to Bloggs – fresh from kicking the teeth in of another second row forward at Twickenham.” “And the Personality of the Year is Blank – fresh from demanding a 50% rise on his already obscene weekly pay packet”. “And the Trophy goes to Dubbin whose contacts in the world of illegal betting wish him well”. And so it will go on.

If some of the players are hypocrites and the commercial organisations which sponsor the awards short-sighted what about the gullible rest of us who lap it all up? Those of us who paid Sky serious money to watch that grotesque parody of sport that was the Haye v Harrison fight. Those of us who hailed the arrival of new fast bowling talent on the Pakistan tour and paid good money to watch it – only to find that that talent was being paid by someone shady to cheat. Those who paid thousands of pounds to go to South Africa to watch England’s grossly over- hyped and overpaid Football team, incompetently led and devoid of any team sprit or focus fail so utterly and miserably. Those of us who fell for the Tiger Woods brand and watched used his image being used to sell anything from razors to golf holidays – only to find that the brand was bogus. Those of us who were fooled into thinking that an exceptional England bid for the Football World Cup in 2018 would be judged on rational grounds – only for it to be contemptuously dismissed by a FIFA committee with zero ethics and greedy hands. Those among us who remember the glory days of Formula one when brave men of integrity competed fairly for trophies surely look askance today at this scandal-infected pseudo-sport headed up by a man who not only successfully bungs his way with Heads of State and Prime Ministers but also says that Adolf Hitler was a man who "was able to get things done", and that “democracy has not worked out for Britain”. Those of us who played Rugby in days of yore, when the nearest thing to a scandal was the stuffing of a few used fivers into the socks of “amateur” players before a match, will recall that in those halcyon days Doctors were not employed at the Stoop to cut players’ lips. And sometimes they never learn. In 2006 Floyd Landis was being awarded victory in the Tour de France only later to be stripped of his title for a doping offense. Roll forward to 2010 and the “winner”, Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, may suffer the same fate as Landis if the investigation into his positive test for using a banned substance leads to his guilt being confirmed. This is a sport which has long since lost any semblance of respectability – and yet Rupert Murdoch’s News International has ploughed tens of millions of dollars into “Team Sky” seemingly oblivious of the fact that the whole sport is rotten to the core. British Tennis is not exactly rotten – but what a shambolic ongoing failure there has been over decades to create a domestic structure which produces professional players of even the most modest quality. Great Tennis nations like Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland and Austria are just some of the countries that have humbled Britain’s best in the Davis Cup in recent times. And we await, as we have done most of my lifetime, the day when we once again have a Grand Slam champion. Hosting the world’s finest tennis tournament well is one thing – actually creating a domestic system that produces decent players seems beyond us.

There has always been an element of “If you can get away with it” in sport – its only human nature after all. But it is the scale of the abuse that is breathtaking today. Just as the Captains of Industry condone things that their predecessors would never have tolerated (John Browne and Tony Hayward’s cavalier approach to Health and Safety at B.P. for example) so sporting administrators and sportsmen behave in ways that would have been unthinkable decades ago. Can you imagine that one of Giles Clarke’s distant predecessors at the top of England cricket would have been as comprehensively conned as Clarke was by Allan Stanford? And can you conceive that in the distant days of Alan Hardaker the Football League, as it then was, would have allowed great Clubs to become the playthings of absentee owners in the Gulf States, or Russia or the USA? In the past Football Clubs had businesses which served the sport – today all too many of them have sport to serve the business. That sports need sound financial underpinning is right – but when the raison d'être of a Club becomes financial, just as if it was a commercial organisation no different from a factory, then we get the sort of vulgar shenanigans we have seen at Liverpool and Manchester United with their phony owners wearing and besmirching Clubs’ proud colours and for whom a Shankly or a Busby is probably an item of headgear. And what would those who ran the Rugby Football Union in distant days have thought of the current mob who in recent times have sent England’s team on to the Twickenham pitch dressed in purple or “anthracite” rather than white – not because there was a colour clash with their opponents but just to sell a few more replicas in the shop.

Sport is for all - and major broadcast sport has to be universally available. In 1966 at Wembley or 2003 at Sydney or 2005 at The Oval the nation was glued to its TV sets as English sportsmen triumphed in major competitions at the highest level. But at The Oval in 2009 or Adelaide last week only those with expensive satellite subscriptions could join in the fun – a deplorable failure of governance. The blame is shared between those who run English cricket and a supine Government which accommodates them. Government can be a force for good in sport, and should be. Tony Blair’s successful involvement in the bidding process for the 2012 Olympic Games, and David Cameron’s no less commendable attempt to secure FIFA 2018, are examples of how political leaders can help. But Blair’s venal decision to accommodate Bernie Ecclestone’s peddling of tobacco brands early in his premiership and Cameron’s recent refusal to insist that The Ashes are returned to terrestrial television shows that political expediency can all too often trump public interest. Even worse is Education Minister Michael Gove’s apparent decision to remove funding of £162m which had been allocated to school sport through many hundreds of successful “School Sports Partnerships” – a decision which will not only be bad for the health of the nation’s children but will also largely banish sport to the elite and mainly private schools. And if we can’t trust our political leaders to protect our interests and those of our children we certainly can’t trust our sporting head honchos. To take cricket as one example how do those at the top of the International Cricket Council, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the England and Wales Cricket Board, the Indian Premier League and the rest get away with always putting profit before principle? And that’s in the sport which so ludicrously congratulates itself on having a special “spirit”! Top of this ignoble list is of course the Pakistan Cricket Board which has consistently brought the game into disrepute for as long as can be remembered. The spectacle of mendacious officials of this Board posturing, prevaricating and libeling this summer was in many ways even worse than the sight of the on the pitch duplicity of some of their players.

There are a couple of golfers, Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell, on this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year short list and few would begrudge either of them the award if they are chosen. The Ryder Cup was a triumph, in the end, for Europe and these two contributed much to the result – and McDowell also won a Major this year. But let’s not delude ourselves that everything in the garden is lovely in this sport either. At the Ryder Cup we were treated to the unpleasant spectacle of the Captain of the American team using military symbolism to “inspire” his team and an Army Major spoke to the team on the eve of the event “I want these guys to be accountable to each other and have each other's backs, and basically that's what happens in the military” said Corey Pavin. Phil Mickleson commented afterwards, with absolutely no sense of irony at all, that he felt “…proud to be part of a country that cares about the civil rights of people all throughout the world and not just in our own country,”. You couldn’t make it up! Meanwhile these pampered multimillionaires flew around in their private gas-guzzling airplanes from tournament to tournament living a life as far removed from the average golf spectator as it is possible to imagine. The bizarre tendency for sporting enterprise to associate itself with the military is not confined to professional golf. Rugby Internationals at Twickenham now have obligatory military displays and there is a presumption, like that of Corey Pavin, that spectators and competitors should support this. As Richard Williams writing in “The Guardian” put it recently “There is something disquieting about this gradual blending of sporting and military culture, with its underlying assumption that all spectators at any given event…necessarily share the government’s view of the rightness of what our forces are doing overseas.” Indeed!

That some members of FIFA have been corrupt should have surprised nobody – especially those who remember the vices of the International Olympic Commission over the year. Power corrupts – and the opportunity to use one’s position on these bodies to enrich oneself corrupts absolutely. Unlike FIFA the IOC may no longer have personally dishonest individuals at its top – but in its decision making it has long since foregone the moral high ground – if it was ever there. The conspiracy to provide a cloak of respectability around the degenerate gang which rules the People’s Republic of China with Beijing 2008 showed that the IOC hasn’t moved on one iota from Berlin 1936 – and that money echoes far more loudly than principles in the IOC’s fetid corridors. Will London 2012 and Rio 2016 be scandal free? Let’s hope so - but don’t hold your breath.

The further sports move away from their followers and spectators the more likely it is that they will forget that we the paying public have a stake in what they do. The ECB disadvantaged millions of cricket fans at a stroke when they awarded live international cricket to Sky. Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City alienated countless thousands of their fans when they sold the clubs down the river to foreign owners who then, in some cases, incurred massive debts. And they compete with one another in spraying their money around in an obscene way – not helped by the greed of players and their agents. It has just emerged that the Manchester City player Carlos Tevez is paid £286,000-a-week tax free at Eastlands - To do the sum for you this is just short of £25m a year gross (very gross!). Nobody would wish to return to the days of the maximum wage – when Jimmy Greaves (worth ten of Mr Tevez) lived in a grace and favour one-bedroomed flat in Chelsea for which he paid thirty shillings a week out of his £20 a week wage. But Greaves and his teammates related to the supporters who went to watch them in a way that the Tevez’s and the Rooney’s never could. And that matters.

Top level motorsport is the same. The leaders of Formula one have taken the sport a million miles away from the ethos and values of the past making it unaffordable for the ordinary spectator to attend a Grand Prix and increasingly holding races in locations where the coffers are unlimited. So great circuits like Estoril or Kyalami are unused whilst absurd and uninteresting new constructions built with oil or vanity money add congestion to an already overcrowded calendar. If you think that nighttime races around the brightly illuminated streets of Singapore give a bad example environmentally then what about FIFA’s incredible decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar? The Qataris plan to build air-conditioned stadia to allow the matches to take place at the height of a Gulf summer – when temperatures of 50 degrees in the shade are common. Just down the road from the grounds a gas-fired power station or two will be cranked up to maximum to provide the electricity that this scandalously wasteful nonsense needs.

As you settle down to watch the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year next Sunday accept it for the superficial, selective and sycophantic spectacle that it is. Cheer when cheers are due – the England cricket team, Tony McCoy, Lee Westwood and the others who have done us proud. But as a counter-balance remember the wise words of Andy Ripley “I’ve finally settled on my little maxim for life. You can earn a living from what you get - but you only get a life from what you give”.

The Legends of Kent cricket

Twelve is a magic number – there were twelve Apostles of course and twelve Gods of the Greek Pantheon – and now twelve Legends of Kent cricket are to be commemorated in the redevelopment of the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury. It’s a nice idea – each of those chosen will have a permanent tribute in stone in the “Walkway” of the new home of Kent cricket. Quite how the 12 will be chosen isn't clear at this stage but as a member of the County for more than 40 years I hope that along with other members I will be in the loop somewhere. Let’s have a first go a putting a list together for others perhaps to comment on. I’ll just list the twelve name that I would select without explanation and see if other Kent aficionados would challenge my choices. So here goes (in no particular order):

 

1. FRANK WOOLLEY
2. COLIN BLYTHE
3. TICH FREEMAN
4. LES AMES
5. GODFREY EVANS
6. COLIN COWDREY
7. ALAN KNOTT
8. DEREK UNDERWOOD
9. MIKE DENNESS
10. BRIAN LUCKHURST
11. JOHN SHEPHERD
12. ROB KEY

 

What do you think?

Let’s have domestic cricket that matters in England…

Asking for sanity in Cricket Administration sometimes seems like asking for sobriety in the Drones Club – the call won’t so much fall on deaf ears but on narrow minds obsessed with their own political and personal games and incapable of seeing reason. In his first communication to members of MCC since becoming President Christopher Martin-Jenkins said in relation to the absurdly over-crowded domestic fixture list of 2010 “Happily a more balanced county programme is under discussion for next year…” Unhappily these discussions, as we now know, came to naught and 2011 will be as daft, fixture-wise, as 2010 was.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has a “Structure group” and those interested will note that this group has recommended shortening the domestic season – but not until 2012. We are in deckchairs on the Titanic territory here. Views vary as to how many of our current counties are in crisis but more than half of them seems a reasonable guess. That crisis comes in some cases from incompetent and even dysfunctional management. But even where the County management teams do know what they are doing their hands are tied by the commercial realities of modern-day domestic cricket.

A day at the India Test match at Lord’s next year will cost you around £100 per head – so a family visit for one day taking account of travel costs might cost £500. Why? Well chiefly because the ECB needs money to recycle to the Counties. We will be denied live International cricket on terrestrial television next year and for the foreseeable future and will need A Sky or Virgin subscription costing £600 to see it. Why? Well chiefly because the ECB needs money to recycle to the Counties. The amounts varied but each of the County P&Ls benefited from around £2million from the ECB in 2010 –remember this is OUR MONEY taken from us in ticket sales (the highest prices in the cricket world by far) and subscription TV costs.

Cricket is the most traditional of games which is why when change comes enthusiasts sometimes go into “Shock/horror” mode. Over my 60 year cricket watching life (so far) the introduction of One Day domestic cricket in 1963, a Cricket World Cup in 1975, domestic Twenty20 in 2003, an International T20 tournament in 2007 and the IPL in 2008 have (inter alia) all been seen, incorrectly, as presaging the end of the “game as we know it”. In fact cricket has proved to be more resilient that the doomsayers believed and Test cricket, for many the apex of the game, survives. County cricket is, however, another matter.

In 2010 there were 151 domestic Twenty20 matches in England mostly between the traditional 18 counties. And despite the fact that all too many of these matches were sparsely attended the same overkill will apply in 2011. In addition each county played thirteen mostly ill-attended 4 Day Championship matches and at least twelve 40 Over games. The rational for retaining this overheavy structure in 2011 is that “that many counties have already entered into commitments to playing staffs and other expenditure for 2011 and that cash flow from membership and ticket sales are vitally important in the current difficult economic climate for the 2011 season”. So despite the fact that the cricket-watching public voted with their feet to stay away in large numbers in 2010 they will be offered exactly the same fare in 2011. If at first you don’t succeed do nothing and hope for the best!

English domestic cricket needs a new, fresh look more urgently than ever and to delay doing this is short-sighted and foolish. From 2012 onwards what is needed is not a tinkering with the fixture lists but a revolutionary redesign to the whole domestic structure. We need a maximum of eight top-class domestic teams playing matches that matter both because of the quality of the cricket and the fact that world-class players (including England players) will be on display. We need far fewer and far better 4 Day and one day matches – 50 (not 40) Overs and T20. Each match should be marketable as an event at a ground with top class facilities in a competition that matters. Some of the eight city-based franchise teams might be built on the infrastructure of existing counties – but they don’t have to be.

This proposal does not mean the end of county cricket – it means that the eighteen counties would revert to being a third semi-professional and amateur tier in regional groupings which would also include the existing minor counties. A new county structure of 38 counties in this way is perfectly viable and would require few if any hand-outs from the ECB. If it took its lead from Australian grade cricket it would provide not just satisfying cricket in its own right but also act as a nursery for England-qualified cricketers who would progress onwards to the city-franchise teams if good enough. We would still be able to watch Kent v Sussex at Tunbridge Wells or Leicestershire v Derbyshire at Grace Road, but within a financial structure that would be viable and would endure.

Thanks Johnners - and thanks Aggers.

Johnners would have loved it. Brian Johnston was a man of comparatively simple pleasures and all were present in abundance at the launch party last night of the new book about him by Jonathan Agnew – “Thanks Johnners”. There were Thesps and entertainers galore: Simon Williams, Roger Lloyd Pack, Tim Rice, Lesley Garrett… his old friends from Test Match Special like Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Peter Baxter as well as, of course, the Author himself – young Aggers. But above all there was family – the Agnews and the Johnstons en masse including Jonathan’s octogenarian parents and Johnners widow Pauline – frail at 88 but with that sparkle in her eye that must instantly have attracted BJ to her when they met way back in 1947. Stephen Fry, who wrote the Foreword to the book, would also have been there but sadly had to attend the funeral of an old friend in Chester.

The unique charm of Brian Johnston is well summed up in Stephen Fry’s contribution to the book “Charming, gallant, funny, courteous, kindly, perceptive, soldierly, honourable and old-fashioned” - old-fashioned in the right way Fry stresses! Everyone at the party had at least one personal Johnners story and each of these confirmed Fry’s assessment of the character of the man. As a schoolboy, back in the early 1960s, I brandished a copy of one of Johnners’ early tomes in front of him for his signature. He looked at me with faux astonishment “Good Lord you actually bought it!” he said.

I must leave an assessment of Aggers new book until I have actually read it – but the signs are promising. I remember when the word leaked out that Agnew had been commissioned to do the book Andrew Johnston, Johnners second son, looked a little doubtful as there had already been a number of very good biographies of his father by Tim Heald, by Johnners’ eldest son Barry as well as BJ’s own various autobiographies and memoirs. But the Johnston family seemed very happy with “Thanks Johnners” and Jonathan Agnew thanked them generously for their cooperation.

Johnners was above all an entertainer and that is a rare thing in sports commentary today. How many writers and correspondents on sport write or talk first about the politics, the money and the darker side of our national sports? Even Aggers, solidly and commendably in the Johnners tradition of entertaining commentary, had to deal all too often this summer with the seamier side of cricket -match-fixing and the like. His distaste for all this was evident but his professionalism in tackling it, which as BBC cricket correspondent he had to, was commendable.

Many cricket fans would argue that cricket is different in that it is rarely predictable who is likely to be an enthusiast for the great game. The theatrical connection is long-standing - even Hollywood has a cricket club going back to the 1930s founded by the actor C.Aubrey Smith - who had played one Test match in 1889. The eclectic nature of the support for the game was shown by the guests at the book launch many of whom has been on TMS’s “View from the Boundary” - originally an interview spot conducted by Johnners and now one of Jonathan Agnew’s favourite parts of the programme. That’s why Lesley Garrett was at the party. By coincidence I had seen one of Ms Garrett’s concerts last week in Liverpool Cathedral, of all places, where it was the highlight of a Pensions conference! She seemed very surprised that there was someone at the book launch who had been at the Cathedral - but she was charmingly pleased that I had enjoyed it so much. Lovely lady!

There is a continuity of style about Test Match Special that enthusiasts like me treasure. The torch has been passed almost effortlessly it seems, from hand to hand: Alston, Swanton, Arlott, Johnston, Mosey, Blofeld, CMJ and now Aggers. None of these great commentators were star cricketers – though Blowers might have been and Agnew was better than his three Test matches and three ODIs record suggests. But what they all have is the special ability to talk to the listener so that it is almost as if the commentator is sitting next to him in a deckchair at the match. On Sky TV we do get very insightful comments from their gaggle of ex-England captains but there is rarely the segue into fantasy that has always been part of TMS’s style. And there is never the geniality and the hospitality either – I doubt that the Sky box is a very welcoming place whereas the TMS commentary box is always an attraction – and not just for the cake.

Aggers expressed his real concerns last night about where the new TMS commentators are going to come from. There are few training grounds any more with commentary on domestic cricket having almost completely withered on the vine. Blowers is 71, CMJ is 65 and even Aggers is 50! True Johnners carried on well into his eighties so we can hope that the “A Team” will be with us for some time to come as well. But isn’t there somewhere an embryo Johnners or Aggers waiting for his or her chance? Don’t tell me we don’t make them like that anymore!

Dachau an inappropriate choice for sports team bonding

It started with Steve Waugh’s 2001 Aussies who visited Gallipoli on their way to defend The Ashes in England. In his autobiography Waugh made it clear why they went – he described the visit as a “true bonding experience”. I thought at the time that there was something very tacky indeed about using a memorial to the fallen as a prop for the team bonding of a sports team. But Gallipoli sits understandably deep in the Australian psyche and although it seemed wrong to me to that a visit had been factored it into the team’s pre Ashes build up I kept quiet. Then in 2009 the England squad under Andrew Strauss made what seemed to me to be a gratuitous visit to Flanders to attend a specially arranged “...ceremony to commemorate the English cricketers who had died there” – as Strauss put it. As with the Australians eight years earlier team-bonding was the objective. And now, in the build up to another Ashes tour, the England squad has again been to a memorial – this time that at the site of the Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich.

I would argue that learning about The Holocaust is essential to the development of a rounded personality for us all and believe that the subject is rightly taught in schools and that it is important that it features in the Arts in films like “Schindler’s List”. The decision to visit sites like Auschwitz or Dachau is, however, a very personal one and many of us would prefer not to do it. If we do decide that it is appropriate for us to go to such a place my guess is that we would prefer to do so quietly, respectfully and with our very closest family – partners and children. For some such a visit might take place as part of a relevant common interest group - the children of Holocaust survivors for example. But surely nobody could conceive that it would be appropriate to expropriate a concentration camp memorial as a bonding tool for a sports team?

It defies belief that the England and Wales Cricket Board should think that it was right for the England cricketers to visit Dachau as a group. Unlike Gallipoli or Flanders, for which some slightly specious Australian or English cricket connection could be found, Dachau has a personal resonance for only a small number of British citizens. That it has meaning for all of us as a symbol of man’s inhumanity to man is undoubtedly true but that is something that we should explore as individuals – using a visit for a team building experience is crass and offensive.

Andrew Strauss said after his visit to Dachau “Following our trip to Flanders last year, this was an opportunity for the players to spend time away from the cricketing environment, learn more about the wider world and develop ourselves both individually and collectively.” Few would question that it is good preparation for a major sporting contest to strengthen the bonds between members of a team and that non cricketing activities can help do this. However the use of a Holocaust memorial site is grossly inappropriate and thoughtless and the ECB should have had the sensitivity to exclude it from the England team’s Bavarian adventures.

Whither the "Spirit of Cricket" now ?

We are used to living in a world where the rhetoric of slogans rarely matches the reality of experience. My old employer Shell had at least stopped using its tag line “You can be sure of Shell” a while before it became quite apparent that you couldn’t. But the LibDems shamelessly propagated their “Change That Works For You. Building a Fairer Britain” as they secretly finessed themselves closer to the Conservatives for whom, as we can now see, “fairness” is hardly a convincing battle cry. And in sport can there be a more dubious motto than that now inculcated into the Laws of the Game and presumptuously adopted by the Marylebone Cricket Club – the “Spirit of Cricket”.

The preamble to the Laws of Cricket says “Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this spirit causes injury to the game itself. The major responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play rests with the captains.” Fine words albeit hugely hubristic ones. The first bit of overweening pride here is the peddling of the myth that cricket in some way sets itself apart from other sports. Its appeal is “unique” and when it is played there is some sort of quasi-spiritual imperative which means that it is played is a spirit which goes beyond its laws and rules. Poppycock! Indeed there is a reasonable argument to say that professional cricket is uniquely dysfunctional compared with other sports. Take sledging for example. Few if any sports have institutionalised verbal abuse of one team’s players by those of the other as cricket has. Perhaps it is marginally less prevalent today than when Shane Warne was ritually foul-mouthing England’s batsmen. But it hasn’t gone away. Examples are legion but Matthew Hayden, A devout Catholic apparently, showed the style with his tirade at Graeme Smith when he came to the wicket a few years ago "You know, you're not fucking good enough. How the fuck are you going to handle Shane Warne when he's bowling in the rough? What the fuck are you going to do?" And former Aussie captain, Steve Waugh, publicly supported the practice of sledging giving it the fancy title of "mental disintegration". I don’t know of any other sport where sledging is an accepted part of the game – but I do know that this practice alone makes a mockery of the so-called “Spirit of Cricket”.

If on the field misbehaviour, not just sledging, in cricket is worse than in many other sports it leaders hardly set a noble example in their behaviour. When financial carrots dangle is there a cricket board Chairman who doesn’t salivate? If the “Spirit of Cricket” had meant anything in practice then the grotesque spectacle of the England and Wales Cricket Board prostrating itself in front of the gruesome “Sir” Allan Stanford would not have happened. And does anyone seriously think that “moral” considerations play any part in the decision making of the Indian Premier League – notwithstanding MCC’s absurd links with this venture? The links were lauded by Lalit Modi the League’s Chairman back in 2008 "I am happy that the Indian Premier League will adopt MCC’s doctrine on the Spirit of Cricket” Modi said at the League’s inception - and the MCC issued similarly pretentious sounding statements at the time. Mr Modi is, of course, currently suspended and answering a raft of accusations of corruption! Some spirit!

The acid test of whether the “Spirit of Cricket” actually means anything in reality is to compare behaviour on and off the field today with how things were before the whole idea was dreamed up. Is there less ball-tampering or sledging? Do batsmen “walk” more when they nick the ball and it is caught? And are cricket’s leaders more concerned with behaving in a principled way than once they were? I would argue that the reverse is the case and that the practical effect of the “Spirit of Cricket” has been zero – PR flimflam aside. This summer the MCC’s “Home of Cricket” was heavily decorated with “Spirit of Cricket” hoardings and Pakistan’s Test matches were overtly branded as “Spirit of Cricket tests”. How ironic, then, that it was at Lord’s that, in the words of ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat, a betting scam which “had the potential to be the worst corruption case in cricket since that of Hansie Cronje” took place.

Defenders of the “Spirit of Cricket” would no doubt say that the concept is aspirational - that it sets a standard of behaviour intention to which all cricketers should aspire. The problem with that is that it is little more than a vague and high-minded slogan which maybe gives a warm glow of comfort to some deluded souls but is largely ignored in reality. What really matters is having clear rules and regulations that are unequivocally stated and properly policed. The ICC does this and it will no doubt be reviewing these rules and their application in the light of the Lord’s debacle. And these rules need to be inculcated into the behaviour of all cricket’s officials not because they relate to some noble cause, like the “Spirit of Cricket”, but because they are non-negotiable conditions for participating in cricket at all. If you can’t manage your players in such a way that they don’t tamper with cricket balls, cheat, abuse and insult opponents and fix matches or incidents within matches then you don’t get a licence to play at all.

It may seem be a sad refection on the modern world that cries of "Play up! Play up! And play the game!" (which is essentially what the “Spirit of Cricket” is) fall onto deaf ears. But it is worth remembering that only 35 years after Henry Newbolt’s Vitaï Lampada, from which this line is of course taken, Douglas Jardine was ordering his bowlers to threaten Australian batsmen with intimidatory bodyline bowling. And that it wasn’t by a reference to some “Spirit of Cricket” that this practice was outlawed but by a change to the Laws of the game. “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!”

There’s betting – and there’s betting

Michael Vaughan tweets: “Off to Aussie to film a TV commercial for Betfair... for The Ashes. Quite ironic with what's been going on…” Indeed it is Michael and whilst we can make a clear distinction between what Betfair does (and what you are doing) and the seamy illegal side of gambling that has reared its ugly head the irony that you identify is a real one.

Yesterday I asked John Stern, the distinguished editor of “The Wisden Cricketer”, whether it was time for Sky to drop their slogan “It matters more if there is money on it”. Stern said “…therein lies the massive conflict of interest. Spot/spread betting (legal) [is a] huge backer of pro sport”. Now I am not much of a gambler – I can always find better things to do with my hard earned money than passing it to a bookie. But I can see that sport and gambling are inextricably tied together – and indeed they always have been. The noble sport of Cricket started in an era of gentlemen’s wagers and indeed it is arguable that the game might not have got off the ground at all without gambling.

Today every ground has betting facilities and betting advertising – as at The Oval in the photograph. To regret this development is I’m afraid naïve – as John Stern says betting is everywhere in sport. So if the culture is one in which gambling is encouraged, and it is, then how do we judge what seems to have been going on in the shady world of illegal gambling and the fixing of cricket matches or incidents within these matches? Is there not a tinge of hypocrisy about on the one hand actively encouraging betting companies like BetFair to be involved in cricket (as Michael Vaughan is doing) whilst on the other hand condemning players’ involvements in gambling?

The answer to my question is, of course, that there is a world of difference between legal gambling and the sordid world of match or spot fixing. The boundary is clear between what is legal, if a bit distasteful (the modern obsession with having a punt) and the grotesque negation of the true spirit of sport that is so gruesomely on view at the moment. Personally I have never thought that it is the case that “it matters more if there is money on it” and I find the slogan offensive and insulting. Would England’s win in the World Twenty20 or the 2009 Ashes have mattered more to me if I had had a successful bet on these outcomes – not at all? Others may take a different view – that is their choice – but there are few situations where I would feel the need to place a sporting bet. At a race meeting perhaps – but that is about it.

But what is apparently taking place all over South Asia, and elsewhere, is not the occasional ten quid each way on a horse in the 3:30 or a punt on the result of a cricket match. It is systematic illegal gambling on a huge scale with the prizes so large that it pays the criminals involved to try and fix outcomes. In order to put the fix into effect these people have to have access to the players and have to make it worth the while of the players to do what they ask. So middlemen, like Mazhar Majeed in the current case, somehow inveigle their way into the players’ sphere and manage to recruit some of them to do the necessary. Which brings me to the main point – this is a comprehensive failure of management by the Pakistan Cricket Board. Four years ago at the Oval we saw what happens when a squad of players is incompetently managed by officials. I wrote at the time “The root cause of Sunday’s Oval fiasco was a lack of proper leadership when it mattered most. Inzaman-Al-Haq should have said to his players “Look guys we are not happy about the ball-tampering allegations but the right time to progress this is after the match. Let’s get on and win it”. When he failed to do this Bob Woolmer or Zaheer Abbas or the ineffable Shaharyar Khan should have stepped in and said something similar. Instead there was vacillation and they all bowed to player power”. Four years on and it is self-evident that Pakistan’s cricket management is as useless as it ever was.

Finally let me express some sympathy for the 18-year-old Mohammed Amir whose highly promising career is likely to be ruined by this affair. At 18 you should know right from wrong but if you are in any doubt at all you should have someone to turn to. That someone could not be his Captain as it seems that Salman Butt was himself up to his neck in the spot fixing affair. But what about the team manager Yawar Saeed? One question that should be asked of Saeed is this. “Before this tour began did you hold a briefing session with the players to warn them of the possibility of illegal approaches by match fixing middlemen? In particular did you speak with the very young players on their first big tour, like Mohammed Amir, and warn them of the dangers. And did you say to them that if they saw or heard anything that made them uncomfortable then they should come straight to the team management for advice.” If no such briefing was held by Saeed and his team at least part of the blame for this debacle lies on his shoulders.

Schumacher should go quietly

In Formula one, as in other sports, the statistics can sometimes lie. Look at World Championship successes and you won’t find the name of Stirling Moss – but few would not place him in the top five of F1 drivers. Similarly do Michael Schumacher’s seven world titles make him the best of all time? Perhaps not – my own top three would put him on a par with Senna and Clark - but I wouldn’t want to call the order. And others would make justifiable cases for Fangio (who I never saw) Stewart, Prost and Lauda to be somewhere on the podium.

The case for Schumacher is a persuasive one – he had not only more world titles but also more pole positions, podiums and fastest laps than any other driver – albeit that his career until his first retirement was one of the longest spanning sixteen seasons. Quite how Schumacher maintained exceptional performances over such a long career it is difficult to pinpoint but it was probably a mixture of genius and effort. The effort was his absolute commitment to the cause – an obsession with fine tuning the car to allow him to get the very best out of it. Schumi was the driver every mechanic and engineer wanted in the cockpit – his analysis of performance after a few test laps was exceptional and practical – and at this he got better and better as the years progressed. But it was the genius that really set him apart – it is no exaggeration to say that, all other things being equal, Schumacher was half a second a lap faster than the field. Unbeatable at his best – and he was usually at his best. 91 wins out of 249 starts (36.5 %) is an astonishing record. Senna, by comparison, won 41 out of 161 (25.5%), Clark 25 out of 72 (34.7%).

After his retirement in 2006 Schumacher continued to attend Grands Prix and carried out some ill-defined role at Ferrari. I saw him at a few Grand Prix and the spark was gone and the smile was false. He obviously missed doing the thing that he was obviously on Earth to do – to drive a Formula one car. So when Ross Brawn ill-advisedly offered Schumacher a drive, in the world champion team remember, for the 2010 season it was no surprise that Schumi jumped at the chnace. And Mercedes were deluded into thinking that their name on the car, and Schumacher in it would enhance their brand. In fact the reverse has happened - from being half a second a lap faster Schumacher is half a second a lap slower than the front runners - something he never experienced in the whole of his 16 year career. True the Mercedes is well off the place – how shrewd Ross Brawn was to sell out when he was on a high at the end of last season, and how smart Jenson Button was to fly the coop. But although the car is no great shakes Schumi’s team mate Nico Rosberg has consistently out-driven his much older partner. Rosberg is a decent driver but arguably far from ever likely to be a world title contender – he has yet to win in 82 races. But at 25 he has, unsurprisingly, the reflexes of a still young man whilst Schumacher, at 41 has simply lost the edge he once had. No disgrace there – but modern Formula one is not a sport for old men.

At the Hungarian Grand Prix Michael Schumacher was in a battle for tenth place with Rubens Barrichello and it was doubtless the realisation that he was nowhere near the head of the field and that he was certain to be an also ran once again for the twelfth race in succession that made him squeeze Rubens almost into the wall. Schumi has previous of course and this has never made him as popular a champion as he might have been if he had always been more sportsmanlike. That he was a flawed genius we knew – but the number of incidents was fairly small and in 249 races during which he was mostly competing to win it is perhaps unsurprising that ambition occasionally took over from fair play. But at the Hungaroring yesterday there was absolutely no excuse and Schumacher has tarnished a comeback that was already looking an embarrassing failure. Have a look at the footage of the incident and I’m afraid Ross Brawn’s defence that "Michael was defending his position, trying to encourage Rubens to go around the outside. I don't think for a moment that he saw Rubens there and thought 'I will squeeze him' is phooey. Schumacher knew exactly what he was doing and he should be ashamed of himself. Time to go Michael – sooner rather than later.